Narco-red scare politics makes a comeback with Trump’s Maduro indictment
Socialism, drugs, and terrorism have dominated the narratives of good versus evil in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. Assassinations, coups, and weapon smuggling are just some of the actions taken by the State Department, CIA, and U.S. military to fight these threats, both real and imagined. It seems then that this week’s allegations against Nicolás Maduro have achieved the holy trifecta: a socialist running a narco-terrorist group, known as the Cartel of the Sun. Maduro and his associates have been indicted by the Department of Justice on charges of narco-terrorism allegedly trying “to flood the United States with cocaine”, in order to “devastate American communities.”
Accusing leftist leaders of being involved in the drug trade is not a new tactic. Narco-red scare politics has been around since at least the 1950s when Harry Anslinger, the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and the father of modern drug enforcement declared that Communist China was “flooding the world with dope to corrupt the youth of America.” Sound familiar? The trope of the narco-communist has constantly appeared in U.S. political discourse and has constantly proven false.
In truth, more often than not, it has been the United States providing support to drug traffickers as part of their goals of removing leftist governments. These narco-red scares have historically been used to increase pressure on governments and justify more drastic actions. When we hear these sorts of allegations against anti-U.S. administrations, we should place them in a historical context, and in the absence of hard evidence, see them as political tools, rather than a demonstration of serious concern about, or real confirmation of drug trafficking.
The problem is that proof to refute the allegations or illustrate U.S. complicity very rarely appears until much later. The clandestine nature of the drug trade means we must rely on police and governments for all of our information. The only other groups able to question these assertions are the members of drug networks themselves, who are unlikely to hold a press conference on the matter, and even less likely to be believed if they did. Instead, it is advisable to look to previous instances of narco-red scares, to show their political function, and historical inaccuracy.
China was the first example of this, and while Anslinger was backed by McCarthyite fervor, there was never any evidence found of wide-scale Chinese smuggling of heroin into the United States. Indeed, Anslinger was working closely with the Nationalist Chinese Government in Taiwan to maintain aid while denying diplomatic relations with Communist China. He even went so far as to suppress a study that found the involvement of high-up officials in the Nationalist Chinese Government in narcotics trafficking.
The next leader to face these allegations was Fidel Castro, who was frequently accused of being one of the lead smugglers of cocaine into the United States. In fact, it was right-wing Cuban exiles, driven from the island by Castro who became the world’s first ever professional cocaine-smuggling class. These individuals always maintained close relationships with the CIA, who saw them as useful partners in the quest to topple Castro’s government.
In 1970, when the Bureau for Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs arrested 150 people as part of their largest drug operation ever, at least 70% had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Alberto Sicilia Falcon, an exiled Cuban and the first individual to ever be accused of running a drug cartel, allegedly worked with a CIA-trained intelligence officer, José Egozi, to funnel a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of arms to Portugal in 1974 as part of an attempt to mount a coup against the Socialist government that had recently come to power.
Then there is the case of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Beginning in 1984 the Reagan Administration, repeatedly claimed that the socialist government of Daniel Ortega was involved in the cocaine trade. This came at a time of mass public concern about drug use during the so-called crack epidemic. It is also where the term “narcoterrorism” first gained popular use. The claim was appropriately extreme: not only were the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua committing an act of terror by trying to flood the U.S. with drugs, but they were also using the proceeds to fund terrorism abroad.
In truth, it was the U.S.-backed Contra guerillas who were smuggling cocaine to fund their insurgency against the Socialist Nicaraguan government. The CIA knew as early as 1981 that the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDEN), an anti-Sandinista group not directly backed by the U.S., was partially funding with cocaine smuggling. In 1989, after a three-year Senate investigation, the Kerry Report found an extensive network of pilots and arms suppliers involved in the drug trade to fund the U.S.-backed rebels, the same network being used by the State Department to funnel “humanitarian aid” to the Contras before the ban.
One could also look at the case of Colombia. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the U.S. helped to push the idea of “narcoguerillas” in an attempt to link the Marxist FARC rebels to drug trafficking. They were repeatedly accused of driving cocaine production in Colombia after the dismantling of Cali and Medellin Drug Trafficking Organizations. The rise was in fact more attributable to the right-wing paramilitaries, who were secretly backed by the Colombian government and military. A Colombian government report from 2001 estimated that the FARC controlled just two percent of the drug trade in Colombia, and paramilitaries forty percent.[i]
The FARC are also implicated in the most recent accusations against Nicholas Maduro. Given how such allegations have unfolded in the past, the need for suspicion in the face of such accusations should be apparent. It therefore seems far more likely that the Trump Administration are using these accusations as a tool to increase the pressure on the Maduro administration, rather than genuine concern about government involvement in drug smuggling. This is without mentioning the fact that Juan Guaido, the other claimant to the presidency of Venezuela was pictured last year with two leaders of the Rastrojos, a Colombian trafficking group with origins as a paramilitary organization.
The claims outlined in the indictment are not immediately disprovable, and it is possible that some officials are involved in trafficking. However, Maduro is facing an economic crisis of almost unprecedented proportions, caused by mismanagement and exacerbated by crippling economic sanctions. It seems unlikely that he is using his free time to launch a plot to flood the U.S. market with cocaine.
The political motivation of the indictment are made all the more apparent with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s “Democratic Transition Framework for Venezuela” which proposes an interim government designed to hold free and fair elections. However, while sanctions would be lifted on many government officials, those implicated in drug trafficking would still be culpable.
Trump has also announced that the U.S. will be deploying the navy to the Caribbean near Venezuela for drug interception. This is one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama to depose and extradite President Manuel Noriega on drug charges. It seems unlikely to be solely about drugs, given that Colombia, by far the world’s largest exporter of cocaine, remains one of the U.S.’s closest allies in the region and has never faced such a military threat. The indictment is simultaneously being used as an excuse to ramp up pressure on the government of Venezuela while undermining their own supposed attempt at promoting talks to resolve the crisis. This is not an issue of drug trafficking; it is purely one of power politics.
[i] Dawn Paley, Drug War Capitalism (Oakland: AK Press, 2014), p. 55.
