Donald Trump and Pam Bondi, Attorney General of the United States. Photo: AP.
By Misión Verdad – Aug 11, 2025
US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s accusation against President Nicolás Maduro—of none other than simultaneously leading the Cartel of the Suns, the Tren de Aragua, and even the Sinaloa Cartel—marks a new milestone in the unsubstantiated narrative that Washington insists on recycling.
The announcement was accompanied by a doubling of the reward for the president’s capture, now reaching $50 million. Beyond the noise, the staging follows a well-worn formula: criminalizing the Venezuelan head of state as a key figure in an alleged international drug trafficking network, without presenting any credible evidence. The operation is not new.
What does change is the delirious scope of the story, which this time seeks to associate him not with one, but with three dissimilar criminal structures, rivals among themselves and, in some cases, at odds with the Venezuelan state itself.
The eternal return of the script
The image of the “Venezuelan narco-state” has been a sustained narrative construct for more than a decade, without any serious charges having emerged in international courts to date. The most recent attempt to revive it came with the case of Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, who, after years of prison and judicial pressure, finally pleaded guilty in the United States to drug trafficking-related charges. A late confession, obtained under questionable conditions, serves less to clarify facts than to breathe life into a narrative already in decline: the so-called Cartel of the Suns.
According to the narrative that has been circulating for over a decade, it is believed to be a network of Venezuelan generals involved in drug trafficking, in alliance with Colombian and Mexican cartels.
However, as Fernando Casado Gutiérrez demonstrates in his work The Cartel of the Suns: The New Invention to Attack Venezuela, this case is based on media speculation, unsubstantiated testimony, and covert operations by US agencies such as the DEA and the CIA.
The term doesn’t describe a real organization with a hierarchy, territory, or modus operandi, but rather a concept constructed to replace the tired myth of the FARC narco-guerrilla. Its narrative is fueled by defectors, former officials in conflict with Chavismo, or fugitives who offer supposed information in exchange for protection or reduced sentences, such as Leamsy Salazar, Rafael Isea, or Eladio Aponte.
Casado explains in detail the cycle of information laundering that shapes this fable. Unverified testimony becomes headline news in outlets such as ABC, El País, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post, and is then cited by other media outlets, by US prosecutors, or even in congressional reports as if it were solid judicial evidence.
The result is a fabricated narrative, in which propaganda replaces evidence and accusations replace investigation. Thus, the existence of a cartel is assumed without the need to show material evidence or file substantial charges.
Meanwhile, objective data is ignored: Venezuela achieved record drug seizures in 2025, far exceeding previous years, and maintains ongoing operations against drug trafficking organizations. This contradiction reveals that the goal of promoting the myth of the “Cartel of the Suns” is to justify sanctions and interventions.
Nor is it insignificant that the DEA—the main source of the leaks—has been implicated in corruption scandals, protection of drug traffickers, sexual assaults and cover-ups. Venezuela expelled the agency in 2005 for the same reasons.
The Aragua Train: myth, spectacle and function
Until recently, the Tren de Aragua (TdA) was a criminal group with local reach, limited to prison operations within Venezuela, with little media presence outside the country. Its rise to international prominence responded to a clearly perceived phenomenon; it was constructed as a threat through an operation amplified by specialized media, agencies, and sectors of the US political apparatus.
The turning point came in 2023, when media outlets such as Insight Crime, OCCRP, CNN, Telemundo, and The Economist began positioning the TdA as a transnational criminal organization with continental reach. An investigation by this publication documents that this construction occurred simultaneously with an intensification of the anti-immigrant narrative in the United States and the hardening of the electoral discourse of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott. In a matter of months, the TdA went from being an unknown group to becoming the perfect excuse for laws such as the Laken Riley Act, proposals to activate Guantánamo Bay as a migrant detention center, and pressure to declare Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism.
