The Canadian Network on Cuba strongly condemns the recent U.S. military strike in the Caribbean that killed 11 people aboard an alleged “drug boat.” This act is not only a criminal assault on the sovereignty of Venezuela but also an attack on the entire Latin American and Caribbean region. It represents yet another chapter in Washington’s imperialist strategy of domination, cloaked in lies and false pretexts, to destabilize governments that refuse to bend to U.S. hegemony.
The truth is clear. As Pino Arlacchi, former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has documented, Venezuela has one of the strongest records in South America in the fight against drug trafficking—comparable only to Cuba’s. During his tenure at UNODC, there was “simply no need” to visit Venezuela because the country was not a hub for drug trafficking. The 2025 UNODC World Drug Report confirms this reality: Venezuela is not a major transit or production centre, and only a minimal fraction of Colombian cocaine passes through its territory. By contrast, countries like Colombia, Guatemala, and Ecuador are the true epicenters of regional drug trafficking networks—yet Washington remains silent because these governments either serve U.S. interests or sit atop negligible oil reserves.
The Cuban government has rightly denounced the militarization of the Caribbean by the United States as a grave threat to the sovereignty and peace of the region. The deployment of warships, nuclear submarines, and massive firepower under the false guise of combating narcotics and irregular migration is an outrageous show of force. It flagrantly violates the CELAC declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. Washington’s claims linking Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro to international drug cartels are baseless fabrications, comparable to the infamous lie about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the catastrophic invasion of Iraq. The so-called “Cartel de los Soles” is nothing more than Hollywood-style fiction—an invented narrative that has never been substantiated by UNODC, the DEA, or European law enforcement agencies.
The reality that U.S. leaders refuse to acknowledge is that the United States itself is the largest market for narcotics in the world, hosting the vast criminal networks that traffic, distribute, and launder drug money with near impunity. The drug crisis is a U.S. problem, not a Venezuelan one. Nearly 100,000 Americans die each year from opioid overdoses—a tragedy tied not to Venezuela but to the greed of U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
This strike, carried out in defiance of international law, is nothing less than state terrorism and a violation of the right to self-determination of the peoples of the Americas. It is a continuation of the Monroe Doctrine—a policy of domination and plunder that has caused untold suffering in the region for two centuries.
We call on the international community, governments, and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to reject this reckless aggression, to reaffirm the region as a Zone of Peace, and to denounce the lies that Washington manufactures to justify its crimes.
Peace, sovereignty, and justice—not imperialist militarism—are the only path forward for our peoples.
Isaac Saney, Executive Committee
Canadian Network on Cuba
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