Maduro and his criminal group can go to prison, escape, or die, but their bosses prefer them dead.

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 01/12/2025

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In the new geopolitical scenario established by the United States, Nicolas Maduro and his "Cartel of the Suns" must restore sovereignty to Venezuela and face the alternatives of being imprisoned, fleeing, or dying, but their bosses and the Cuban establishment prefer them dead.

The first 25 years of the 21st century in the Americas are the story of the expansion of the Cuban dictatorship with the money and oil from Venezuela delivered by Hugo Chávez, in which we witness the destruction of democracy and its replacement by dictatorships and quasi-dictatorial regimes, the establishment of narco-states and the institutionalization of aggression against democracies through hybrid warfare under the anti-imperialist banner.

The new US foreign policy has set Venezuela as its starting point. The fate of the transnational organized crime group that holds power and has been identified as the "Cartel of the Suns" determines whether crime will end its hold on political power.

The Venezuela occupied by the Cartel of the Suns is not a national or local issue; it is the expansion of the Cuban dictatorship that has controlled it since the convenient death of Hugo Chávez. Venezuela is a country occupied by a transnational organized crime group that presents itself as 21st-century socialism, which has established a narco-state, supported guerrilla warfare, perpetrated state and international terrorism, and facilitated the penetration of extra-continental dictatorships such as China, Russia, and Iran for anti-democratic expansion, and which operates as a “subject of international law.”

The 21st-century socialism as a criminal organization was always evident, but democracies decided to "coexist with organized crime," giving in and recognizing its status and political personhood at the cost of their own security, freedom, and survival, until the United States - in 2025 - assumed the defense of its national security.

Nicolás Maduro and the usurpers of Venezuela's sovereignty have been identified as criminals, are being prosecuted, have international arrest warrants issued against them, and millions of dollars in rewards are offered for their capture. They are the primary target in the application of the law to dismantle the criminal groups that, by supplanting politics, have turned the Americas into a haven for criminals in power, who operate with impunity and use immunities and privileges that belong to democratic dignitaries and sovereign states.

The identification of the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization, Operation "Lanza del Sur," the repeated ultimatums to Nicolas Maduro and his criminal group to relinquish power and restore sovereignty to the people of Venezuela, and the United States' treatment of Maduro and his entourage as a criminal group and not as a government, have broken the strategy of delay, false dialogues, and resistance orchestrated by the Cuban dictatorship, which has worked for the Castro regime for 67 years.

Objective reality shows Nicolas Maduro and his criminal group with only three options:

Everything indicates that it is not Maduro who is directing the resistance strategy, which has now become a matter of survival. It is Cuba! It is the leading dictatorship that, with its practice of remaining in power for almost 67 years, with its track record of having resisted and manipulated 13 US presidents from Eisenhower to Biden, now aspires to tire, alienate, weaken, threaten, or simply deceive Trump 47.

The Cuban dictatorship knows that the end of Maduro and the loss of Venezuela paves the way for its own downfall. The Cartel of the Suns is the Cuban dictatorship's last bastion before it faces its demise. Its game of waiting for the US president, who threatens it, to weaken or change power seems unrealistic just ten months into the Trump administration.

The underlying issue is that neither the United States nor the democracies of the Americas have any other option, because the dictatorships of 21st-century socialism have gone too far with their aggression through narcoterrorism, state terrorism, forced migration, human trafficking, infiltration by common criminals, digital manipulation, campaign financing, the gradual takeover of political power, and more. This is the breaking point where only democracy or the dictatorships of organized crime can survive.

*Lawyer and Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».