Drugs Trafficking in Venezuela Is an Ocean Away From the Capture of Maduro

Why It Matters

Because Venezuela’s drug corridors remain intact, regional anti‑narcotics strategies must focus beyond regime change and address the entrenched criminal‑state nexus. Ignoring this reality risks ineffective policies and continued cocaine flow to North America and Europe.

Key Takeaways

• Venezuela transits ~250 metric tons cocaine annually (10% global).
• Maduro's removal won't disrupt trafficking routes or volumes.
• Tren de Aragua regulates routes, not controlling production.
• Colombian groups supply cocaine; Venezuelan state corruption remains.
• Trafficking adapts, shifting routes rather than collapsing.

Pulse Analysis

Venezuela’s strategic location between Colombia’s coca belts and Caribbean shipping lanes has turned it into a critical conduit for cocaine, despite lacking domestic production. The decay of state institutions, porous borders, and the presence of armed groups such as the ELN and FARC dissidents enable the flow of an estimated 250 metric tons of cocaine each year. Criminal organisations like the Tren de Aragua (TdA) have built a governance model that secures airports, highways and ports, offering protection and arbitrating disputes without taking on the high‑risk business of production or export.

The ousting of President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026 does not dismantle this infrastructure. Maduro’s administration was characterized by fragmented corruption rather than a monolithic ‘narco‑state,’ allowing traffickers to negotiate directly with military officials and prison gangs. Historical evidence shows that when interdiction pressure rises, smugglers simply reroute; the same pattern will repeat after the regime change. The TdA is expected to tighten its regulatory grip, while Colombian suppliers continue expanding, as production in Colombia reached 3,000 tons in 2024, a rise of 400 tons from the previous year.

Policymakers therefore need a continental approach that tackles the economic drivers of the trade—poverty, inequality, and weak governance—rather than relying on military solutions. Strengthening cross‑border law‑enforcement cooperation, investing in alternative livelihoods for border communities, and disrupting the financial networks that reward corrupt officials are essential steps. Without addressing the entrenched state‑criminal nexus, any future leadership change in Caracas is unlikely to curtail the steady stream of cocaine destined for North America and Europe.

Drugs Trafficking in Venezuela is an Ocean Away From the Capture of Maduro

Written by Federico Varese, Guest Contributor

What are the defining characteristics of Venezuelan drug trafficking and how will they change after the fall of Nicolás Maduro? Venezuela is not a cocaine‑producing country, yet it has become one transit hub in global trafficking. Its role in the supply chain stems from geographical factors, institutional decay and the emergence of criminal organisations capable of controlling infrastructure and communities. Among these, the Tren de Aragua (TdA) exercises forms of criminal governance over territory; as a result, its involvement in drug trafficking is indirect, regulatory and opportunistic.

The regime led by Maduro until 3 January 2026 was not a centralised ‘narco‑state’. Yet, it allowed fragmented institutional complicity that facilitated large‑scale trafficking even in the absence of unified control by a single cartel. The fall of the dictator will affect neither cocaine production nor its transport, and corrupt deals continue unchanged.

Cocaine enters the country primarily from Colombia – through Zulia, Táchira, Apure and Amazonas – where production and initial processing remain under the control of Colombian armed groups such as the ELN and FARC dissidents. Venezuelan territory provides storage facilities and exit routes. According to the 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, approximately 250 metric tons of cocaine transit through Venezuela each year, accounting for about 10 % of global production.

Trafficking relies on three main modalities: clandestine flights from improvised airstrips; maritime routes along the Caribbean coast toward Central America and the Dominican Republic; and container shipments through ports such as Puerto Cabello. Recent investigations also document limited coca cultivation and drug processing in border regions with Colombia. Control of nodal territories is crucial. Access to airports, highways, ports and border crossings depends on negotiated agreements involving state actors, Colombian armed groups and Venezuelan criminal organisations. Among these, the TdA plays a decisive role.

Several journalistic investigations suggest that under Maduro’s presidency the state sought to regulate access to the cocaine economy, distributing rents and protection as a means of managing internal balances within the armed forces.