The most serious aspect is not the media overexposure of the TdA, but the insinuated—but never proven—link between this organization and the Venezuelan state. In most of the cases presented as “proof” of its expansion, the individuals involved are Venezuelans with no proven criminal record as active members of the group. Alleged affiliations, family ties, or simple nationalities are often cited to suggest a structural connection. Being Venezuelan thus becomes a suspect category by default.
On the other hand, the prison interventions the Venezuelan state carried out in 2023 to dismantle criminal control of Tocorón, the founding headquarters of the TdA, and the visible decline in its internal operations since then are deliberately omitted. Rather than being valued as an act of sovereignty and combating crime, these measures were recycled as a sign of state weakness or as evidence that the group existed.
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Head of the Sinaloa Cartel? The most delusional accusation
Of all the claims Pam Bondi makes in her statement against President Nicolás Maduro, perhaps the most delusional is the one that directly links him to the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the oldest, most complex, and violent criminal organizations in the hemisphere. The accusation ignores the cartel’s internal nature and history in Mexico, as well as its deep and proven relationship with US power structures.
To dismantle this, it’s enough to review articles like the one published by journalist Ioan Grillo in CrashOut, titled “Fall of the Narco King.” Based on judicial sources and testimony from former members of the court, he recounts the capture of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the veteran leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered by many to be its true leader, over Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Zambada was arrested in July 2024 after more than half a century of impunity, a life dedicated to drug trafficking without ever having set foot in a jail cell. His capture was presented by prosecutor Merrick Garland as a “severe blow against fentanyl,” but the reality behind his arrest is surrounded by suspicion. According to the Wall Street Journal, El Mayo was lured to El Paso, Texas, through an undercover operation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, using El Chapo’s son as decoy. Supposedly, Zambada thought he was going to inspect clandestine airstrips or drug crops elsewhere in Mexico, but ended up landing in the United States in handcuffs.
Other journalists, such as Luis Chaparro, claim that it was more of a covert agreement to surrender voluntarily. Chaparro even presented a conversation with the drug lord’s grandson, in which he told him that his grandfather “just wanted to see Vicentillo”—his son, a DEA protected witness.
This detail is not minor. Vicentillo Zambada Niebla attempted to use the so-called public authority defense at his trial, alleging that his father (El Mayo), El Chapo, and other cartel members regularly collaborated with agencies like the DEA and ICE to provide information and receive protection. Although the judge did not allow this line of defense to go forward, the mere fact that it was formally raised in federal court speaks to the deep ties between this Mexican organization and the intelligence and justice systems of the United States.
It has even been documented that the long-time Cuban drug trafficker Antonio Cruz Vázquez, linked to El Mayo in the 1970s, had ties to the CIA. And we must not forget the role of Margarito Flores, one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s major cocaine distributors in the US, who declared that El Mayo was “one of the fiercest but also most just businessmen,” testimony that reflects how this criminal leadership was embedded and tolerated for years in the underground economy of the Global North.
Furthermore, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stated that there is no investigation or evidence linking the Venezuelan government to the Sinaloa Cartel.
Accusatory fiction for imperial interests
The accusation against Nicolás Maduro of simultaneously leading three criminal organizations lacks legal and political basis. What it does reveal is a sustained strategy to keep Venezuela under pressure, legitimize sanctions, and expand the United States’ room for maneuver on the continent.
These accusations are fueled by media and judicial operations that combine propaganda, unsupported testimony, and high-impact media spectacles, such as the multimillion-dollar reward announced by Bondi.
All of this coexists with an obvious contradiction: while unsubstantiated accusations multiply, Washington maintains channels of negotiation with Caracas to ensure oil and energy stability.
This is a mechanism of comprehensive criminalization, in which drug trafficking is the pretext to project Venezuela as a hemispheric threat and maintain its status as a country under permanent siege. All of this undoubtedly aligns with the group supporting Rubio, the US institutional guarantor of a bad-cop-and-big-stick strategy surrounding President Maduro’s government.
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
