Hugo "El Pollo" Carvajal, former director of Intelligence for the Venezuelan regime and one of the most powerful figures in Chavismo during the administrations of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, sent a letter to President Donald Trump in which he reveals previously undisclosed details about the criminal operations of the Chavista regime. From a U.S. prison, where he is serving a sentence after pleading guilty, Carvajal states that he decided to cooperate to reveal "the complete truth" about how Venezuela became a platform for narco-terrorism, espionage, clandestine operations, and electoral manipulation on an international scale.
In the document, dated December 2, 2025, the former general claims that he directly witnessed the transformation of the Chavista apparatus into a transnational criminal system. According to his account, the Cartel of the Suns, the drug trafficking structure operated from the Venezuelan state, was conceived to flood the United States with cocaine as part of a plan designed with Cuban advice. He keeps that the drug shipments and associated corruption were never isolated incidents, but rather an organized policy from the highest levels of the regime.
Carvajal also describes how the Tren de Aragua was born and expanded, the criminal organization that now operates throughout the Americas. He explains that Chávez first and Maduro later used criminal gangs as political tools: they recruited criminal leaders, guaranteed them impunity, and then exported violence to other countries to destabilize societies and attack opponents. According to Carvajal, the immigration policy of Joe Biden's administration facilitated the infiltration of Tren de Aragua members into U.S. territory, where cells would operate dedicated to kidnapping, extortion, and murder.
