On 7 August, the US Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced a US$50 million bounty on the head of the democratically-elected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. On 15 August, the US moved 4,500 military personnel and warships off the coast of Venezuela. At least seven warships including three guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and aerial intelligence units now sit on the edge of Venezuelan sovereign territory. Venezuela has mobilised eight million people across the country in militia forces, as well as the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, to defend sovereignty and the revolution. Maduro has warned that Venezuela is prepared to enter into “a period of armed struggle” if attacked.

A $15 million bounty for information leading to the capture and arrest of Maduro was imposed in Trump’s first term. It was later raised to $25 million under Biden, before being doubled to $50 million. To justify the move Bondi listed a host of unsubstantiated claims: that the US Drug Enforcement Administration has seized 30 tonnes of cocaine linked to high level Venezuelan officials and seven tonnes of cocaine personally connected to Maduro; that Maduro is working with international drug cartels such as the infamous Mexican Sanola cartel and is the leader of the “Cartel of the Suns”. These have been added to earlier claims that Maduro is working with Colombian drug gangs and is essentially the kingpin of the Tren de Aragua gang. Bondi also declared Maduro to be “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world” – all of which he is supposedly doing while also leading a country under siege.

This is part of an effort to criminalise Maduro and the Venezuelan people, embolden the far-right in Venezuela and create a pretext for further attacks against the Bolivarian Revolution. The US has long been trying, and failing, to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. Its commitment to building socialism through the communal processes and championing international solidarity stands as a threat to US and Western imperialism. Venezuela is also home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Speaking to Red Spark from Caracas, Ana Maldonado from ALBA Movimientos and Frente Francisco de Miranda summarised the “narco-terrorist” narrative as a way “to de-legitimise the current leadership on the international stage. The final goal is to take by force our oil, as Trump has rampantly said.”

The United States and the drug trade

The US has the highest global drug consumption rates and is the main destination for a number of drugs, including cocaine which is primarily cultivated in the Americas. The drug trade is a lucrative business that generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually. It facilitates exploited Global South countries loan repayments to US based financial institutions such as the IMF and keeps bankers, advisers, investors and property agents in jobs. The US and British financial systems are at the centre of laundering vast amounts of drug money.

In October 2024, the US based TD Bank was fined $3 billion for processing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions related to drug cartels. Banks process the money which is then hidden in a complicated web of shell companies and offshore accounts – infamously in British overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Anguilla – before making its way into the US economy through the purchase of luxury goods and financial investments. Domestically drugs are used as a form of social control and there is a long history of state forces funnelling drugs into working class neighbourhoods. The US has no interest in curbing the trade.

“Narco-terrorist” Venezuela – fake news

Countries such as Colombia have become dependent on drug production and sale due to ruthless imperialist exploitation and the historical links between cocaine production used to fund right-wing paramilitaries and death-squads to destroy working class and leftist forces. Data provided by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its 2025 report confirmed that Colombia remains the most significant cultivator of coca bush globally, followed by Peru. Those two countries account for almost all of the total global potential cocaine production. US claims that “Venezuela is now an illicit drug-producing country as well as a transit country”, are proven false with Venezuela not highlighted by UNODC as playing any significant role in coca cultivation or cocaine production.

The UNODC’s data on the main source and transit countries – identified by reported seizures in 2023 – shows the majority of US-bound cocaine travels through US-allied countries in Central America, not via Venezuela or the East Caribbean Sea. By the US’ own estimates, 200 to 250 metric tons of cocaine is trafficked through Venezuela annually. Even if its claims are correct, the number is dwarfed by the estimated two million metric tonnes trafficked through the US-aligned Guatemala in 2022, much of it travelling overland via Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, before transiting through Guatemala, Mexico and into the US.

