CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s government on Tuesday condemned as “a ridiculous fiction” that the U.S. has formally listed the purported Cartel de los Soles among foreign organizations deemed terrorists, a move operational in Washington but frozen in terms of execution by the military. Officials charged the Trump administration with fabricating a “nonexistent” cartel as a pretext for an expanding military buildup and potential intervention off the country’s Caribbean coast, Nov. 25, 2025.
‘Cartel de los Soles’ label further tightens US-Venezuela noose.
The inclusion of the Cartel de los Soles on the State Department list, signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and published Monday in Washington’s Federal Register, piles terrorism-related criminal penalties and immigration bars atop existing sanctions for anyone deemed to be providing “material support” to Cartel de los Soles. Even as warships and thousands of troops conduct military exercises near Venezuela, the statute does not itself authorize U.S. military force, experts note.
Cartel de los Soles — whose name is frequently translated as the “Cartel of the Suns” — is a Venezuela-based network in the armed forces led by President Nicolás Maduro and other senior officials, who use their authority to facilitate cocaine shipments abroad that are bound for North America and Europe, according to the State Department. The decision to officially brand the group as a terrorist organization, which this month it began designing, and that was detailed in a Reuters report, represents one of Washington’s most aggressive steps yet in its effort to attach the label of narco-terrorist regime to Maduro’s government.
This moment has been building for years in Washington. In July, the U.S. Treasury Department named Cartel de los Soles a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in a sanctions designation that described the Venezuela-based criminal syndicate led by Maduro and accused of providing assistance to other entities like Tren de Aragua, as well as Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. Previously, a 2020 indictment by the Justice Department accused Maduro and 14 current and former officials of narco-terrorism and drug-trafficking offenses, adding that they had served as top members of the Cartel de los Soles cartel in partnership with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas to “flood” the United States with cocaine.
The Venezuelan foreign minister, Yvan Gil, said on his Telegram channel that Caracas “categorically, firmly and absolutely rejects” Rubio’s move, describing it as a new and ridiculous lie aimed at resurrecting a vile lie regarding the so-called Cartel de los Soles. Television networks run by allies of Maduro have echoed that message, describing the cartel as a fabrication of U.S. agencies and allied media, and accusing Washington of eyeing Venezuelan oil, gas, gold, and other resources in the name of a war on drugs.
It also comes as the United States adds to its anti-drug response in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, where American forces have sunk or seized suspected trafficking boats and made port calls with regional allies as part of a wider pressure campaign against Caracas. Reporting in some regional outlets, including Al Jazeera, has raised alarms that the Cartel de los Soles label could offer political cover for a strike within Venezuela, even as U.S. officials maintain that “nothing is off the table, but nothing’s automatically on the table.”
Policy analysts say that applying terrorism tools to drug-trafficking networks marks a significant policy shift that blurs the line between criminal enforcement and counterterrorism, possibly reducing the threshold for military action and complicating any eventual peace talks. A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted this new approach—such as designating Cartel de los Soles and Ecuador’s Los Choneros—broadens the Foreign Terrorist Organization list beyond its origins, drawing skepticism about effectiveness and oversight, according to the analysis.
Even some critics of Mr. Maduro, who concede that the Cartel de los Soles exists, agree that the name itself is a misnomer. Recent investigations and interviews with dozens of experts also depict it less as a traditional cartel with a rigid command structure than as a flexible, state-embedded network of military officers, intelligence officials and political cadres who earn money from smuggling routes and illicit economies in return for loyalty to the ruling party — an image reinforced by coverage calling the group “not a cartel in the traditional sense” or that of Venezuelan outlet Caracas Chronicles’ portrayal as a real but diffuse mafia hiding within security forces.
The battle over how to describe Cartel de los Soles feels to Venezuelans like more than just a semantic one: It goes to the prospect of American strikes, the scale of sanctions, and whether there is any way out of a crisis that could depend on a negotiated solution. As Caracas struck back hard, defiantly refusing to recognize the terrorist designation and risking a broader discrediting of such measures, with Washington gambling that more pressure will begin to crack the regime in earnest, these new moves portend an even more perilous face-off rather than precipitate one.
