The United States State Department will designate the 'Cartel of the Suns', an organization about which very little is known and which Washington links to the top brass of the Venezuelan Army and Government, as a foreign terrorist group (FTO) starting this Monday, at a time marked by the increase in the White House's pressure strategy on the Nicolás Maduro administration.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on November 16 that, according to the Trump administration,"there is sufficient factual basis" to demonstrate that the 'Cartel of the Suns' meets the conditions described in the immigration and nationality law that regulates the designation of FTOs.
That rule states that an FTO must be a foreign group that engages in"terrorist activities or terrorism" and that it must "threaten the safety of U.S. citizens or the national security of the United States," which includes the areas of defense, foreign relations, or economic interests.
This decision comes after the U.S. Treasury Department already listed the 'Cartel of the Suns' as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Group (SDGT) in July, although the Venezuelan government asserted at the time that this organization is a"fabrication" of the United States.
Rubio believes that the 'Cartel of the Suns', and other designated FTOs, such as the Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel, are responsible for terrorist violence in the American hemisphere, as well as trafficking drugs to the United States and Europe.
Although US authorities claim that the 'Cartel of the Suns' (a name supposedly derived from the insignia worn by the generals) is a group comprised mainly of Venezuelan military personnel since the 1990s, the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) investigations were not made official until March 2020, during Trump's first term.
It was then that the Department of Justice formally acknowledged the existence of this group, which it claims is headed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello.
The cartel's designation as a FTO coincides with the intensification of Trump's pressure strategy on Maduro through an increasing military deployment in the southern Caribbean Sea, which the White House says is aimed at combating drug trafficking, resulting in the summary destruction of around twenty - what Washington claims are - drug boats and the death of 83 of their occupants.