Former Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations Vienna Office wrote in Venezuelanalysis that during his tenure “the Venezuelan governments collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best on the South American continent, equal only to that of Cuba”. Jorge Vilalta of ALBA Movimientos and Otro Beta and based in Caracas told Red Spark that “from Venezuela we must say that drug production, consumption and transit are almost non-existent here: in our country, drugs do not represent a state problem, both in terms of public health and national security, as they do in neighbouring countries, especially in the United States.”

Another US-ally, Ecuador, has seen an exponential rise in drug trafficking and operates as a hub for the movement of cocaine from South America to the US and Europe, often leaving from ports in Guayaquil. Related crime and violence is ripping communities apart, with the homicide rate in Ecuador jumping from 7.8 per 100,000 of the population in 2020 to 45.7 per 100,000 in 2023.

The facts are of no concern to the US. The “narco-terrorist state” narrative simply serves as cover for promoting regime change initiatives to try and overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. Part of this has included criminalising Venezuelans living in the US by creating an association between the Venezuelan identity and participation in illicit drug and gang activity. On 20 February Trump designated Tren de Arugua as a terrorist organisation and on 26 July the Cartel of the Suns was also designated. The move was copied by the US-aligned Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Argentina.

Tren de Arugua was a Venezuelan prison-based gang in the Aragua state which was dismantled by Venezuelan state forces in 2023. No proof has been presented that the gang ever operated in the US, nor that it ever had any ties to Maduro. A leaked US memo in April confirmed that no proof has been presented because the US has no evidence of this. In February 2025, media frenzy around Tren de Aragua and baseless accusations of membership of the former-gang was used by the US state to criminalise Venezuelan migrants and facilitate their kidnap, extradition and subsequent torture in El Salvador. Seventy-five percent of those deported had no criminal history and of the few who had been convicted of US crimes, these were largely non-violent offences such as retail theft or traffic violations.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration continues to use the lie of an active Tren de Aragua gang to viciously criminalise, attack and murder. On 2 September, Trump announced the US had killed 11 people in an airstrike on a civilian boat in international waters, claiming they were members of the gang and carrying drugs. Trump’s warhawk and fanatical anti-socialist Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised that extrajudicial, arbitrary killings “will happen again”.

The second cartel the US claims Maduro operates is the Cartel of the Suns. It is presented as an organised hierarchical force with a clear chain of command and complex, integrated transnational networks for the production, movement and sale of drugs. Cartel of the Suns was a term originating from 1993 – years before the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 – to refer to individuals within the Venezuelan military participating in the drug trade. No evidence has been presented for the existence of the Cartel of the Suns today, let alone as a centralised, hierarchical organisation being operated by Maduro and senior Venezuelan officials. As summarised by Colombian President Gustavo Pedro: “The Cartel of the Suns does not exist; it is the far-right’s fictitious excuse to overthrow governments that do not obey them.”

US attacks on the Bolivarian Revolution

The “narco-terrorist” Venezuela story has been one of the narratives-of-choice for imposing economic warfare on Venezuela since 2005, after attempts by the US and Venezuelan bourgeoisie at kidnapping Hugo Chavez, forcing him out by a coup and murdering him had not borne fruit. When Nicolas Maduro replaced Chavez, the US ramped up this approach, declaring Venezuela a “threat to national security” under Obama in 2015, imposing financial sanctions in 2017 and an oil embargo in 2019. Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas estimated over 100 thousand people had died as a result of US sanctions on Venezuela by early 2020. However, economic warfare is only one way in which the US and fascist Venezuelan bourgeoisie have attempted to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution.

On 23 January 2019, a National Assembly member for the state of Vargas and US-stooge, Juan Guiado stood on a bridge over a motorway in the Capital District of Caracas and declared himself to be President of Venezuela, thus beginning the Guiado circus . Immediately, he was recognised as President by the US and subsequently by its imperialist allies, including Australia. The majority of the world’s countries continued relations with Maduro. While Guiado tried and failed numerous times to incite civil and military uprisings, his self-proclaimed Presidency created the pretext for the imperialist countries to steal Venezuela’s overseas assets to the tune of billions of dollars.

