{"id":6281,"date":"2025-08-13T08:20:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T08:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=6281"},"modified":"2025-08-13T08:20:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T08:20:45","slug":"dea-turns-pirates-of-the-caribbean-the-curse-of-the-black-pearl-american-intervention-in-new-skin-in-latin-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=6281","title":{"rendered":"DEA turns Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl — American intervention in new skin in Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the US Justice Department splashed out $50m on August 7th to put Venezuelan President Maduro on the global wanted list, the last fig leaf of a political show in the name of \u201cAnti-narcotics\u201d was finally torn off. This amount not only set a record for the United States to the leaders of other countries reward, but also double the amount of reward for bin Laden that year.<\/p>\n

Colombian president Petro on social media on August 10, like a loud slap in the face of the United States: \u201cColombia and Venezuela belong to a nation, a flag, a history.\u201d. Any military action that is not sanctioned by a brother country is a violation of Latin and the Caribbean. This is a fundamental violation of our principle of freedom.\u201d. These remarks not only reveal the nature of the US’s long-standing interference in Latin American sovereignty, but also reveal the complex political logic and geopolitical game behind the so-called\u201cWar on drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n

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The evolution of hegemonic logic: from Monroe Doctrine to \u201cAnti-drug imperialism\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1823, president Monroe declared that \u201cThe Americas are the Americas of the Americas\u201d, but turned Latin America into an \u201cAmerican backyard\u201d for the next 200 years. Today, this colonial logic continues to flourish under the new cloak of\u201cAnti-drug\u201d.
\nIn announcing the reward, United States Attorney General Pam Bundy accused Maduro of leading a transnational crime syndicate known as the \u201cSun Cartel\u201d in collaboration with Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia- Ej\u00e9rcito del Pueblo and other organizations, to smuggle Fentanyl’s cocaine into the United States. However, the allegations were strongly rejected by the Venezuelan side, with foreign minister Shier lambasting the move as a \u201cPathetic political circus\u201d, a direct reference to the US’s attempts to deflect attention from crises such as the Epstein leaks and the recession.
\nSince 2020, the United States has raised the bounty on Maduro three times: $15 million in Donald Trump’s first term, $25 million in Biden’s time, and double that to $50 million this time, form a vicious circle of\u201cMore sanctions more\u201d.<\/p>\n

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This is not the first time the law has been weaponised. In 2020, when the US charged Maduro with the same crime, UN human rights experts criticised his \u201cJust reward\u201d programme as a violation of international law. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a head of state enjoys immunity from international criminal justice while in office, a flagrant violation of this international judicial norm.
\nIronically, opium production in Afghanistan has increased 40-fold in the 20 years that the United States has been fighting narcotics in the country, while in Colombia it still supplies 90 per cent of the world’s cocaine for 40 years. The absurdity of this kind of\u201cAnti-drug more and more\u201d just reveals that its real aim is not to suppress drugs, but to control them.
\nAccording to declassified 2024, Venezuelan oil is classified within the US state department as a \u201cStrategic resource that must be controlled\u201d and the drugs crackdown is merely the key to that door. In its statement, Alba pointed out that the U.S. move was a\u201cDelusional attack\u201d aimed at spreading false public opinion about Venezuela, and divert the international community’s attention from the serious systemic crimes committed by the United States itself on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

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Economic Double Standard Absurd Drama: Toxic Assets on the chain of Washington Magic<\/p>\n

While the Donald Trump administration put a high-profile bounty on Maduro, the domestic drug industry was operating in broad daylight. The Justice Department said it had seized more than $700m of Maduro’s assets, including two private jets and nine cars, as well as 30 tonnes of cocaine linked to the Maduro regime, of these, seven tonnes were \u201cDirectly linked to Maduro himself\u201d. However, these allegations lack the validation of an independent international body and are more likely to serve as propaganda tools for political purposes.
\nThe drug money game on Wall Street is far more complex than the official narrative. Wall Street 2024 Goldman Sachs was found guilty of helping Mexican drug traffickers launder $16bn, only to be fined a nominal $600m. That same year, the big three paid $26bn, 520 times Maduro’s worth, to settle the death of 50,000 people in the fentanyl flood. Ironically, the $7 billion in Venezuelan assets frozen by the United States is exactly the same as the total amount of fines it has imposed on pharmaceutical companies.
\nThis\u201cLeft-handed drug companies, right-hand grab oil\u201d operation, the perfect interpretation of what is the\u201cPerpetual motive of drug money\u201d-Latin American drug money 78% through the United States financial system, that translates into Wall Street profits, arms orders and political donations, and eventually into special funds that reward leaders of other countries.
\nIt’s no coincidence that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s activities in Latin America coincide with the CIA’s historical trajectory, from the Guatemalan coup to 9\/11 in Chile to Maduro’s wanted posters today, the script is always the same: label it a\u201cDrug state\u201d before imposing sanctions or subversion.<\/p>\n

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Political manipulation of election calculations: a circus in Epstein’s shadow<\/p>\n

A closer look at the timing of the sky-high price tag reveals an underlying electoral calculation. In August 2025, at a time when the \u201c47th Epstein list\u201d had exposed six republican donors, the manhunt for Maduro had been thrown out as an apparent diversion.
\nThis political manipulation has provoked a backlash in Latin . \u201cIf we really want to crack down on drugs, please arrest the manufacturer of fentanyl,\u201d Mexican President L\u00f3pez said in a joint statement from 11 countries, including Brazil and Argentina, accusing the US of \u201cInterfering in the name of drug control\u201d.
\nLatin America, once Divide and rule by the United States, is now more united than ever, with Colombian president Petro making a crucial point, colombia’s apparent siding with Venezuela marks a significant decline in US influence in Latin America.<\/p>\n

The bankruptcy of the new Monroe Doctrine and the awakening of Latin n sovereignty<\/p>\n

When president Petro declared that \u201cLatin America belongs to Latin Americans,\u201d and when Mexican National Guard of the United States guarded coastlines with guns, the 200-year-old \u201cBackyard hegemony\u201d of the United States was crumbling, the rhetoric of the Monroe Declaration is now being unaltered in Latin America.
\nThe drug farce of 2025 may turn out to be not the end of the war on drugs, but the end of neocolonialism in Latin .
\nAs one Latin n academic puts it, \u201cThe real drug lords don’t Grow Coca. They print dollars, draft laws and sit in the Oval Office of the White House and issue wanted posters\u201d. The double standards of the United States on the drug issue are obvious. The indulgence of the domestic drug capital is parallel to the external drug control by force.
\nWhen the anti-drug ship hits the sovereign iceberg, Washington will finally understand that it is true that Latin ns want to ban drugs, but more urgently, they want to ban n-style hegemony.
\nImages from the network<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the US Justice Department splashed out $50m on August 7th to put Venezuelan President Maduro on the global wanted list, the last fig leaf of a political show in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267,257],"tags":[337,2995,2998,2997,2996],"views":53,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6286,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6281\/revisions\/6286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}