The federal court in Manhattan, New York, sentenced to 18 years in prison the nephews of Cilia Flores, wife of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efraín Antonio Campo Flores (the nephews) had been found guilty in November 2016 for conspiring to send about 5 kilos or more of cocaine to the United States, although during the trial, both revealed that they planned to send around of 800 kilograms of cocaine to the United States.
The case is known as the trial of the "narco-sobrinos" (drug-nephews) and represents a blow to the dismantling of the links between the Venezuelan socialist government and Latin American drug trafficking networks.
This is not the first time that the Venezuelan government, or other socialist governments in the region, have been closely involved with organizations and people linked to drug trafficking.
The Venezuelan government has been accused several times of being a Narco-State, where government mechanisms and the money entered by oil are used to establish a strong drug trafficking network throughout the region, injecting money to terrorist organizations such as the FARC.
The opposition has accused the government of drug trafficking, the United States Department of Justice also, but most importantly, many characters linked to the government of Nicolás Maduro and former President Hugo Chávez, have revealed how the Venezuelan socialist state has sent money to finance Marxist-revolutionary organizations that distribute and manage the drug business in the region.
Leamsy Salazar, the former security chief of Hugo Chávez and Diosdado Cabello (former vice president of Venezuela), gave statements to the US justice, in which he pointed to Cabello as head of the Cartel of the Suns.
Cartel of the Suns
The Cartel of the Suns is a terrorist organization destined to drug trafficking that is presumed to lead Diosdado Cabello Rondón, who has in his record to have been Vice President of Venezuela, President of the National Assembly, Governor of Miranda State, interim President of the Nation (during the coup of 2002), Vice President of the socialist party, and current member of the plenipotentiary national constituent assembly.
According to Jhon Jairo Velásquez, former hitman of the Medellín Cartel and Pablo Escobar's right-hand man, Diosdado Cabello personally leads, along with other high political and military officials of the Venezuelan government, the powerful Cartel of the Suns.
In fact, the name "Cartel of the Suns" refers to the badges carried by the Venezuelan military high strata, since they carry from one to four suns in their uniform. The same Diosdado Cabello is an ex-soldier who participated in the failed coup d'état of 1992 carried out by ex-president Hugo Chávez.
Only Socialism
Last year a "peace agreement" was made between the Colombian government and the terrorist organization of the FARC, the agreement was closed in Havana, since the organization was a group with Marxist objectives, the mediator was Cuba. It is a secret to all voices that the Venezuelan government, with the intentions of Nicolás Maduro, advocated and promoted the dialogue between the government of the neighboring country and the revolutionary organization. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos declared himself, when Hugo Chávez was alive, a firm "Chavista" (follower of Chavez and Venezuelan socialism), and it is rumored that Chávez helped Santos get to power. As for the FARC, he received his main funding from the Venezuelan government. Both sides were in the hands of President Chávez in his last years of life, but after the drop in oil prices and the serious crisis that began to cross the country, the agreements between the FARC and Colombia were forced.
The Venezuelan government is not the only one linked to drug trafficking in the region, it seems that all or most of the socialist governments that have had the history of Latin America are deeply linked to the drug trade.
Jhon Jairo Velásquez, Pablo Escobar's right-hand man, said that the Cuban government was linked to the Medellín Cartel, and Escobar had pleasant relations with the current president of Cuba Raúl Castro, since he was "a serious and enterprising man". He also admitted that Fidel Castro knew of the existence and the course of the drug by his country, and approved the operation, but his brother was the head of the army and he was the one in charge of that.
For this moment we are not talking about tens or hundreds of kilos of drugs, we all know Pablo Escobar. The escalation allowed by the Castro brothers in Cuba allowed the drug trafficker to enter between 10,000 and 12,000 kilos of drugs into the United States.
Manuel Piñeiro Losada, one of the leading figures of the Cuban Revolution, known as the Barbarossa commander and in charge of the expansion of radical leftist groups throughout Latin America during the Cold War, admitted that the problem of drugs is a problem of the United States, and that if drug trafficking causes damage and gets money for the revolution, then it is doubly beneficial.
If you think that socialism in a country is not a regional problem, then you should think twice.