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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">Sure, But Venezuela is the Narco
State...</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Oscar Forero – February
24, 2020<br>
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<p>Both inside and outside Venezuela it is becoming more
common to hear the term "narco-state” as a way of
accusing not only the Venezuelan government but the
entirety of the country’s institutions of being
immersed in the crime of drug-trafficking.</p>
<p>This description is particularly brazen because
amongst those who describe Venezuela this way are
Colombia, the main global cocaine producer, and the
United States, the fourth largest opium consumer and
principal cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine,
pharmaceutical stimulant and ecstasy consumer in the
world.</p>
<p>Using this description generally looks to open the
way for the intervention that the Trump administration
is pushing full scale. These kinds of accusations,
along with adjectives such as “terrorist” and
“anti-democratic” to name just two, are a kind of tool
used to demonise governments that are not to the
liking of the White House. Paradoxically, countries
that actually practice state terrorism or those that
maintain bloody dictatorships that violate any and all
principles of human rights receive Washington's
blessing, as long as they comply with the US’ mandate.</p>
<p>International media, in their creeping and
subservient role, broadly respond to this information
without presenting any half-serious evidence that may
at least address the subject from a documented
perspective.</p>
<p>It is an outright barbarity that from the United
States, Colombia, or Spain they accuse Venezuela of
being a narco-state. This accusation principally looks
to negate the rationality of the population, with
moral annihilation being the step prior to physical
annihilation, as we have seen in Yugoslavia, Libya and
Iraq.</p>
<p>Those governments allied to the White House and
international media are the same ones that told us
that if [Colombian drug baron] Pablo Escobar died,
then drug shipments would stop. These governments, in
their role as victims, are trying to make us conclude
that the drug trade exists because the Venezuelan
authorities are responsible for buying and producing
huge quantities of cocaine that are going to end up,
who knows how, on the streets of the global North, the
victims. They also allege that this trade enriches the
entire Venezuelan political establishment, including
judges, ministers, deputies, governors, mayors and
many others. This is an insistent attempt to render
Chavismo synonymous with drug trafficking.</p>
<h2>The Venezuelan drug route?</h2>
<p>Venezuela is located in a geographically privileged
area, with ample coastline and a 2,150-kilometre
border with Colombia. This makes it a phenomenal
potential route for the shipment of drugs to the
United States and Europe, routes which previously
included stop-offs mainly in the Dominican Republic,
Aruba, and Trinidad and Tobago.</p>
<p>The Venezuelan route, however, despite being so
attractive, is not the main one used.</p>
<p>The bulk of cocaine and heroin shipments produced by
Venezuela’s neighbours leave via the Colombian
Pacific, arriving in Panama, Honduras and Mexico,
countries where the United States has at least 18
military bases. Another route, the second most used,
departs from Cartagena City on the Colombian Caribbean
coastline and arrives to the Bahamas, a small island
of 13,000 square kilometres where the northern power
also has a military base in Nassau. On this point, the
Colombian, and even US, authorities agree.</p>
<p>The transit of drugs through Venezuelan territory en
route to the United States and Europe is nothing new,
nor is the relocation of [Colombian] drug lords to
[Venezuela’s] western cities such as Merida or San
Cristobal.</p>
<p>In 1997, Justo Pastor Perafán, the "last great drug
lord” after the death of Pablo Escobar, was captured
in the centre of San Cristobal. This former Colombian
military man had been living for at least a year on
Venezuelan soil where he could move freely.</p>
<p>Venezuela has been a historical stop-off for
international drug shipments, something which at no
point do we want to hide.</p>
<p>In 1999, a Boeing 727 belonging to Saudi Prince Nayef
Bin Fawwaz al-Shaalan departed Caracas after he
finished a meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC). The jet was stopped in
Paris with two tons of high quality cocaine. The
prince has been protected by Saudi Arabia ever since,
despite an arrest warrant being issued for drug
trafficking.</p>
<p>For all this to have happened, there was undoubtedly
cooperation between the [Venezuelan] military, police
and civilian officials, as well as in all the
countries considered part of the cocaine route. It is
never our intention to deny the existence of networks
governed by by this industry’s obscene profits; this
is a historical and real fact. What cannot be accepted
is the idea that the institutions of the Venezuelan
state are designed for this purpose. There is a huge
gap between the reality and these accusations, which
if analysed with information from international
organisations, leaves those who happen to be quickest
to accuse us in a weak position.</p>
<h2>The Colombia-US axis of narco-capitalism</h2>
<p>According to the most recent report published by the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),
revenue from the drug trade is estimated to be at
least US $320 billion in 2017. Of this, at least 95
percent is allegedly made in the recipient countries,
i.e. US, Canada and Europe, while the remaining 5
percent is made by the producing countries.</p>
<p>These figures do not differ at all from the profit
margins that industrialised countries (the consumers)
and developing countries (producers-extractivists)
receive through the marketing of any raw material, say
iron, copper, gold, diamonds or coltan.</p>
<p>The exploitative relationship and the international
