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A new dossier from Cuba Siglo 21 analyzes how Cuban advice was key in the creation and consolidation of the Cartel de los Soles in Venezuela, documents Havana’s participation as a political, military, and intelligence guarantor of the Venezuelan narco-state, and refers to its role in initially facilitating Caracas’ alliance with international actors such as Russia, Iran, China, as well as with various narco-terrorist organizations.

Madrid / Miami – September 15th, 2025. The think tank Cuba Siglo 21 announces the publication of a new dossier entitled The Cuban Mafia State and the Cartel de los Soles, prepared by analysts Juan Antonio Blanco and Emilio Morales. This report reveals Cuba’s central role as architect and guarantor of the Venezuelan narco-state and holds Havana jointly responsible for the emergence of the so-called Cartel de los Soles.

The dossier argues that Cuba is not a traditional dictatorship, but a totalitarian mafia state. Through GAESA, a conglomerate controlled by the military leadership and the Castro family, political, economic, and military power merge into a structure designed to enrich an elite and protect it from any audit. GAESA mixes legal and illegal operations and is beyond the reach of any national audit in Cuba.

Cuba’s strategic contribution to regional organized crime has been decisive. For more than two decades, Havana has been providing advice on intelligence, social control methodologies, and repression techniques that first allowed the birth and consolidation of the Venezuelan mafia state and then, through it, the Cartel de los Soles.

The study details three key areas in which Cuba has specialized within the criminal ecosystem:

  • Sanctuary and advisory services: training in intelligence and counterintelligence, providing refuge for narco-terrorists, and strategies for quelling protests.
  • Human trafficking and slave labor: exporting and exploiting doctors as a form of modern trafficking, with multimillion-dollar profits.
  • Money laundering: through the GAESA/CIMEX-Panama network, the hotel industry, and international financial triangulations.

The authors warn that, without Cuba’s participation, the Caracas regime and its Cartel of the Suns would not have been able to survive international sanctions, overcome internal political crises, and expand its ties with actors such as Russia, Iran, China, as well as the FARC, the ELN, and Mexican drug cartels.

The dossier concludes that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua should be recognized as mafia, criminal states, lacking the legitimacy and rights that correspond to sovereign states. It recommends that the international community confront them as transnational organized crime structures, investigate GAESA’s assets under the RICO Act in the US, and consider their criminal activities as aggressions that legitimize immediate self-defense responses, as recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

“We are facing an unprecedented phenomenon in the hemisphere: states that operate as criminal cartels and use sovereignty as a shield to commit crimes. Recognizing this reality is an essential step in confronting the threat they pose to democracy and regional security,” Blanco and Morales point out.

The dossier The Cuban Mafia State and the Cartel of the Suns is now available through Cuba Siglo 21.