The U.S. Accuses President Maduro of Heading “The Cartel of the Suns” Does “The Cartel of the Suns” Really Exist ?

2025:The U.S. Accuses President Maduro of Heading “The Cartel of the Suns”

Does “The Cartel of the Suns” Really Exist ?

In an August 7, 2025 video, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the United States was offering a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.[1] Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Maduro “is the head of the vicious Cartel de Los soles”[Cartel of the Suns]. [1] On July 25, 2025, The Treasury Department designated the Cartel of the Suns as a “Specifically Designated Global Terrorist Organization.”

Maduro was originally indicted by Attorney General William Barr on March 26, 2020 in the first Trump Administration. Barr said: “Since at least 1999, Maduro has acted as a leader of the ‘Cartel of the Suns’ which sought to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine.”

Fernando Casado, a professor at Universidad Bolivarian de Ecuador, wrote an essay in 2017 called “The Cartel of the Suns.” [2] His research objective was to find any kind of evidence beyond rumors, suspicions or speculations that could prove the existence of the Cartel of the Suns. His conclusion was that: “The Cartel of the Suns simply does not exist.”

After Barr’s indictment of Maduro in 2020, Casado wrote another essay The Myth of the Cartel of the Suns and again concluded that “There is no such cartel.” [3] He stated: “The strategy of the US is to show to international public opinion that Venezuela is a rogue state, in order to justify any aggression that would otherwise be inconceivable.”

In his 2020 essay, Casado called out the international press for not questioning the US narrative: “The media spread the indictment against Maduro without even questioning it, checking the veracity of the sources or questioning the geopolitical interests of the indictment imposed by the US Attorney General. Not a single journalist from the reputable newsrooms of the major newspapers questioned the existence of the Cartel of the Suns.”

Two weeks before Bondi’s charge, Casado wrote an article stating: “A decade ago, the pretext used to attack the Chavista government was the Cartel of the Suns, a fabricated organization that never even existed.” [4] Casado credited the press for its questioning the Trump administration’s declaration that labelled the Aragua Train as a terrorist organization run by Maduro. Casado then asked: “If the US narrative about Venezuela and the Aragua Train and its ties to Maduro’s government is a lie, does that mean the narrative about the Cartel of the Suns is also a lie?”

Recently, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said that the Cartel of the Suns does not exist and denounced the narrative as being used to criminalize Venezuela and carry out a military operation to control its resources saying “…that is a lie like Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and it serves only to invade countries.[5]

 

1.      Washington Post, Trump Doubles Reward for Arrest of Venezuela’s President to $50 million, August 8, 2025

2.      Casado, F., El Cartel de Los Soles, Fundación Editorial El perro y la rana, 2017 (digital)

3.      Casado, F., El mito del “Cartel de los Soles,” El Perro y la Rana Publishing Foundation, 2020 (digital)

4.     Casado, F., The Aragua Train:  The Trump Administration’s New Narrative Against Venezuela, Revista De Frente, July 24, 2025

5.     Orinoco Tribune, President Petro: The Cartel of the Suns Does Not Exist; It is a fictious Far-right Excuse for Regime Change, August 25, 2025.


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