A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela

Washington Post ^ | May 24, 2015 | By Jackson Diehl

[Brad from Tennessee]

Venezuela is afflicted with the world’s highest inflation, its second highest murder rate and crippling shortages of food, medicine and basic consumer goods. Its authoritarian government is holding some 70 political prisoners, including the mayor of Caracas and senior opposition leader Leopoldo López, and stands accused by human rights groups of illegal detentions, torture and repression of independent media.

All of that is now pretty well known, and it is finally beginning to gain some attention from Latin American leaders who for years did their best to appease or ignore Hugo Chávez and his “Bolivarian Revolution.” What’s less understood is the complicating factor that will make any political change or economic reconstruction in this failing state far more difficult: The Chávez regime, headed since his demise by Nicolás Maduro, harbors not just a clique of crackpot socialists, but also one of the world’s biggest drug cartels.

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. . .

[9thLife]

Left.ists.

[RightGeek]

Stay classy, commies.

[Regulator]

Coming to America with the tidal wave of “hispanics”

Won’t that be great when a Maduro gets into the presidency of the U.S. and has control of the nuclear stockpile?

[bajabaja]

Given the Cuba/Venezuela working relationship on other endeavors, I expect Fidel and hermanos to be somewhere in this, too.

[ConservingFreedom]

And it's cocaine criminalization's inflation of prices and thus profits that gives cartels power.