Former Venezuelan general Hugo Carvajal, better known as "El Pollo." Photo: Emilio Naranjo/AP Photo.
By Misión Verdad – Jul 1, 2025
The “narco-state” narrative has been a constant in the United States’ discursive arsenal to justify policies of pressure, illegal sanctions, and even veiled threats of intervention.
In this context, the recent guilty plea of Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal before a federal court in New York, officially announced by the Department of Justice on June 25, provides a new opportunity to relaunch this narrative, with the usual load of judicial drama and national security rhetoric.
Carvajal pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, narcoterrorism in collaboration with the defunct FARC guerrilla group, and other weapons-related offenses.”
The Justice Department notes that his involvement included “coordinating the shipment of tons of cocaine, providing armed protection for the shipments, and arming the FARC with explosives and automatic weapons.”
His sentencing is scheduled for October 29, and he could face life imprisonment.
In the official statement, federal prosecutor Jay Clayton stated that “Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios was one of the most powerful men in Venezuela. For years, he and other officials of the so-called Cartel of the Suns used cocaine as a weapon, flooding New York and other American cities with poison, in alliance with a terrorist organization like the FARC.”
In his speech, Washington presents Carvajal as a central player in an alleged criminal structure within the Venezuelan state. It is evident that the case goes far beyond the judicial facts, as it is part of a long-running political and media operation whose objective has been to criminalize the Venezuelan state as a whole by propping up a figure who, for more than a decade, without verifiable evidence, has described Venezuela as a country controlled by a drug organization called the “Cartel of the Suns.”
But beyond the trial and its technicalities, the context suggests this move has broader implications. It’s clear that a system already used vigorously during the “maximum pressure” period under the first Trump administration is being reactivated, and now this formula is being used again.
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Brief record
Hugo Carvajal publicly broke with the Venezuelan government in 2017 and began aligning himself with the extremist opposition. In 2019, he took an even more explicit step by openly backing the Guaidó project.
Since then, his career has become that of an operator in transit to the US orbit.
Detained in Spain under an extradition order issued by Washington, Carvajal managed to evade justice for two years until his recapture in 2021. In July 2023, he was finally extradited as another piece of the judicial framework to reinforce pressure on Venezuela.
Pleading guilty can, in these terms, imply not only a strategy of reducing the sentence but also the validation that favors the US discourse of criminalization against the country.
A repeated story with the same script
The case now being built against the Venezuelan government through Carvajal resembles in many ways the case of Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, who was used by Washington as an excuse to justify an armed invasion of Panama in 1989.
He was also accused of drug trafficking after being a strategic ally of the US for years. The reference is not accidental: William Barr, then the prosecutor in the Trump administration, evoked him in 2020 when he accused President Nicolás Maduro of similar crimes and offered $15 million for his capture, declaring that “this already happened with Noriega.”
The idea of a “narco-state” doesn’t require conclusive evidence. It’s enough to fuel a narrative sustained by federal agencies, corporate media, and judicial officials to justify actions that violate sovereignty.
Carvajal’s instrumentalization as a “star witness” appears to be operating within this framework with his confession; the United States is seeking to validate a case that, under other circumstances, it has been unable to sustain.
“El Pollo” is, in this scheme, a useful screen in the objective of reactivating an aggression strategy that seeks to give continuity to the “regime change” agenda.
It should be noted that, so far in 2025, Venezuela has seized more than 3.9 million doses of illicit substances, a figure that exceeds the total for 2024, according to figures presented by the national anti-drug superintendent, M/G Danny Ferrer Sandrea. “This has been the result of the efforts of all security agencies and the popular, military, and police fusion that characterizes us,” the official stated.
Likewise, a 23% reduction in drug trafficking was recorded compared to 2023, thanks to a combination of strategic measures, joint actions, and international cooperation. Venezuela is promoting the National Anti-Drug Plan 2026-2031, which articulates police, community, and educational actions in line with multilateral conventions on drug control.
The reality of the anti-drug fight in Venezuela, translated into hard data and tangible effects, contrasts with a hackneyed narrative by the United States, based on the same script without evidence, recycling the “Pollo” resource with the intention of refloating headlines about the supposed “narco-state,” which is combined with other elements such as the “criminal flood” with destabilizing aims in the North American country by Caracas.
In any case, especially as far as Washington is concerned, the accusation is a confession.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JB/SH
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
