Countless states have deep ties to organized crime and narcotics trafficking. To be sure, there are corrupt actors in regimes around the world. Some Mexican states are effectively run by the cartels. Afghanistan’s economy is almost entirely predicated on heroin. Guinea-Bissau was a notorious narco-state, acting as a transshipment point for cocaine headed to Europe. This week’s news in Venezuela, though, demonstrates the depth in which a regime can become embedded in narcotics trafficking. More than any other country in the western hemisphere, Venezuela is the epitome of a narco-state.
More coca is farmed in Peru. Colombia is known to ship more of it. Mexico transports it across the border. But no country has more of an apparent government involvement in drug trafficking than Venezuela, especially after this past week. As detailed in InsightCrime on Friday, Hugo Armando Carvajal Barrios, a former intelligence chief in Venezuela, was arrested in Aruba on the behest of the US government. He had been heading to Aruba to take up a diplomatic post, one that would have given him immunity from international prosecution. Carvajal Barrios had been designated on the OFAC narcotics trafficking sanctions list in 2008 due to his role with the FARC in neighboring Colombia. According to the New York Times, there are court documents that have been unsealed this week stating that Carvajal Barrios was also associated with Wilber Varela, a leader of the Norte de Valle cartel in Colombia. Additionally, he was considered a member of the Cartel del los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which is a loose organization of narcotics traffickers in the Venezuelan political and military ranks. Because he had not been officially accredited for his diplomatic post, it was thought that he could be arrested. When Venezuela pushed heavily on the Netherlands, who run the foreign policy of their former colony Aruba, the Dutch gave Carvajal Barrios up to Venezuela. There are rumors that Venezuela was threatening to cut oil drilling support. Additionally, Venezuela had brought ships up to the Aruban coast and had cancelled flights to Aruba’s airport, in order to put pressure on the island’s tourist economy. Regardless, Carvajal Barrios has successfully avoided American prison, and the Venezuelan government has avoided the potential that Carvajal Barrios could have told what he knows about the Chavez regime’s activities to the US.
What is more concerning in this story is that a government went to such great lengths to keep a general with narcotics trafficking ties out of prison. The theoretical conceptualization for a narco-state is one in which organized crime uses its power and wealth to buy members of the government and therefore greater control and influence. In the Venezuelan case, it appears that the government went out of its way to become narcotics traffickers. Although they were initially simply allowing the smuggling to happen, individuals in the Cartel del los Soles eventually shipped the drugs themselves, fighting amongst each other for more kilos. This kind of corruption facilitated support and aid for the FARC, as well. Such a deeply entrenched culture of narcotics trafficking in high-levels of any state is threatening to all other countries, as it takes advantage of the covert operations of organized crime and the overt advantages of Westphalian statehood (in this case, the ability to appoint diplomats with immunity from international prosecution).
Venezuela proclaimed Carvajal Barrios’s return to Caracas as a victory for the country. It remains to be seen how doubling down on this narco-state reputation will play out for Venezuela.
Photo from InsightCrime (http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/capture-ex-intelligence-chief-highlights-venezuela-military-org-crime-ties)
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