Victor M. Quintana S.
AND
he triple cycle of oil, weapons and currencies is present in Trump’s illegal and violent incursion into Venezuela. Democracy is no longer the interventionist alibi – the word does not appear even once in Trump’s speech on January 3 – and Washington’s ambition to seize Venezuelan oil resources is clearly shown.
Not only that: in a lucid article in these same pages (“The petrodollar in the 21st century”, The Day, 01/06/26), Alonso Romero reveals another important motivation behind the US offensive: preventing the Chinese yuan from being placed as an ordinary currency in the oil market, which would further weaken the dollar.
There is a fourth factor that must be considered among the axes of global geopolitical reconfiguration: drug trafficking. At least in the Western Hemisphere it is playing hard, as a pretext or as a underlying cause, for this realignment.
Drug trafficking cannot be considered an excrescence, a perverse effect of current capitalism. Just as the privateers of the 16th to 18th centuries cannot be considered an external factor to the formation of capitalism. The Englishman Francis Drake, the Dutchman Peter van der Does and others developed their piracy thanks to the letters of marque issued by their respective empires. The looting they carried out was very important for the accumulation of capital in their homeland. And piracy is still there, says Boaventura de Sousa Santos: “Another sign of recolonization is the anachronistic return of piracy. In times of peace or undeclared war, interfering with navigation in national or international waters is an act of piracy.” The US Navy has just demonstrated it in Caribbean waters.
Something similar happens today with drug trafficking. It is not a “disease of current capitalism”, but rather a kind of frowned upon relative, but very useful for the current project of accumulation, domination and colonialism, fulfilling several functions:
Drug trafficking is a great alibi for United States military intervention in Latin America. This is revealed by Trump’s repetitive speech. The one used in practice against Venezuela and as a threat to intervene in Colombia or Mexico.
It is also a pretext to legitimize not only armed intervention in other countries, but to justify the subordination of their security policies to that of the United States.
It is also no coincidence that drug trafficking is established in areas of Mexico and Latin America to control the territories where transnational companies impose mining, forestry or water exploitation projects. The action of narco It seeks to intimidate any protest or movement of local communities, control the territory and, in addition, charges a floor fee that is included in the costs of extractive companies.
Drug trafficking weakens the states of the global South, especially in Latin America, for two main reasons: because it appropriates territorial control of entire areas of countries, challenging governments. And because governments have to allocate enormous sums to combat drug trafficking in armed forces, equipment, logistics, etc., which would otherwise be used in social investment: education, health, housing. They have to dedicate a good part of what they could invest in combating the causes to combating the effects.
Drug trafficking also functions as a channel for enormous financial resources that escape all fiscal and customs control and all accountability. It is not only the Latin American cartels so demonized by Trump that are the only protagonists and beneficiaries of this enormous flow of resources, but also the hidden network of drug lords, politicians and “white collar” US officials who reap the billions of dollars that circulate through the narcotics supply networks to the country with the most addicts on the planet.
And, penultimately, because this list of functions of drug trafficking does not pretend to be exhaustive: the structure of drug trafficking provides a “good” (narcotics) that comes to satisfy the long-cultivated drive, long fostered by capitalism at a cultural level, to escape an aggressive and adverse reality, to endure the exhausting and monotonous work days, to join the culture of consumerism-hedonism-individualism also fostered by current capitalism. In the National Security Strategy published by the White House at the end of last year, it insists on addressing cultural aspects to ensure US hegemony.
An alibi for some purposes, a useful means for others, real or exaggerated drug trafficking is suspiciously functional for the purposes of the construction of US colonialism and domination according to Donald Trump. If it didn’t exist, I would invent it.