division of labour is also identical for illegal
industries. The actors are the same. On the one hand
there are the winners, the great international banking
system, the corporations, and the military-industrial
apparatus. On the other, there are the losers, those
who provide the blood and the sweat in the war: the
unemployed, peasants without opportunities and
thousands of children who offer their labour as leaf
scrapers or "raspachines".</p>
<p>Coca production in rural Colombia is directly
influenced by poverty. The areas where there is the
highest concentration of this crop coincide with
levels of government abandonment and the domination of
para-legal groups. The Colombian government’s signing
of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United
States [in 2012] has meant that the land destined for
these crops has multiplied greatly. Areas where
previously there was food crop production, virgin
forests or even national parks are now large areas
dedicated to coca cultivation.</p>
<p>While the coffee-producing area, the main industry of
the Colombian economy, has remained virtually stable
between 2002 and 2018, the planting of coca leaves
occupies increasingly important spaces. To date, and
according to projections, the coca leaf is the third
most planted product in the country, behind only
bananas (which it is near to overtaking) and coffee.</p>
<p>Society, highly influenced by what the press writes,
sees the problem in the rural population and demands
solutions that even threaten the lives of the
campesinos. It is truly difficult for a farmer from
[the Colombian regions of] Antioquia, Nariño or Norte
de Santander to launch into the neoliberal arena of
"free trade,” to compete against a producer which may
be subsidised and enjoys a broad protectionist policy
in [the US states of] Nebraska or North Dakota.</p>
<p>Likewise, the signing of the FTA made it a crime to
store and preserve seeds, while it became law to have
to only use "certified" seeds marketed by large
multinationals such as Monsanto (now Bayer) and
Dupont.</p>
<p>As with the international coffee market, of which
coffee growers are estimated to receive only US $2 out
of every US $1,000 that is generated, the income for
the Colombian farmer who sows and transforms the coca
leaf into the basis for cocaine is small next to that
of the great drug lords. These barons, it is worth
noting, are not Colombian, Mexican, and much less
Venezuelan, but US, Spanish, Portuguese, French or
Dutch.</p>
<p>While in the Colombian countryside a kilo of coca
hydrochloride (the final product, ready for
consumption) costs on average US $1,500, on the
streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Detroit
it can reach a much higher price. In Europe, the
influx of gigantic shipments of cocaine - mainly
through Spain and Portugal - increases its cost,
always depending on the purity and quality.</p>
<p>Contrary to what government-constructed publicity in
Colombia and the United States try to portray, there
is a steady growth in the planting of the coca leaf
and its subsequent production, with a similar growth
in its demand in the developed countries.</p>
<p>By 2009, an estimated 210 million people were
consuming [illegal] narcotics in the world. In 2017
this figure has increased to 271 million. At least
76.2 million are from North America (United States,
Mexico and Canada), reflecting the huge public-sector
complex (including the military and police), as well
as the private sector, which operates around this
lucrative business.</p>
<p>It is believed that 188 million people consume
cannabis every year, of which 36 percent are in the
United States and Western and Central Europe where
only 10 percent of the world's population live. This
exponential growth, coupled with the trend of
legalising marijuana use, has been exploited by large
corporations that have been displacing the two
traditional producers: Mexico and Morocco. Right now,
the leader in global production is curiously the
world's self-styled anti-narcotics policeman, the
United States.</p>
<p>At the regional level, the planting of coca leaves
and the production of coca hydrochloride have been
increasing.</p>
<p>Despite more than US $11 billion invested in Plan
Colombia, nine U.S. military bases and an
indeterminate set of "quasi-bases" that are housed in
at least 51 buildings and 24 leased facilities (which
could be more) being installed and dedicated entirely
to "combating" this scourge, hundreds of contractors
who enjoy total immunity as if they were accredited
diplomats, thousands of square kilometres of virgin
rainforest bathed with glyphosate (which Monsanto
dispenses), large losses for the peasantry, effects on
the water they consume and the air they breathe,
displacement, years of “democratic security” under
[former hard-right President Alvaro] Uribe and the
demobilisation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, historically marked as the
great producers of the alkaloid, it can be said that
Colombia, instead of eradicating drug production, has
been monopolising the cocaine market ever more, almost
quadrupling its production in just 4 years.</p>
<p>The most recent data published by UNODC highlights
that in Colombia 48,000 hectares (ha) of coca were
planted by 2013, representing 40 percent of the total
amount grown on the planet. By 2017, the area in use
increased to 171,000 ha., or 70 percent of the world's
production. By 2020 this figure could reach 250,000
ha., an area similar to the surface of [Venezuela’s]
Margarita Island and La Guaira State put together.</p>
<h2>Colombia: A narco-bourgeoisie with political power</h2>
<p>In the [Colombian] cities of Bogota, Medellin or
Cali, little is known about the painful consequences
left in the bosoms of society and the family by coca
farming. There, in the centres of power, citizens only
enjoy the millions of dollars which come into the
Colombian economic system.</p>
<p>The richest man in the country, Luis Carlos Sarmiento
Angulo, is currently worth more than US $11 billion.
This magnate, who is the owner of the principal
Colombian bank, has laundered billions of dollars
coming from criminal activities which stimulate the
productive apparatus of the country, a fact which
doesn’t at all bother the politicians, business class,
and investors. This is where the “success” of Uribe’s
policies originates.</p>
<p>While this goes on, in the impoverished towns on the
outskirts, the semi-legal economy is what props up the
law itself. The value of the coca leaf crop fields in
the ten municipalities with the largest crop
production in Colombia is almost double that of the
public budget destined to these municipalities by the
national government.</p>
<p>The same phenomenon occurs in the three states with
the largest coca production: Putumayo, Nariño and
North Santander. It is worth pointing out that these
three states are border regions, the first two with
Ecuador and the last with Venezuela.</p>
<p>By including itself in the drug industry, the
Colombian state looks to bring down costs, and as such
it is an accomplice of many of the other connected
crimes.</p>
<p>One of these is fuel smuggling, which can be seen
from Ecuador and Venezuela and which bleeds both
countries out significantly.</p>
<p>The dominance of pseudo-demobilised paramilitary
groups and the establishment of crop fields and
laboratories close to international border lines
allows for the permanent supply of fuel and other
materials at often ridiculously cheap prices, such as
car fuel, cement, and petrochemical products made in
Venezuela. To produce one kilogram of base cocaine,
282 litres of gasoline are required, as well as
thousands of litres for the laboratories which are
generally set up in deserted areas with no electrical
power.</p>
<p>The fact that Venezuelan and Ecuadorian fuel is of
better quality than that produced in Colombia has also
contributed to improving base cocaine output. The
specialist technical support which is carried out by
semi-legal groups has also increased the per-hectare
output in the crop fields. In 2013, 205,000 tonnes of
coca leaf were produced, whilst in 2017 this rose to
930,900 tonnes, a 453 percent rise. This fact is no
coincidence, as scientific investigation has been
working in line with drug production for many years,
not just in Colombia but globally.</p>
<h2>The First World: pharmaceutical dependency and
accumulation of drug profits</h2>
<p>So-called opioids are the cause of the very real
public health epidemic in a large percentage of the
developed countries. These are natural derivatives of
morphine and poppies or are synthetically made, which
are the most damaging versions.</p>
<p>The two best known opioids are fentanyl and
oxycodone, both of which are synthetic analgesics and
anaesthetics created in laboratories, and are 50 times
more powerful than heroin. Opioids are responsible for
more than 2,000 overdose-related deaths in the USA in
2007, and 47,000 in 2017 according to conservative UN
data. Cruder official report from US health
authorities suggest that overdose deaths for the same
year are closer to 63,000, more than the entire number
of US lives lost in the Vietnam War.</p>
<p>The global corporate system has known how to take
advantage of this dependency on pharmaceuticals which
threatens to devastate millions of lives in the next
few years. Its alienating strategy generates juicy
profits for the great laboratories which are backed up
by the complicity and consent of governments. Even
more worrying is the support they receive from the
legal and political establishment.</p>
<p>Chinese, US, Colombian, Mexican, and South Asian
laboratories compete for the immense booty which,
apart from producing billions of dollars every year,
also produces 600,000 deaths, something which
transnational capital is not concerned about.</p>
<p>Johnson & Johnson is globally known for baby
talc. Nonetheless, this firm is one of the principal
producers of opioids. Not content with this, it is
faced with an endless demand for its products, having
sneakily pushed millions of people towards consumption
and dependency. The transnational is on the brink of
achieving an agreement with the [US] federal
government for which it will have to pay a fine as if
it had gone through a red light, which will free it up
of any responsibility. Once again, all of this happens
with the complicity of the system.</p>
<p>The system also regulates its own metabolism to
efficiently guarantee the supply of narcotics from its
primary production sites. The drug economy has been
one of the principal motors which drives the world
economy for some time, especially for consumers and
producers.</p>
<p>If we bring together all of the criminal activities
(drug running, piracy, illegal arms sales, fuel
smuggling, informatics crimes, etc.), the contribution
of the drug industry to global GDP is as high as 5
percent.</p>
<p>The Colombian banking system is not the only one
which is stabilised from the money coming from this
criminal economy, with the world banking system
laundering astronomical amounts of money. According to
the UN, US $1.6 trillion go into the system every year
after having been laundered. During the last decade,
financial institutions like the Bank of America, City
Group, HSBC and even the Institute for the Works of
Religion (popularly known as the Bank of God or the
Vatican’s Bank) have been splattered with
anti-laundering investigations.</p>
<p>But, even with all these official figures and data,
the narco-state is apparently Venezuela.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are the
author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.</em></p>
<p><em>Translation by Paul Dobson for Venezuelanalysis.</em></p>
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