It was world news when last Friday it was announced that the ex-head of the Venezuelan military intelligence service, Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, was arrested in Spain at the request of the American Justice who had been lurking for him for alleged drug crimes against the US state.
El Pollo has been on the American sanctions list since 2008 for coordinating cocaine smuggling to the United States. He was also known to act as the main point of contact between the FARC leadership and former President Hugo Chavez, who gave the guerrilla fighters complete freedom to engage in drug trafficking through the territory of Venezuela.
Chavez, coordinated by Carvajal, also provided the FARC with weapons, ammunition and military clothing. Carvajal played a pivotal role in dealing with drug cartels with the Venezuelan government, so his involvement in the dark world of drug practices went far beyond the mere provision of logistics for the illegal transport of drugs and weapons.
Just like Vladimiro Montesinos, the chief of the Peruvian Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN) at the time of the regime of ex-president Alberto Fujimori, El Pollo also had an unprecedented network of informers and tellers who kept him informed of everything necessary to maintain its grip on its illegal practices. Just like Hugo, Montesinos also cooperated with the FARC and with Colombian drug traffickers, so the entangled culture of South American intelligence with the drug mafia is nothing new.
The information available to Carvajal, which he is expected to use as a useful means of reducing the sentence, is of course overwhelming and particularly damaging to the cartel bosses in the Venezuelan government such as Diosdado Cabello and El Aissami.
It is quite possible to remember the incident that took place in Aruba in 2014 in which Carvajal, who was appointed by the Venezuelan government as their consul in Aruba, was arrested by the Aruban authorities at the request of the US Justice pending the handling of the request for extradition. What happened afterwards was still shrouded in the dark, in contrast to a position previously adopted by the then Dutch Foreign Minister, Mr Koenders said that Carvajal should be released because he enjoyed immunity as a consul.
This, while it was not the case. In no time Carvajal was picked up by a private jet from the Venezuelan government, since Maduro could not take the risk that El Pollo would still fall into the hands of the DEA and would break. The events on Aruba and the dubious role that Koenders has played in them remain a mystery to date.
The fact is that Carvajal has now been arrested for the second time abroad and is once again awaiting the completion of a trial for extradition to the USA. But that situation is now different. After all, not long ago, Carvajal publicly announced his support for Guaido, and even went so far as to call on its mates to choose Guaido. Maduro, therefore, has little need to protect him and would probably rather have him dead now that he is able to cause damage to the Maduro regime.
What surprises me is that Carvajal apparently thought he could pull the war forces away from Maduro. More than anyone else, he needs to know that this relationship is very close because the entire top of the army is bribed and earns big money from corruption in state-owned companies (30% of state-owned companies are run by soldiers, CAMIMPEG founded in 2016, is the most famous military group management in the mining, oil and gas companies).
In addition, I want to quote the following passage from the report of the International Crisis Group, Latin America Report no. 73 dated February 28, 2019 (page 12):
(Quote): “..that top military officers in Amazonas state receive at least 20 kg in gold every month (valued at about $ 800,000.) To allow illegal mining in Yapacana. This helps explain why senior army positions in the region, especially in Bolivar, are among the most popular postings in Venezuela. These generals are often rotated, helping to foster expectations and buttress loyalty to the government in senior military circles. ”(Unquote).
The army top therefore earns an unprecedented amount of money by facilitating the drug and gold smuggling regime. This regime, which is run by criminal groups such as those of the Sindicatos and Colombian guerrillas such as the ELN and the new guerrilla group Aguilas Negras (mostly FARC dissidents), maintains close contacts with the Venezuelan army to get their illegal goods freely transported within Venezuela and abroad. The army is in the service of the mafia, in fact, the army IS the mafia.
I keep pointing out, the struggle of the Venezuelan people is not so much the struggle against a dictatorial regime, but a struggle against the Latin American Mafia. As long as the foreign forces are not fully aware of this and do not change the rules of engagement, there will soon be no solution to relieve the people from organized crime.
Moreover, the structural criminalization of the country is becoming very threatening at home and abroad, all the more so now that Maduro has announced at the end of last week that he will expand his popular militia with a million citizens who will all be armed and trained, an extremely creepy development that in my opinion will cause a lot of blood loss.
One million armed civilians on the street who are incited to fight, with the fallacy of protecting the "Socialismo Bolivariano" not realizing that they are only being misused as the first battle order (and cannon meat) to protect drug bosses.
This is Maduro's answer to the threatening conspiracy by those countries that want to dismiss him. Come on, you are not going to butcher my population? Never in the history of organized crime has a crime organization managed to get so many foot soldiers tensed for their cart. Even in their peak years the Italian Cosa Nostra, Camorra, "Ndrangheta, the Mexican cartels, the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads have not succeeded at all.
I fear that the momentum for a bloodless removal from Maduro has expired, with so many weapons on the streets combined with the sowed discord, I see the country sliding into a civil war. After all, the drug mafia will do everything in its power to defend the territory it has been free to use since Chavez.
