Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios’s ‘leadership of the Cártel de Los Soles inflicted immeasurable pain and suffering’ on both Venezuelans and Americans, the Biden DOJ said
Establishment news outlets like CNN, the Associated Press, and the New York Times have embraced a new narrative about Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles: It doesn’t actually exist. Unmentioned in the coverage is the Biden administration’s 2023 extradition of a former Venezuelan spy chief whose “leadership of the Cártel de Los Soles inflicted immeasurable pain and suffering” on Venezuelans and Americans, as the Department of Justice put it at the time.
The claim that Cartel de los Soles is a nonexistent entity has taken hold after the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization led by Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. As President Donald Trump warned Maduro to “stop sending poison to our country” through the narcotics trade or face military action, his critics in the media downplayed the threat posed by Cartel de los Soles, arguing it is a leaderless network or that it doesn’t exist at all.
A CNN headline declared the cartel “may not technically exist.” AP said, “it’s not a cartel per se.” USA Today cited experts who claimed Cartel de los Soles “is not a real drug cartel.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg called Cartel de los Soles “a group that doesn’t exist.” The Guardian and other outlets echoed similar sentiments.
But officials in the Biden administration cast Cartel de los Soles as an organized, legitimate, and violent narco-terrorist outfit that operates within the Venezuelan government. In 2023, Manhattan U.S attorney Damien Williams announced the extradition of Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, also known as “El Pollo,” to face narco-terrorism, drug trafficking, and weapons charges.
The Biden DOJ’s press release announcing the indictment said Carvajal Barrios “coordinated with other members of the Cartel de los Soles” to ship 5.6 tons of cocaine from Venezuela bound for the United States. And Carvajal Barrios attended a meeting with a representative of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Colombian terrorist group, “at which it was agreed that the Cártel de Los Soles” would provide FARC with cash and guns in exchange for increased cocaine production.
Cartel de los Soles formed in 1999 as a network of high-ranking Venezuelan officials to enrich themselves largely through “the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States,” the Biden DOJ said. Carvajal Barrios rose to power during Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s reign, serving until 2011 as the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence unit. Maduro appointed Carvajal Barrios to serve a second stint in that role after he took power following Chavez’s death. He broke with Maduro after his arrest in Spain in 2019.
While Maduro has denied any links to Cartel de los Soles, federal prosecutors during Trump’s first term said the Venezuelan strongman “helped manage” and “ultimately lead” Cartel de los Soles during his ascent to power. According to the 2019 indictment against Maduro, Carvajal Barrios, and other Venezuelan officials, Maduro took part in the 2008 meeting with FARC members to negotiate an increase in cocaine production.
In their coverage of the cartel, news organizations have largely turned to think tank scholars from left-leaning foreign policy think tanks.
Phil Gunson, quoted by the Times and CNN saying “there’s no such thing as the cartel,” is a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the think tank formerly led by Robert Malley, a Biden administration State Department official suspected of leaking intelligence to Iran.
CNN quoted Brian Finucane, another International Crisis Group scholar, who stated that the Trump administration is “designating a non-thing that is not a terror organization as a terrorist organization.”
Sanho Tree, who told USA Today “there is no such thing as the Cartel de los Soles,” is a project director at the Institute for Policy Studies, an anti-war think tank whose trustees include Jodie Evans, a Code Pink co-founder married to suspected Chinese Communist Party operative Neville Roy Singham.
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