The Justice Department’s criminal complaint against Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro further proves what we already knew: Maduro is a brutal leader who has abused his power and his people for his own gain.
Maduro leads his own drug ring, dubbed the Cartel of the Sun, in coordination with the Colombia-based Marxist terrorist group known as FARC, according to investigators. Together, Maduro and FARC reportedly imported hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, as well as illegal weapons, according to the charges.
“We estimate that somewhere between 200 and 250 metric tons of cocaine are shipped out of Venezuela by these routes,” the DOJ said in a statement. “Those 250 metric tons equates to 30 million lethal doses.”
Maduro’s crimes have been well known for years. He rose to power in 2013, and his tenure has been marked by rampant poverty, starvation, and human rights abuses that forced more than 4 million Venezuelans to flee the country.
These abuses were possible, in part, because Venezuela had already begun to consolidate its power under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Venezuela’s experiment with socialism under Chavez resulted in nationalized industries and expansive regulation. Maduro has taken Chavez’s worst authoritarian excesses even further, abolishing Venezuela’s legislature, jailing his political enemies, and violently suppressing political dissent, while lacking the resources to keep up the social programs that had made Chavez popular with Venezuela’s poor. As a result, Maduro reigns supreme and the poor now starve.
Yet it was this socialist model that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once praised: “These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela, and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today,” read an editorial by the Valley News, which Sanders’s official Senate website listed as a “must read” just last year.
Sanders has since distanced himself from that editorial, and he has been openly critical of the Maduro regime’s repression and brutality. But he still “agrees with many of the important points raised in that article with regard to wealth and income inequality,” said Sarah Ford, the deputy communications director for Sanders’s 2020 campaign.
Sanders rightly rejects the brutal authoritarian, but he still praises the system of government that made Maduro’s authoritarianism possible. This is a serious disconnect that continues to plague Sanders’s campaign. He refuses to disavow his past comments praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for implementing social programs, and has insisted that even dictators deserve credit where it’s due.
Sanders is certainly no Maduro. But it is true that Sanders would implement many of the same policies present in Venezuela’s socialist structure — policies that enabled Maduro’s power grab, and policies that have no place in a country that values its freedom.
