1/23/2024 0 Comments Venezuela recent history![]() Other cases of official misconduct followed. A major from the army reserve was caught with 667 kilograms of cocaine in a small aircraft in 1983, one of the biggest seizures that had yet been registered in South America. ![]() Violence in Colombia was another factor displaced people fled across the border, providing more contacts for Colombian traffickers in the neighboring country.Īctive and retired members of the security forces have been involved in Venezuela’s drug trade since the very beginning. The economic crisis that affected Venezuela in the 1980s, nearly doubling unemployment, also helped the expansion of the drug trade in the country. In a pattern that would continue for decades to come, whenever Colombia cracked down on drug trafficking groups, they would respond by shifting more of their operations to Venezuela. In the 1980s, Colombia’s drug cartels became the world’s biggest distributors of cocaine, marijuana and heroin, and Venezuela inevitably felt the impact. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Caruana family became involved in trafficking cocaine and heroin from Colombia to Europe, via a connection with the Cali Cartel. Members of the Cuntreta and Caruana families settled in Caracas as part of a wave of Italian immigrants who established themselves in Venezuela after World War II. One of the first foreign organized crime cells to establish a significant presence in Venezuela was a clan from Italy’s Cosa Nostra. He would later become an adviser to the Chávez brothers, Adán and Hugo. One rebel leader who refused, Douglas Bravo, maintained several guerrilla cells in the cities and countryside. By the end of the decade, many of these groups had chosen to accept an amnesty offer from the government. (Ironically, the relatively high quality of this infrastructure, including highways and ports, would later make Venezuela an attractive transit country for the cocaine trade.) Inequality fueled the rise of violent guerrilla movements in the 1960s. But these leaders are also credited with building up Venezuela’s infrastructure. Their regimes were corrupt and brutal, and the upper classes were allowed to ransack the country. The dictatorships of General Juan Vicente Gómez, from 1908 to 1935, and General Marcos Pérez Jiménez during the 1950s helped make Venezuela one of the most unequal societies in the world. Fuel is now smuggled from Venezuela to Colombia, often along the same routes as cocaine, but in the opposite direction. Another lucrative contraband good to come out of Venezuela was the “black gold” of the 20th century: oil. HistoryĬontraband alcohol, Colombian emeralds and tobacco were among the earliest illicit trades in Venezuela. Its long Caribbean coastline, sparsely populated jungles and plains and proximity to other Caribbean drug transit points like Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have also contributed to Venezuela becoming a major narcotics smuggling route. Venezuelan cities also have a major problem with street crime and urban gang warfare, with the capital Caracas having one of the highest homicide rates in the world.ĭue to its 2,200 kilometer border with Colombia, Venezuela has been impacted by security problems in the neighboring country. Human trafficking, money laundering and the drug precursor chemical trade are other problems for Venezuela’s struggling law enforcement. Both the FARC and the ELN have established a presence in states along Venezuela’s shared border with Colombia, a hub of criminal activity, alongside Venezuela’s own armed rebel group the FBL-FPLN. There is evidence, however, that beginning in the mid-2000s corrupt elements in the security forces stepped up their role in the business, forming a loose network dubbed the “Cartel de los Soles” (Cartel of the Suns).Ĭorrupt members of the security forces have also been major providers of weapons to the black market, to the particular benefit of Colombian guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). Foreign groups, particularly Colombians, have traditionally controlled Venezuela’s drug trade, attracted by poor rule of law and corruption. Venezuela is a key transit country for drug shipments leaving Colombia for the United States and Europe.
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