From its origins in the Tocorón prison, the TdA expanded outward, consolidating its influence over neighbourhoods, communities and transport corridors. Its involvement in cocaine trafficking consists of regulating access to routes, protecting logistics and arbitrating conflicts, rather than controlling production or wholesale export. This model allows the group to integrate into existing transport chains without assuming the risks borne by producers and international brokers. Drug trafficking, however, represents only one source of revenue among others, alongside extortion, illegal mining, migrant smuggling, contract violence and territorial control.

Contrasts with Neighbours

A comparison with Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), currently the most important drug‑trafficking criminal organisation in the region, is instructive. Both groups originated in prisons and developed sophisticated systems of internal governance. The PCC coordinates wholesale purchases, manages routes, negotiates directly with foreign suppliers and buyers and reinvests profits in logistical expansion. Its presence in Bolivia, Paraguay and Europe reflects a strategy of integration and scale. The TdA, by contrast, does not seek to dominate supply chains. It functions as a regulatory authority within fragmented and nationally bounded illicit markets. The TdA acts as a broker of local power, monetising control over territory and infrastructure.

Both groups are involved in criminal governance, yet the Brazilian one does that on a much larger scale. For instance, while there is significant evidence of direct contacts between Italian mafias, in particular the Calabrese ‘Ndrangheta and the PCC, the TdA’s role in the global supply chain is to facilitate passage through Venezuela of drugs coming from Colombia and destined to Central America. A route, more relevant for the European market, runs from Colombia to Brazil and from there to Italy and Northern Europe (including France), bypassing Venezuela altogether.

As in other Latin American countries, security forces and sectors of the prison system strike deals with the TdA, producing a form of decentralised, negotiated and territorially uneven complicity. Indeed, this is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where almost anything is up for sale, not just safe passage of drugs. Several journalistic investigations suggest that under Maduro’s presidency the state sought to regulate access to the cocaine economy, distributing rents and protection as a means of managing internal balances within the armed forces.

This does not imply that the state operated as a unified trafficking organisation. An early indictment against Maduro and a group of his associates mentioned the elusive Cartel de los Soles. U.S. authorities described it as a hierarchical criminal organisation composed of senior Venezuelan political, military and intelligence officials who, over several decades, coordinated large‑scale cocaine trafficking with groups such as the FARC, ELN, the Sinaloa Cartel and TdA, using state institutions and infrastructure under Nicolás Maduro’s leadership.

In this account, Maduro appears as a central coordinator who protected routes, facilitated diplomatic and military cover and oversaw a system in which drug profits enriched the ruling elite and their families. Yet the label Cartel de los Soles is a journalistic expression to refer to widespread official corruption in Venezuela. By reifying this metaphor into a criminal organisation and over‑centralising Maduro’s role, the original U.S. indictment distorted the reality of how illicit markets are governed in Venezuela. On 5 January 2026, the U.S. Justice Department dropped claims that it is an actual group. Furthermore, and contrary to remarks made by President Trump, Venezuela is not producing fentanyl.

What will be the effect of the removal of Maduro on the production and transportation of cocaine?

Some observers suggested that “routes that once used Venezuelan territory have likely rerouted rather than collapsed.” Indeed, a study simulating the effects of U.S. government’s cocaine interdiction missions, based on some fifty years of data, shows that such efforts simply lead traffickers to adapt and seek new routes, with virtually no effect on the amount of drugs moving north.

Yet, in this instance, there was no effort to interdict any route. Sources in Colombia told me that the deals between traffickers, criminal groups and corrupt sectors of the army are still in place and the flow of drugs has not been affected by Maduro’s capture. Likely, the fall of Maduro will have the effect of strengthening the territorial control of the TdA and of armed groups operating along the border, such as the ELN. The reputation of the armed forces has taken a hit, hence the repression inside the country has resumed, in order to prevent a popular uprising, but also to send a message to traffickers that the army is still in control of the territory though which drugs pass. Of course, production in Colombia will not be affected in any way and will continue to grow. In 2024, it reached approximately 3,000 tons, 400 more than in 2023. Finally, anti‑American ideological justifications of criminal actors will intensify.

In conclusion, the fight against drug trafficking cannot be conducted through military operations but would require a continental strategy capable of addressing the structural causes of production and consumption, which include inequality and poverty. We know, however, that the real concern of Donald Trump’s administration is not to solve a social and human problem that afflicts the Americas and Europe.