The administration of Donald Trump has returned to the first line of the international agenda an issue that seemed worn, but never resolved: the war on drugs. With a style that combines old militarization recipes and a language of “War to terror”, the White House decided to climb the confrontation against Latin American drug trafficking, in a movement that mixes electoral calculation, diplomatic pressure and demonstration of strength.
At the beginning of August, Trump signed an executive order that authorized to vehicle military operations against criminal organizations in Latin America. Days later, three Lanzamisile destroyers were deployed off the coast of Venezuela, with the mission of intercepting drug shipments and sending a direct message to Caracas.
The novelty of this offensive is the designation of posters and bands as terrorist organizations. Under this legal umbrella, groups such as the Venezuelan Train of Aragua, six Mexican posters, the MS-13 gang and the so-called Los Soles poster were compared to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
The classification allows the pentagon to deploy special forces and covert operations with a legal framework similar to that which justified interventions in the Middle East. For Trump, it is about stopping the wave of fentanyl and cocaine that, he maintains, feeds violence in US cities.
Venezuela in the sights
No country concentrates as many tensions as Venezuela. The reward for the capture of Nicolás Maduro was raised to 50 million dollars, while the US government insists that senior Chavista officials are part of a transnational drug trafficking network.
The Los Soles poster – a name that refers to the participation of military in the traffic chain – is presented by Washington as an example of that collide between state and crime. Chavismo, meanwhile, rejects accusations and attributes them to a destabilization strategy.
Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused the United States of lacking credibility and failing in his own fight against domestic consumption. Maduro, meanwhile, reacted mobilizing more than 4.5 million militiamen and prohibiting the use of drones in airspace, alluding to the assassination of magnicide of 2018.
However, beyond propaganda, multiple press reports, international organizations and testimonies of deserters have linked Venezuelan officials with traffic networks and with the Aragua train, a band that was born in Venezuelan prisons and today operates in Chile, Peru and Colombia.
Mexico: Limited cooperation
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has extradited capos and reinforced surveillance in Sinaloa and the northern border, in a gesture of goodwill towards Trump. But at the same time it made it clear that it will not accept US troops in its territory, an idea suggested by the Republican President himself.
Mexico drags a bitter experience: the “war against narco” launched by Felipe Calderón in 2006 multiplied violence without stopping the business. The so -called Kingpin strategy, which sought to decapate organizations, only produced fragmentation and the emergence of more violent cells. Today the posters are flexible, decentralized networks and with great capacity for adaptation. The capture of a leader usually opens bloody disputes instead of stabilizing the situation.
The fentanyl boom exposed the limitations of this approach. Synthetic, cheap and lethal opioid, shot overdose deaths in the United States since 2013. But neither border walls nor massive raids have stopped their flow. The roots of the problem are found in both Mexican clandestine laboratories and in the historical responsibility of the American pharmaceutical industry, which expanded the consumption of opioids under lax regulation.
Colombia: Coca and Guerrillas
The administration of Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, has its own total peace project, which includes negotiations with armed groups that control vast extensions of coca culture. The border commands, led by Jairo Marín, aka “Popeye”, are presented as a new type guerrillas: they manage territories, regulate populations and dominate more than 100,000 hectares of coca in the Amazon.
For Washington, the lack of advance is intolerable. Trump threatens to cut military aid if crops are not reduced, which reached record figures in 2023. The White House even presses so that Colombia is “described” in anti -drug cooperation, which would affect international credits. Petro, with just over a year of mandate ahead, faces the dilemma of accelerating partial agreements or being caught in an increase in violence and external discredit: more than 20 deaths in the last week point the failure and encourage suspicions about the president and former guerrilla leader.
The dilemma is deep: drug trafficking was consolidated as an economic engine in peripheral regions, where the State never managed to establish authority. Crop substitution attempts (Petro’s proposal) failed due to lack of infrastructure, markets and financial support. Communities, trapped between guerrillas, paramilitaries and state forces, see in coca the only means of subsistence.
Militarization limits
Trump’s military deployment responds to immediate logic: show visible results before a public opinion that associates the opioid crisis with the border. But the effectiveness is doubtful. Venezuela is not a relevant channel in fentanyl traffic, and the presence of destroyers does not cut the flexible networks that supply the US market.
Moreover, militarization usually reinforces the narrative of the posters, which are presented as local defenders against a corrupt state or in front of foreign “imperialism.” In Mexico and Colombia, several groups managed to legitimize their presence before marginalized communities, becoming referees of everyday life.
The regional scenario shows nuances. Venezuela is indicated as an accomplice state; Mexico partially cooperates; Colombia seeks to negotiate with armed actors who are also drug traffickers. In all cases, drug trafficking is intertwined with guerrillas, informal economies and political systems that tolerate or use it as a power tool.
