Gordon Carrera

This is, I think, the central claim.

And it's quite important, isn't it, in the build-up to what happened.

And it's interesting, the Cartel of the Suns, it's actually a reference to the Sun insignia, which is affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officers.

So the idea is that this is a cartel which operates within the state, within high-ranking military officers.

Right.

you could say that it was very convenient, I think.

If you want to kind of claim that there's a narco-terrorist head of state, then claiming there is a narco group which is aligned perfectly with the state is one way of doing that.

And I mean, the reality is when you kind of look at this Cartel of the Sons, it's not a cartel in the way that some of the other cartels are.

It's not really a terrorist organisation in the way it's been defined, even though the US has designated it as a terrorist organisation.

It is a group, but it's a group of corrupt officials linked to the drug trade.

It's a corrupt group rather than a traditional criminal cartel

Or a terrorist group.

And so I think, you know, already there, you've got a sense in which, you know, the reality has been stretched and the labels have been used of narco terrorist groups to fit the desire to kind of carry out a certain activity and have a legal justification for it.

Yeah.

And again, here, you know, the facts are a little bit more complex.

I mean, the fentanyl flow has been the thing that's really concerned a lot of people in the US, in which Donald Trump has made a kind of a big theme.

But the reality is that doesn't come through Venezuela.

I mean, the chemicals are coming from China and then finished in Mexico before being smuggled into the US.

And so Venezuela is not really in that field at all.

When it comes to cocaine, again, it's not a producer of cocaine.