CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Washington cited Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s alleged role in the “Cartel de los Soles” as it dispatched five warships and thousands of Marines toward the Caribbean country for an anti-drug deployment.

While some of US President Donald Trump’s right-wing led allies in South America — Argentina, Ecuador and Paraguay — have echoed his designation of “Soles” as a terrorist organization, many have doubts such a group even exists.

Venezuela itself, and neighbor Colombia, insist there is no such thing as “Cartel de los Soles.”

Some experts agree, saying there is no evidence of the existence of an organized group with a defined hierarchy that goes by that name.

– View from the US –
The Trump administration in July described the “Cartel de los Soles” as a “Venezuela-based criminal group headed by Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan individuals.”

It said the cartel “provides material support to foreign terrorist organizations threatening the peace and security of the United States, namely Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel” — two major drug trafficking groups.

Washington upped a bounty to $50 million for the capture of Maduro on drug charges.

Yet in March, the latest US State Department report on global anti-drug operations made no mention of the “Cartel de los Soles” or any connection between Maduro and narco trafficking.

The United States did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 re-election, rejected by the Venezuelan opposition and much of the world as a stolen vote.

– Expert opinion –
“There is no such thing, so Maduro can hardly be its boss,” Phil Gunson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, told AFP of the so-called “Cartel de los Soles.”

And while there was no doubt of “complicity” between people in power and organized crime, “direct, incontrovertible evidence has never been presented” for the existence of an organized cartel by that name in Venezuela.

According to the InSight Crime think tank, the name was ironically coined by Venezuelan media in 1993 after two generals were nabbed for drug trafficking. The sun is a symbol on the military uniform epaulettes of generals in the South American country.

“Rather than a hierarchical organization with Maduro directing drug trafficking strategies, the Cartel of the Suns is more accurately described as a system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers,” InSight Crime said on its website.

Maduro denies any connection to the drug trade, although two nephews of his wife have been convicted in New York for cocaine trafficking.

– What now? –
The United States says its Caribbean deployment is focused on combating drug trafficking, but Caracas fears there is more to it.

Venezuela has deployed warships and drones to patrol its coastline, and Maduro announced he would activate 4.5 million civilian militia members — a number questioned by observers — to confront “any threat.”

According to Mariano de Alba, a London-based geopolitics expert, the US deployment was likely not an attack force.

“If the Trump administration really wanted to provoke regime change” as claimed by Maduro, it would more likely rely on “surprise action,” de Alba told AFP.