Cabello invites you to read an article by renowned former UN official that dismantles false narrative against Venezuela

Published at: 27/08/2025 09:07 PM

The Secretary General of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello Rondón, presented an article prepared by the Italian sociologist Pino Arlacchi, who held the Deputy General Secretariat of the United Nations and was Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in which he decentralizes the false narrative of the “narco-state” that imperialism attempts to position.

“The great deception against Venezuela: The geopolitics of oil disguised as a war on drugs”, is the name of this article written by this former UN official who is recognized worldwide for his studies and essays on the mafia associated with drug trafficking.

Below is this report by this prestigious researcher reviewed during the Con El Mazo Dando program in its 540 broadcast:

During my tenure as Director of UNODC, the UN agency against drugs and crime, I was in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, but I never visited Venezuela. There was simply no need. The Venezuelan government's cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking was one of the best in South America, compared only to Cuba's impeccable record. This fact, in Trump's delusional narrative of “Venezuela as a narco-state”, sounds like geopolitically motivated slander.

But the data, published in the World Drug Report 2025, from the organization that I had the honor of leading, tell a story opposite to that spread by the Trump administration. A story that dismantles piece by piece the geopolitical framework built around the “Cartel of the Suns”, an entity as legendary as the Loch Ness Monster, but capable of justifying sanctions, embargoes and threats of military intervention against a country that, coincidentally, is located on one of the largest oil reserves on the planet.

Venezuela according to UNODC: An irrelevant country on the drug trafficking map

The UNODC 2025 report is very clear, which should embarrass those who have constructed the rhetoric of demonizing Venezuela. The report only makes a minimal and brief mention of Venezuela, stating that a minimal fraction of Colombian drug production passes through the country on its way to the United States and Europe. Venezuela, according to the UN, has established itself as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, marijuana and similar products, as well as the presence of international criminal cartels.

The document has done nothing more than confirm the 30 previous annual reports, which don't talk about Venezuelan drug trafficking because it doesn't exist. Only 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela. To put this figure into perspective: in 2018, while 210 tons of cocaine were transiting Venezuela, Colombia produced or marketed 2,370 tons (ten times more) and Guatemala, 1,400 tons; yes, you read that right: Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than the supposed fearsome Bolivarian “narco-state”. But nobody talks about it because Guatemala produces only 0.01% of the world total of the only unnatural drug that interests Trump: oil.

The Fantastic Cartel of the Suns: Hollywood-style fiction

The “Cartel of the Suns” is a creation of Trump's imagination. It is supposedly led by the president of Venezuela, but it is not mentioned in the report of the world's main anti-drug agency, nor in the documents of any European agency or almost any other anti-crime agency in the world. Not even a footnote. A deafening silence, which should make anyone who still has a minimum of critical thinking reflect. How can such a powerful criminal organization deserving a $50 million reward be completely ignored by those working in the anti-drug field?

In other words, what is sold as a super cartel in the best Netflix style is actually the type of petty crime found in every country in the world, including the United States, where in addition, almost 100,000 people die every year from opioid overdoses that have nothing to do with Venezuela and, however, with big American pharmaceutical companies.

Ecuador: The real center that nobody wants to see

While Washington is uprooting the issue of Venezuela, the true centers of drug trafficking are thriving almost undisturbed. In Ecuador, for example, 57% of the truck containers leaving Guayaquil arrive in Belgium loaded with cocaine. European authorities seized 13 tons of cocaine from a Spanish ship coming from Ecuadorian ports, controlled by companies protected by Ecuadorian government officials.

The European Union produced a detailed report on the ports of Guayaquil, which describes how “Colombian, Mexican and Albanian mafias operate extensively in Ecuador”. The homicide rate in Ecuador has skyrocketed from 7.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020 to 45.7 in 2023. But little is said about Ecuador. Perhaps because Ecuador produces only 0.5% of the world's oil and because its government doesn't have a bad habit of challenging U.S. dominance in Latin America?

The True Drug Routes: Geography vs. Propaganda

During my years at UNODC, one of the most important lessons I learned was that geography doesn't lie. Drug routes follow a precise logic: proximity to production centers, ease of transportation, corruption of local authorities and the presence of consolidated criminal networks. Venezuela does not meet any of these criteria.

Colombia produces more than 70% of the world's cocaine. Peru and Bolivia account for the majority of the remaining 30%. The logical routes to reach the American and European markets pass through the Pacific to Asia, through the Eastern Caribbean to Europe and by land through Central America to the United States. Venezuela, bordering the South Atlantic, is at a geographical disadvantage for all three main routes. Criminal logistics make Venezuela an irrelevant actor in the grand international drug trafficking scene.

Cuba: The Shameful Example

Geography doesn't lie, in fact, but politics can defeat it. Today, Cuba continues to represent the model to be followed for anti-drug cooperation in the Caribbean. An island off the coast of Florida, a theoretically perfect base for transit to the United States, but in practice, it is not used in drug trafficking. I have repeatedly observed the admiration of DEA and FBI agents for the rigorous anti-drug policies of Cuban communists.

Chavista Venezuela has constantly followed the Cuban model in the fight against drugs, inaugurated by Fidel Castro himself: “international cooperation, territorial control and repression of criminal activity”. Neither Venezuela nor Cuba have ever had tracts of land cultivated with cocaine and controlled by big criminals.

The European Union has no particular oil interests in Venezuela, but it does have a specific interest in combating drug trafficking affecting its cities. He has produced the European Drug Report 2025. The document, based on real data and not on geopolitical illusions, does not mention Venezuela as an international drug trafficking route even once.

This is the difference between honest analysis and a false and insulting narrative. Europe needs reliable data to protect its citizens from drugs, so it produces accurate reports. The United States needs to justify its oil policies, so it produces propaganda disguised as intelligence services.

According to the European report, cocaine is the second most consumed drug in the 27 EU countries, but the main sources are clearly identified: Colombia for production, Central America for distribution, and West Africa with different routes for distribution. Venezuela and Cuba simply don't show up.

But Venezuela is systematically demonized, against any principle of truth. The former director of the FBI, James Comey, gave the explanation in his memoir after his resignation, where he spoke of the unspeakable motivations behind US policies towards Venezuela: Trump had told him that the Maduro government was “a government sitting on a mountain of oil that we have to buy”. So, it's not about drugs, crime, or national security. This is oil that it would be better not to pay for.

It is then Donald Trump who would deserve an international reward for a very specific crime: “systematic slander against a sovereign State in order to appropriate its oil resources”.

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Mazo News Team