With Petro as President of Colombia, castrochavism reactivates its attacks against the war on drugs

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua’s regimes have a unique feature; to legitimize narcotics’ trafficking that they present as “anti-imperialism” and “the need to end the failed war on drugs”, a flawed strategy with which they pretend to coverup the narco-States they have converted the countries they control. Castro from Cuba, made narcotics’ trafficking “an anti-imperialism weapon”, Chavez from Venezuela, ordered “to combat the U.S. by flooding it with cocaine”. Morales on behalf of Bolivia, proposed these at the United Nations. Gustavo Petro, at his swearing-in as President of Colombia, repeated it. All of these are attacks to protect narcotics’ trafficking.

Narcotics’ trafficking is a universal crime included in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, amended by the 1972 United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) Protocol for Amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the United Nations 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and the Palermo Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

It is often claimed the U.S. is the main consumer but a 2017 report revealed the attacks to fuel drug consumption are worldwide: Albania 2.5%, Scotland 2.3%, the U.S. 2.3%, England and Gales 2.2%, Spain 2.2%, Australia 2.1%, Uruguay 1,8%, Chile 1.7%. The United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) in its 2022 Worldwide Report on Drugs states “Data suggests the trafficking of Cocaine is expanding to other regions outside of the principal markets of North America and Europe, with increasing levels towards Africa and Asia”.

Narco-State is an “economic and political buzz word that is applied to countries whose political institutions are influenced -in a significant way- by the power and wealth of narcotics’ trafficking, and whose leaders simultaneously function as governmental officials and members of illicit narcotics’ trafficking networks, shielded by their legal authority and powers”.

Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua are narco-States. Proof of this fact are their notorious and public acts and, in Cuba’s case, the fact that history identifies it as the first of Americas’ narco-States ever since the Castro’s association with narcotics’ traffickers Pablo Escobar and Roberto Suarez in the decade of the 1980s, something they attempted to coverup with the execution by a firing squad of Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa and Colonel Antonio “Tony” de la Guardia and others who were operators and chieftains of the dictatorship.

In this 21st century, in association with Hugo Chavez, Cuba continued to be a narco-State and has control over the dictatorship operated by Nicolas Maduro, convicted by international justice for his role in the “Los Soles’ Cartel” with a bounty of $15 million dollars over his head. Cuba’s dictatorship is the Freight Forwarder of Cocaine as proven by the April 2016 “seizure in Colon of 401 kilograms of cocaine shipped from Cuba to Belgium, hidden between tanks with sugar cane syrup” and “the 1517 packages of cocaine seized in Panama” in May of 2019 and more.

The narco-State of Venezuela is proof of the “political use of narcotics’ trafficking against democracies” as shown in the September 2019 report of the U.S. Department of Justice to Spain’s National Assembly in the legal proceedings against the former Venezuelan Chief of Military Intelligence Hugo Carvajal, AKA “El Pollo” that details how Hugo Chavez in 2005, gathered in his official residence those responsible for the country’s intelligence to order them “to combat the U.S. by flooding it with cocaine” and Chavez, immediately thereafter, further ordered “to coordinate with the Colombian FARC Guerrilla to execute the plan”.

Evo Morales is the lifelong head of the illegal coca-leaf harvester federations and cocaine producers and thanks to Chavez and Castro ended up as the Head of State of Bolivia who, immediately following his ascent to the presidency, established the Plurinational Narco-State. In April of 2016, in its speech -labeled as 883- at the United Nations, “Evo Morales asked for the DEA to be dissolved, following his arguments that the war on drugs had failed” and with the backing of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua stated “the fight against narcotics’ trafficking is a weapon of imperialism to oppress the peoples” and he asked for a “UN Resolution” to “end DEA and the war against narcotics’ trafficking”.

Now Gustavo Petro as President of Colombia, proposes “to end with the failed war on drugs in the world and move towards a strong and preventive policies of demand reduction in developed countries”. As part of Castrochavism, he assumes the treacherous position that could transform Colombia into a narco-State, ignoring that the “anti-narcotics policies” -what he calls war- include “the prevention, eradication of illegal cultivation, interdiction and alternative development” and that the consumption of drugs grows in the third world, especially in drug producing countries such as Colombia and Bolivia.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas