Caracas Chronicles

Donald Trump has been pushing for years the theory that, thanks to the Biden administration’s negligence, the U.S. has become more unsafe because Nicolás Maduro opened Venezuela’s prisons to flood the country with criminals disguised as undocumented migrants. The evidence of the Tren de Aragua’s international expansion helped him turn that diffuse threat into something much more tangible, inflating what happened in Aurora and declaring that Maduro is the gang’s boss.

But in recent months, that narrative has been woven together with another story that has been developing for years in the media and in measures taken by the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations: the long trail of individual sanctions and indictments against frontmen, officials, and even relatives of the chavista elite for money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing.

In 2025, the Cartel de los Soles went from being a hypothesis about a giant Venezuelan military mafia to a construct that, like the Tren de Aragua, condenses a vague, complex threat into a digestible, communicable idea. An entire essentially corrupt practice within the armed forces, penetrated by drug trafficking interests, was reduced into something that fits inside a hashtag. That so-called Cartel of the Suns, says Trump II, also has Maduro at its head. So different parallel stories have been merging into one: the illegitimate president of Venezuela, a socialist who stole the 2024 elections, runs both a gang that exports criminals to the U.S.—the Tren de Aragua—and a military mafia that ships drugs north—the Cartel of the Suns. That triangle of Maduro, the TdA, and the Cartel of the Suns isn’t just criminal, it’s terrorist, and therefore demands a military response in the name of national security.

This is no longer just propaganda. It is the sweeping justification for measures that range from migrant arrests and deportations to OFAC sanctions, DEA indictments, and now a naval deployment of half a dozen vessels, at least one nuclear-powered submarine, spy planes, and drones in the southern Caribbean. We only know this thanks to leaks to Reuters, not from official statements. But the impact has been considerable. More and more people and outlets, with wildly varying degrees of responsibility and knowledge, are speculating about what the U.S. could do against the chavista regime. And the more ships, submarines, planes, and soldiers get listed, the more scenarios get laid out, the more resonance the intimidation gestures have, as the Trump administration seems intent on instilling panic in the chavista alliance to the point of producing what hasn’t happened in a quarter century: the famous military split.

More relevant still is the wave of official statements that is turning the U.S. narrative against the Maduro regime into the beginnings of a real international siege. Ecuador, Paraguay and Argentina declared the Cartel de los Soles a terrorist organization. That was predictable; more significant is that the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean country with territorial waters, did the same after news broke about the U.S. taking out a drug boat allegedly coming from Venezuela (the news that brought us here!). And even more significant: governments with waters bordering Venezuela’s—like Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana (which has also been publicly threatened by the chavista regime, and defended by the U.S., over the Essequibo dispute)—have said they could allow U.S. operations against drug trafficking, specifically the Cartel of the Suns, to be launched from their territory if Washington requests it.

What the U.S. conveyed yesterday was the message that the military buildup in the Caribbean can suddenly and without warning execute a “lethal strike” that Maduro and his circle can’t anticipate or prevent.

All this marks a substantial shift from the days when Trump told Elon Musk that Caracas had become very safe because all the thugs were now in the U.S. Now, other states are joining the measures and a fleet is closing in on Venezuela. A fleet that, apparently, fired its first shot yesterday.

Good content to spark fear and excitement

Yesterday’s episode, staged out of all this buildup, began with Trump’s morning announcement that he would deliver an important defense message, which turned out to be about relocating the space defense program. But in his speech he vaguely said they had fired on a boat coming from Venezuela, and that more was coming. A crucial player in this story, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, followed with a tweet with two emojis open to interpretation (“smoke equals fire”), and another one saying that Southern Command had killed 11 terrorists from an organization in a lethal strike.

The premium cut was reserved for the president’s favorite channel, his Truth Social network, where he said the boat belonged to the Tren de Aragua and posted the video: the familiar attack-drone aesthetic, first showing the boat in detail from the left, then from above in a top shot, as a missile slams into it causing an explosion and fire but not sinking it. Just a few seconds, easy to forward, spectacular, and without details. A strike without questions or prior warning, nothing like the usual drug bust. Good TV made for social media.

As the video goes viral in the press, on social networks, and across WhatsApp, we can draw three readings.

First, the strike supposedly took place in international waters and was aimed at drug trafficking. Of course, many questions arise—whether they were indeed Tren de Aragua members, whether there were 11, whether they were carrying drugs, and whether any law allowed the action—but the strongest impression is the official silence. The Trump administration is controlling this story alone. As far as we know at the time of writing, no one at the big defense summit in China has criticized the U.S. for it, nor have Caribbean states. Only Petro tweeted that it was a murder.

Second, this is the first time rhetoric has been coupled with force, and Trump has joined this new phase of the narrative against the chavista regime. Until yesterday, the naval deployment supposedly ordered against Maduro was unofficial, known only through off-the-record statements to Reuters; Trump not only confirmed it, he personally addressed the U.S. and global public about it. And to the administrative measures and verbal threats something unprecedented was added: a missile strike.

Nobody knows how far the U.S. will go with precision strikes like this. But yesterday they did more than tweets and press leaks.

Third, the drone is the message. Ever since Chávez daydreamed on Aló Presidente about mounting machine guns on El Ávila to repel the Marines, chavista military doctrine has been based on the scenario of a U.S. invasion. That’s supposedly the logic of the alliances with the ELN and FARC dissidents: in exchange for taking part in illegal economies and enjoying sanctuary in Venezuelan territory, they’d help chavismo repel a U.S. incursion. But guerrillas, Russian hardware, or Xi Jinping’s and Gustavo Petro’s eventual sovereignty statements can’t protect them from missiles fired by drones—and even less so the “deep concern” of UN authorities. What the U.S. conveyed yesterday was the message that the military buildup in the Caribbean can suddenly and without warning execute a “lethal strike” that Maduro and his circle can’t anticipate or prevent.

The story, the TV, and the omens

That very short video may well be a new historical piece in the audiovisual careers of two now-enemy reactionary revolutions: the chavista and the trumpist. Both populist, authoritarian, anti-democratic movements owe their rise to television. Hugo Chávez failed in his coup attempt but triumphed with his live surrender in February 1992, launching a political project that would wield television as its main weapon; Donald Trump became famous through tabloid press and cable TV before turning that media capital into a springboard to the White House. What we’re seeing today is a war between two TV channels, chavismo and trumpism. The difference is that in the new clip of this ratings battle, there’s an explosion and some dead.

For now, chavismo is losing: neither China nor Russia used the occasion of their spectacular parade to say anything in its favor, and the only response so far from Caracas, via an insignificant minister, is that the bomb-strike video is fake, AI-generated.

We, on the other hand, are starting to think the naval deployment goes beyond bluffing, and that what happened yesterday is a precedent for more serious actions.

That’s what the ghosts of history whisper: how the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor justified the war against Cuba in 1898; how the accusation that Manuel Noriega was working for Colombian cartels justified Operation Just Cause, which ousted him in 1989; how the theory of “weapons of mass destruction” justified, together with countries like Britain and Spain, the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And that’s what present-day factors suggest. The international case against Maduro as head of the murky TdA–Cartel of the Suns narcoterrorist network is rallying more pro-Trump governments in the region. Marco Rubio needs to show successes against chavismo and the allied regime that exiled his family, Cuba’s, to rack up points for his ambitious political career. If Ukraine can hurt Russia with attack drones, the U.S. can do much more with them if it chooses to act against chavismo; it doesn’t need the 30,000 troops it used in Panama.

The invasion chavismo has been preparing for during 25 years doesn’t have to happen. It would clash with Trump’s positions and be a bad idea all around. But yesterday’s drone strike does bring near-term, feasible scenarios to life. Alongside sanctions and rewards, and without contradicting the Chevron license or the exchange of prisoners and migrants, the Trump administration can go far beyond setting that boat ablaze. That’s what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Fox News the following morning. Nobody knows how far the U.S. will go with precision strikes like this. But yesterday they did more than tweets and press leaks. And in a dictatorship used to killing unarmed protesters, there must be people worried and asking themselves questions, replaying again and again on their phones how that fishing boat with four engines cutting through the Caribbean night suddenly turned into a green fireball.