Going Local: Venezuela’s Leader Targets Towns to Survive Dissent, Sanctions

Over the past six months, President Nicolás Maduro has been removing mayors in the northwestern state of Zulia.  

The first to be arrested was Maracaibo Mayor Rafael Ramírez Colina in October. Six more followed soon after. The most recent was Indira Fernández, mayor of Guajira, who was detained by intelligence officials in early April.  

All-in-all, more than a third of the 21 mayors in the state – of all political stripes – have been removed and detained since the fall, ostensibly because of their links to a drug-trafficking network allegedly plotting with opposition leader María Corina Machado to topple the president, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said in early April.  

“This entire operation is being directed by (former Colombian Presidents) Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque, who want to use our territory to attack Venezuela,” he said, according to the Orinoco Tribune, which is close to the government. “They use that money to conspire, and promote terrorism and drug trafficking.” 

He explained that there is a “conspiracy and corruption scheme” that was detected last year after an investigation was launched into the Maracaibo mayor’s office. 

Analysts say it’s a ruse to take total control of the country’s most populous state, and crack down on the opposition ahead of May 25 parliamentary and regional elections – and also prevent Zulia’s top official, Manuel Rosales, from being reelected governor. 

“The arrests of … mayors in Venezuela show how President Nicolás Maduro’s government has weaponized the supposed fight against organized crime to achieve its political ends,” wrote Insight Crime. “There is little chance that those arrested will be able to campaign for reelection.” 

Since his inauguration in January for a third term, Maduro has been moving fast to counter the opposition as well as new sanctions by the United States.  

As a result, the government wants total control over Zulia state, one of four led by an opposition governor, and one that borders the trafficking hub, Catatumbo, in Colombia. That makes it key to Venezuelan cocaine trafficking operations, which the government wants to control because of its revenue generation that allows Maduro to keep the security services, powerbrokers, and criminal gangs happy, who, in turn, keep Maduro in power.  

The regime has long been positioning itself as the “gatekeepers” of the cocaine trade. 

For example, Cabello, who was appointed “supreme chief” of Zulia recently, has been accused of being a key player – along with military and other officials – in Venezuelan drug-trafficking operations. He has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries. 

Colombian guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), an ally of the Maduro administration, is also involved, and has a strong presence in Zulia. 

The trafficking corridor via Zulia is controlled by the Cartel of the Suns (Venezuela), the Sinaloa Cartel (Mexico), and the Gulf Clan (Colombia), operating through various municipalities in Zulia, according to the report Drug Trafficking in Venezuela 2024: A Business that Enriches Power and Expands, by Transparency International’s Venezuela chapter. 

However, Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns is less a cartel and more a “fluid and loose-knit network of trafficking cells embedded within the Venezuelan security forces, facilitated, protected, and sometimes directed by political actors,” Insight Crime added. 

“All this structure is well known to municipal, regional, and national authorities,” a security official told independent outlet, the Caracas Chronicles. “That’s why Minister Cabello’s actions are less about solving the problem and more about signaling a shift in who wields power in Zulia.” 

Also, Maduro needs more control over the trafficking routes because the US sanctions on the country are biting. Maduro recently declared “an economy emergency,” which allows him to enact emergency measures to “defend the national economy,” including suspending tax collections and establishing “mechanisms” for the mandatory purchasing of national production facilities to promote import substitution.  

“The country’s economy is unraveling yet again as key oil revenue dries up due to renewed economic sanctions punishing Maduro for electoral fraud, and as his government finds itself with little wiggle room to respond despite some post-pandemic stability,” the Associated Press wrote. 

One contributing factor is the US’s revoking of a permit by energy giant Chevron and other multinationals to pump and export Venezuelan oil after July’s election, which was widely viewed as fraudulent after the opposition produced proof that its candidate won the most votes.  

As a result, Venezuelan oil tankers this month began returning home, with their cargo still on board. The US has also threatened to sanction countries that purchase Venezuelan crude, including allies like Spain, Agence France-Presse wrote. 

That is putting Maduro in a difficult situation, analysts say, especially as its allies, Russia, China, and Iran, are supporting the country far less than a decade ago, World Politics Review noted. 

The protégé of former socialist strongman Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, Maduro has long cracked down on opposition figures, dissidents, and journalists, increasing repression when the economy was struggling. The economy shrank about 80 percent between 2014 and 2020. Recovering slightly after the pandemic, in the period when he promised to work with the opposition, it’s headed downward again.  

Now he’s pushing harder. Along with the crackdown on Zulia, he’s planning to reform the country’s constitution to tighten control over the country, MercoPress reported.  

Maduro plans to add a new level of government he called “communal” in addition to federal, state, and municipal governments that exist today, which he says he also wants to “transform.”  

Maduro also wants to provide constitutional cover for harsher penalties against individuals who he says threaten the government’s authority.  

“Venezuela will not tolerate in any way any fascist threat,” Maduro said, adding that traitors should be punished “in a more draconian” manner. 

The draft of a new charter is slated to be completed this spring, and then will be put to a referendum.  

Venezuelan political scientist, Walter Molina, who is based in Argentina, says the reform is Maduro reacting to the July elections, and worrying about upcoming ones: “In order to try to maintain power by force and terror, they need to establish a new system that they will call ‘communal,’ but which, at its core, will seek to be what they have always wanted to achieve: totalitarianism,” he wrote on X.  

“They are despised by almost all of society and are left with only bullets and a tiny elite made up of generals who have made Venezuela their personal estate and have become collaborators of barbarism who … crawl for crumbs.”