This was followed by the 2020 Operation Gideon in which a Florida-based private security firm Silvercorp, which has provided security services for Trump, attempted land and sea incursions with the aim of killing President Maduro and overthrowing the socialist government. Among the terrorists involved in this plan were then-Colombian President Ivan Duque, Guiado’s Venezuelan supporters and former-United States Special Forces soldiers.

Several further false flag operations, assassination attempts and planned invasions have failed. The Venezuelan bourgeoisie have been repeatedly humiliated by failure to achieve their goal despite receiving intelligence, funding, arms and training from the US. The Venezuelan right-wing is divided over its strategy going forward. Sections are fed up with the violence perpetuated by the fascist bourgeoisie, led by Maria Corina Mochado. The fascists – though increasingly isolated – are determined to continue with their terror methods.

In July 2024 Maduro was re-elected President. This was despite the best efforts of the right to suspend the vote by burning election materials and vehicles. During election night, the National Electoral Council and numerous government bodies were hit with a cyberattack, resulting in a delay in the results. As intended, this was seized on by the right in an attempt to undermine, delegitimise and steal an election that they could not win, while inciting violence on the streets. In Venezuela, digital voting is corroborated by paper tallies. There has never been any credible evidence of discrepancies in the figures produced with this system.

Australia’s role

In the midst of post election violent street riots coordinated by the Machado-led fascist wing of the opposition, on 30 August the Albanese government released a statement urging Venezuelan authorities “to guarantee full respect for freedom of assembly and expression” and calling for a “return to democracy in Venezuela through free and fair Presidential elections”. This was a similar statement to that released by then Foreign Minister Marise Payne when recognising Guaido as the Venezuelan President in 2019 in which she said “Australia calls for a transition to democracy in Venezuela as soon as possible” as well as “respect for the rule of law and upholding of human rights of the Venezuelan people.”

These statements turn reality on its head. Australia and the imperialist powers do not want democracy in Venezuela, which currently exists through extensive democratic participatory processes demonstrated through the grassroots organisations and communal councils in which people directly exercise the management of policies and development projects. They want an overthrow of democracy and for imperialist domination to once again subjugate Venezuela and ensure the easy exploitation of its people and oil.

Meanwhile, the Australian media has played its role in manufacturing consent for intervention. After the 2024 Venezuelan election, publicly funded Australian broadcasters such as ABC and SBS ran several headlines uncritically quoting Machado. SBS referred to Machado – guilty of a long list of terror offences including the attempted coup against Chavez in 2002 – as an “opposition powerhouse”. In its coverage of the latest US attacks on Venezuela, and its “narco-terrorist” narrative, the ABC is uncritically repeating the US state line. The democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro is disparagingly referred to as the “Maduro regime”.

It remains to be seen whether the US will push for an invasion, try to impose a naval blockade on Venezuela or if the political theatre has served its purpose for now in providing bravado to the far right-wing of the opposition, testing the response of the Latin American and Caribbean countries and creating the association in popular consciousness of Venezuela and drug trafficking.

The Venezuelan people stand firm. Vilalta told Red Spark:

“In the face of the Monroe Doctrine, which is the plan for imperialist domination of the continent and which says that “America (the continent) is for Americans (people in the US)”, we continue our historic project to build a world with justice and where Latin America and the Caribbean are a unified power… We are the only country in Latin America with anti-missile shields, we have a powerful air force and a large, well-armed and trained army, but our greatest strength is the civil-military union, the people in arms: from the four million militia that existed in the country, the possibility of aggression and the call made by President Maduro doubled that number to over eight and a half million people in just two weeks.”

As communists and anti-imperialists in imperialist Australia, it is our duty to dispel the lies and distortions through raising consciousness on the Venezuelan reality and to be unwavering and unequivocal in our support for the Bolivarian Revolution.

Hands off Venezuela!

No to imperialist intervention in Latin America!

Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution!