Maduro’s capture is a warning to Latin American leaders propped up by drug trade | Opinion

When President Trump put pressure on Venezuela’s now-captive regime leader Nicolás Maduro — and Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that Maduro had no legitimate claim to the presidency — Trump branded Maduro what he is: a narcotics trafficker and terrorist.

Maduro was long overdue for a reckoning for his myriad abuses. He traded in misery and death, and the bill is now being paid. So why lead with the charge that Maduro was in bed with drug and human traffickers?

Confronting narco-terrorist regimes matters beyond justice because those regimes do not merely brutalize their own people; they suppress the economic and social potential of our entire hemisphere.

Many Miami-Dade residents of Hispanic heritage know this firsthand. Their story illustrates trafficking’s corrupting influence of dirty money, which fuels leftist regimes. A court will now test what many already know: that Maduro trafficked in leftism’s misery as well as in the hell of drugs.

History shows that Latin American regimes that decry “capitalism” and “colonizers” en El Norte often rely on the lucrative trafficking sector. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa expelled U.S. anti-cocaine operations at Manta air force base in 2009. In Honduras, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa accepted bribes from the Los Cachiros trafficking network. In Colombia, Gustavo Petro has weakened key elements of anti-drug enforcement.

Mexico under Claudia Sheinbaum provides the most disastrous example. As disillusioned Gen-Z activists besiege the presidential palace, she glibly argues that confronting narco-terrorists is unlawful. Never mind the assassinations of six municipal officials across four Mexican states during her presidency.

The Americas suffer because criminal networks have been permitted to operate freely. They bankroll puppet governments and usher in managed decline and humanitarian crises. To understand the dysfunction, corruption, and poverty that fuel mass migration, look first to the drug and human traffickers.

In narco-regimes, the people are a burden, an afterthought, an inconvenience, even though they are promised dignity and prosperity at the ballot box. If they dare demand change, their wealthy, corrupt leaders tell them to leave. If they are unlucky, they are de-platformed, dehumanized, imprisoned, tortured or disappeared.

Meanwhile, trafficking of drugs and people flourishes. At the helm are tyrants who saber-rattle against the U.S. and investors who question their uneven application of law or arbitrary expulsions. Seeing this, adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran make inroads under the veil of investment or philanthropy. Hezbollah and other hostile networks operating with the tolerance of corrupt regimes, alongside the unchecked influx of fentanyl, directly threaten U.S. national security.

Yet there is hope. With Venezuela’s kingpin in custody and a regime change underway, its chief ally communist Cuba is more isolated than ever. The Cuban dictatorship that outlaws political parties, jails dissidents and stages sham elections is teetering on a long-deserved collapse. Other recent elections prove how quickly things can change: Argentina elected Javier Milei and halted its inflationary decline, while El Salvador elected Nayib Bukele and dismantled its gang-driven security crisis.

America now has allies and renewed hope for regional cooperation. At stake is the potential for the Western Hemisphere, led by the U.S., to collaborate under a posture that benefits all. This hemisphere holds the world’s deepest capital markets, vast oil and gas reserves, dominant agricultural production and critical minerals like copper and lithium that will shape the next century. With its resources, connectivity and human capital, the Americas could be self-sustaining and outwardly influential, if we choose to see it.

Hope, however, needs a push. Trump and Rubio — a son of Miami-Dade who was shaped by families scarred by communist tyranny, and who understands hemispheric politics — started it. Now other Latin American countries must join in cooperation. Working together, we begin to unlock the untapped potential in this hemisphere and its people. The rewards are immense: a Western Hemisphere that is secure, prosperous and strategically dominant in the world.

Roberto J. Gonzalez is the Miami-Dade County commissioner for District 11.