Drugs Trafficking in Venezuela is an Ocean Away From the Capture of Maduro

What are the defining characteristics of Venezuelan drug trafficking and how will they change after the fall of Nicolás Maduro? Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing country, yet it has become one transit hub in global trafficking. Its role in the supply chain stems from geographical factors, institutional decay and the emergence of criminal organisations capable of controlling infrastructure and communities. Among these, the Tren de Aragua (TdA) exercises forms of criminal governance over territory; as a result, its involvement in drug trafficking is indirect, regulatory and opportunistic.

The regime led by Maduro until 3 January, 2026, was not a centralised ‘narco-state’. Yet, it allowed fragmented institutional complicity that facilitated large-scale trafficking even in the absence of unified control by a single cartel. The fall of the dictator will affect neither cocaine production nor its transport, and corrupt deals continue unchanged.

Cocaine enters the country primarily from Colombia – through Zulia, Táchira, Apure and Amazonas – where production and initial processing remain under the control of Colombian armed groups such as the ELN and FARC dissidents. Venezuelan territory provides storage facilities and exits routes. According to the 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, approximately 250 metric tons of cocaine transit through Venezuela each year, accounting for about 10% of global production.

Trafficking relies on three main modalities: clandestine flights from improvised airstrips; maritime routes along the Caribbean coast toward Central America and the Dominican Republic; and container shipments through ports such as Puerto Cabello. Recent investigations also document limited coca cultivation and drug processing in border regions with Colombia. Control of nodal territories is crucial. Access to airports, highways, ports and border crossings depends on negotiated agreements involving state actors, Colombian armed groups and Venezuelan criminal organisations. Among these, the TdA plays a decisive role.

From its origins in the Tocorón prison, the TdA expanded outward, consolidating its influence over neighbourhoods, communities and transport corridors. Its involvement in cocaine trafficking consists of regulating access to routes, protecting logistics and arbitrating conflicts, rather than controlling production or wholesale export. This model allows the group to integrate into existing transport chains without assuming the risks borne by producers and international brokers. Drug trafficking, however, represents only one source of revenue among others, alongside extortion, illegal mining, migrant smuggling, contract violence and territorial control.

Contrasts with Neighbours

A comparison with Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), currently the most important drug-trafficking criminal organisation in the region, is instructive. Both groups originated in prisons and developed sophisticated systems of internal governance. The PCC coordinates wholesale purchases, manages routes, negotiates directly with foreign suppliers and buyers and reinvests profits in logistical expansion. Its presence in Bolivia, Paraguay and Europe reflects a strategy of integration and scale. The TdA, by contrast, does not seek to dominate supply chains. It functions as a regulatory authority within fragmented and nationally bounded illicit markets. The TdA acts as a broker of local power, monetising control over territory and infrastructure.

Both groups are involved in criminal governance, yet the Brazilian one does that on a much larger scale. For instance, while there is significant evidence of direct contacts between Italian mafias, in particular the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta and the PCC, the TdA’s role in the global supply chain is to facilitate passage through Venezuela of drugs coming from Colombia and destined to Central America. A route, more relevant for the European market, runs from Colombia to Brazil and from there to Italy and Northern Europe (including France), bypassing Venezuela altogether.

As in other Latin American countries, security forces and sectors of the prison system strike deals with the TdA, producing a form of decentralised, negotiated and territorially uneven complicity. Indeed, this is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where almost anything is up for sale, not just safe passage of drugs. Several journalistic investigations suggest that under Maduro’s presidency the state sought to regulate access to the cocaine economy, distributing rents and protection as a means of managing internal balances within the armed forces.

This does not imply that the state operated as a unified trafficking organisation. An early indictment against Maduro and a group of his associates mentioned the elusive Cartel de los Soles. US authorities described it as a hierarchical criminal organisation composed of senior Venezuelan political, military and intelligence officials who, over several decades, coordinated large-scale cocaine trafficking with groups such as the FARC, ELN, the Sinaloa Cartel and TdA, using state institutions and infrastructure under Nicolás Maduro’s leadership.

In this account, Maduro appears as a central coordinator who protected routes, facilitated diplomatic and military cover and oversaw a system in which drug profits enriched the ruling elite and their families. Yet the label Cartel de los Soles is a journalistic expression to refer to widespread official corruption in Venezuela. By reifying this metaphor into a criminal organisation and over-centralising Maduro’s role, the original US indictment distorted the reality of how illicit markets are governed in Venezuela. On 5 January, 2026, the US Justice Department dropped claims that it is an actual group. Furthermore, and contrary to remarks made by President Trump, Venezuela is not producing fentanyl.

What will be the effect of the removal of Maduro on the production and transportation of cocaine? Some observers suggested that ‘routes that once used Venezuelan territory have likely rerouted rather than collapsed.’ Indeed, a study simulating the effects of US government’s cocaine interdiction missions, based on some fifty years of data, shows that such efforts simply lead traffickers to adapt and seek new routes, with virtually no effect on the amount of drugs moving north.

Yet, in this instance, there was no effort to interdict any route. Sources in Colombia told me that the deals between traffickers, criminal groups and corrupt sectors of the army are still in place and the flow of drugs has not been affected by Maduro’s capture. Likely, the fall of Maduro will have the effect of strengthening the territorial control of the TdA and of armed groups operating along the border, such as the ELN. The reputation of the armed forces has taken a hit, hence the repression inside the country has resumed, in order to prevent a popular uprising, but also to send a message to traffickers that the army is still in control of the territory though which drugs pass. Of course, production in Colombia will not be affected in any way and will continue to grow. In 2024, it reached approximately 3,000 tons, 400 more than in 2023. Finally, anti-American ideological justifications of criminal actors will intensify.

In conclusion, the fight against drug trafficking cannot be conducted through military operations but would require a continental strategy capable of addressing the structural causes of production and consumption, which include inequality and poverty. We know, however, that the real concern of Donald Trump’s administration is not to solve a social and human problem that afflicts the Americas and Europe.

© Federico Varese, 2026, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

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