ANALYSIS
Report identifies Havana regime as 'strategic partner' of Cartel of the Suns
The Cuban dictatorship's connection to drug trafficking has been extensively documented over the years. An abundance of evidence gathered in judicial processes, testimonies of deserters, investigations and historical archives detail the involvement of high-ranking officials and institutions of the island with drug trafficking from organizations in the region, especially Venezuelan.
(Archive) Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in 2006 in Venezuela.
From strategic, military and ideological advice to a passage channel and alternative ways for money laundering, these are some of the contributions of the Cuban regime in the creation and consolidation of the Cartel of the Suns, "a drug trafficking organization composed of high-ranking Venezuelan officials," accused by the State Department.
This is the thesis defended by a report from the think tank Cuba Siglo 21, published this week by analysts Juan Antonio Blanco and Emilio Morales, where they argue that the relationship between Havana and Caracas for more than two decades, has contributed to the criminal tasks pointed out by Washington in its fight against drug trafficking.
The dossier titled El estado mafioso-cubano y el-Cártel-de los Soles recalls that the island's closeness with Venezuela began in the late 1980s, when Cuba had to survive without allies or subsidies after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the USSR.
Almost a decade later, Fidel Castro "found in Venezuelan coup colonel Hugo Chávez Frías a partner," says the report, as the Caribbean nation survived the misnamed Special Period.
Castro's relationship with Chávez and the construction of "Cubazuela"
After 1992 Chavez, who was imprisoned for two years for the coup attempt against the then Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, visited Havana. There began everything that was consolidated years later.
As documented in the book La invasión consentida (Debate), in the year 2000, the first major bilateral cooperation agreement, which guaranteed Cuba the supply of oil under favorable conditions (up to 105,000 barrels per day to the island) and opened the door to all kinds of business.
Two years later, the Cuban-led intelligence tasks were reinforced in Caracas, requested by Chavez himself to armor himself against future military conspiracies.
Subsequently, in December 2007, Hugo Chavez lost a referendum that would have allowed him to be reelected indefinitely. In view of this scenario, Cuba Siglo 21's report states that "Castro convinced him without much work that he could remain in charge of the country if he handed over control of his armed services, submitting them to the continuous inspection and monitoring of the Cuban intelligence apparatus. Thus two secret agreements were signed between Caracas and Havana that cemented the construction of Cubazuela, a two-headed mafia state that made possible the Cartel of the Suns."
From the Cartel of the Sun to the Cartel of the Suns
"It is not a classic cartel like the Sinaloa or Cali cartels, but a decentralized criminal network that penetrates the institutional architecture of the State and the Armed Forces until it becomes confused with it," explains a report by the Center for a Free Cuba and the Ibero-American Alliance for Global Security.
The origin of the name is associated with the golden sun-shaped insignia worn on the jackets of the Bolivarian National Guard and was first used in 1993 when two generals, Ramon Guillen Davila and Orlando Hernandez Villegas were investigated for drug trafficking.
Over the years the drug trafficking network grew, and has implicated other Venezuelan individuals and institutions, such as Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and President Nicolás Maduro himself, who allegedly run the criminal organization today according to Washington.
World
Colombia's Senate declares Maduro's Cartel de los Soles a terrorist organization, aligning with Washington and allied countries
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón
"Cuba is part of that transnational cartel"
According to the text El Estado Mafioso....that group, today dedicated to drug trafficking, organized crime and declared a danger to the region by the United States, emerged under the political, diplomatic, military and intelligence support of Havana to Hugo Chavez.
"Cuba is part of that transnational cartel, whose birth and rise it sponsored together with Venezuela."
There came also relations with other anti-US states, such as Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua and Evo Morales' Bolivia, as well as with "the theocratic autocracy of Iran and anti-Western nuclear countries such as Russia, China and the Democratic Republic of Korea."
The report adds that this organization even served to make contact with other elements of Mexican drug trafficking that had already collaborated with Havana.
World
Report reveals political violence and terrorism that sustain the Cuban dictatorship
Diane Hernández
Key link to the Cartel of the Suns, "a strategic partner"
For Blanco and Morales, the three priority areas in which Cuba has contributed to the Venezuelan criminal group include a "sanctuary for narcoterrorists and criminals, as well as intelligence and counterintelligence advice and training. In addition, it trains repressive forces and designs strategies to crush protests and opponents."
Another line is the human and slave trafficking, explained in "the business of exporting doctors, a modern trafficking scheme that has brought in tens of billions of dollars to GAESA (a business conglomerate controlled by the military). Some recent regional mass exoduses have been encouraged and exploited between Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexican cartels for their benefit."
The third of these main areas is money laundering, where they "use the hotel real estate industry, front companies abroad and financial triangulation via GAESA's Cimex-Panama corporation to launder their own and other people's capital."
The role of the Cuban regime is a key link in the Cartel of the Suns, "not as a drug producer, but as a strategic partner. Havana provides financial, logistical and intelligence infrastructure that ensures the cartel's operability and global expansion. Without Cuba, the Venezuelan network would lack the international advice and shielding that has allowed it to emerge, survive sanctions and overcome internal political crises," the report summarizes.
The old ties of the Castro regime with drug trafficking
- Senior officers of the Castro Army, diplomats and even the husband of Raul Castro's daughter
- The Ochoa case: some purged commanders and a firing squad announced on tv
- An organ of the Ministry of the Interior as camouflage
- The Panamanian connection and Nicaraguan links.
Also drug trafficker Carlos Lehder, a key associate of Pablo Escobar in the Medellín Cartel, detailed in the trial against Noriega the existing collaboration to facilitate drug trafficking through Cuba and Nicaragua. Lehder asserted that the Cuban government directed that traffic, while the Nicaraguans acted under orders from the Cubans.
According to the drug trafficker's account in Vida y Muerte del Cartel de Medellín drug-laden planes to land in Cuba to facilitate their transport to the Bahamas and Florida. For its part, Nicaragua's Sandinista regime allowed the cartel to use government airstrips to transport cocainein exchange for millions of dollars.
The Castro regime is linked in many other episodes with drug trafficking, relationships it maintains to this day. Shadows over the Sao Paulo Forum presided over by Fidel and leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, strategic and financial links with the Colombian FARC, and many other channels with narco governments that expose Cuba as a strategic bridge and training base for organizations dedicated to drug trafficking in the region, and keep it in the sights of the US.
LATEST
