Socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro designated strongman and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello his minister of the interior on Tuesday to “bring peace” to the country.
Maduro also appointed Cabello his “vice president for citizen security, political, and peace.”
The designation puts Cabello in charge of the socialist regime’s repressive security and intelligence agencies, courts, and prisons used to silence anti-socialist dissent. Venezuela is experiencing a new wave of protests and other forms of resistance against the regime in response to Maduro hosting a sham election on July 28 that he claims to have “won.”
Cabello is widely considered one of the most powerful members of Venezuela’s socialist regime and stands accused by U.S. authorities of leading the Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles), an intercontinental cocaine trafficking operation. Drug trafficking experts believe the Cartel of the Suns is led by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military and leading figures of the Maduro regime and seeks to “flood” the United States with cocaine to harm its people.
The administration of former President Donald Trump sanctioned Cabello in 2018 for corruption, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and other illegal activities. The Southern District of New York federal court indicted Cabello in March 2020 on charges of conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, and associated firearms charges. Since then, U.S. authorities have enacted a still-active $10 million bounty for information that can lead to Cabello’s arrest and/or conviction.
“Diosdado brings luck. He knows a lot about peace. He knows a lot about justice,” Maduro said, praising the socialist strongman’s “ability to consolidate peace” in the face of “so much conspiracy.”
Cabello, who is presently the vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — in addition to being an aspiring YouTuber — assured Maduro that he will work so that Venezuela “takes the path of peace with justice” and that “those who have acted against the law” are prosecuted.
“Thank you for your trust, president, when the clarion call of the homeland is heard, we are there, ready, together with the people, always following the path of Commander Hugo Chávez,” Cabello said.
Cabello, who has occupied several high-ranking positions in Venezuela’s socialist regime throughout the past 25 years, recalled that he had already briefly served as interior minister 22 years ago during the rule of late dictator Hugo Chávez, who appointed him at the end of April 2002, days after opposition protests resulted in Chávez’s brief ouster in prior weeks.
Cabello highlighted that the socialist regime “defeated the violence of the right-wing” at that time, and that is why, “today, Venezuela is heading toward a definitive peace, a peace with justice, one where the people feel that those who have acted against the constitution and the law will receive justice in a timely, opportune, and fair manner.”
“So, at your command, president, here is a soldier of February 4, a soldier of the revolution, a soldier of yours,” Cabello said, referencing his participation in Chávez’s failed February 1992 coup attempt against the government of former President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
ÚLTIMA HORA | Nicolás Maduro designa a Diosdado Cabello Rondón como nuevo ministro de Interior y Justicia, y vicepresidente de gobierno para la seguridad ciudadana. https://t.co/ubs4k1bxiv pic.twitter.com/QBqb9g457C
— AlbertoRodNews (@AlbertoRodNews) August 27, 2024
Cabello’s designation as interior minister is part of a broader “profound renewal” of roughly a dozen high-ranking positions of Maduro’s socialist regime that he claims seeks to “accommodate the strength of the popular, revolutionary, and socialist government of Venezuela.”
The designation also occurred one month after the July 28 sham presidential election, which Maduro and his regime’s institutions insist he “won” despite growing international condemnation and evidence that the Venezuelan opposition presented that indicates Maduro was defeated in a landslide by opposition candidate Edmundo González.
The Maduro regime’s ongoing attempts to keep the dictator in power for an additional six years through fraudulent results, which the Venezuelan top court — loyal to Maduro — upheld, sparked nationwide protests that Maduro immediately responded to with a brutal crackdown and persecution campaign.
One of the main elements of Maduro’s latest crackdown wave is the relaunch of Operation Tun Tun (“Knock Knock”), a dissident-hunting campaign Cabello first launched in 2017 that targets individuals who protest or publish social media content against the socialist regime.
The targets are hunted down in their homes and forcefully apprehended. In some cases, the individuals are forced to record public “apologies” to Maduro and his regime, which regime-affiliated accounts on social media platforms then publish.
Human rights activists and non-government organizations have confirmed that the crackdown has, so far, left at least 25 dead and resulted in the arbitrary detention of more than 2,400 individuals, including more than 120 children. Maduro regime officials deny any responsibility for the deaths because regime security forces have not documented “a single complaint” against themselves.
Maduro announced at the start of the crackdown that the detained dissidents would be sent to “re-education centers” in Venezuela’s Tocorón and Tocuyito — two maximum security prisons that the Maduro regime emptied of its inmates in late 2023.
Tocorón is infamously known for having served as the main headquarters of the Tren de Aragua transnational crime syndicate before Venezuelan security forces “raided” it in September 2023. It is largely believed that the Maduro regime negotiated with the gang’s leader, Héctor Guerrero, allowing him and some of the gang’s top brass to escape safely before the “raid.”
Local media reported in August that construction works for the re-education camp in the Tocuyito prison were temporarily stopped on Monday due to the arrival of more than 120 detainees on Sunday. By Wednesday, the number of arrived detainees had reportedly increased to more than 230. The Maduro regime, which maintains Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage at roughly $4, is reportedly paying $30-$45 per day to individuals working on the construction of the re-education centers.
On Wednesday, the non-government human rights organization Provea denounced that family members of the detainees sent to Tocuyito are being prohibited from delivering food and supplies to their relatives upon their arrival at the “El Libertador Training Center for the New Man” in Tocuyito Prison. The relatives were reportedly told that the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), which Cabello now controls, would be in charge of the custody of the inmates.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
