AS IF President Trump intended to meet professional US mercenary Erik Prince half way, US Attorney General Pam Bondi increased the existing US bounty on President Nicolas Maduro — originally set at $15 million — from $25m to $50m for anyone providing “information leading to his arrest or conviction.”

In late 2024, Prince, a professional mercenary, alongside Venezuela’s far right, promoted a plan to deploy a private army to Venezuela. He suggested that if the US raised the bounty on Maduro’s head to $100 million, targeting not only the president but also Diosdado Cabello and the entire government, they could “just sit back and wait for the magic to happen.” Prince and Venezuela’s far right even launched a crowdfunding campaign, Ya Casi Venezuela (“Almost There, Venezuela”), to collect the $100 million.

In November 2024, Prince declared that after January 10 2025 (Maduro’s inauguration day), key figures — including Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, National Assembly president Jorge Rodriguez, Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez, Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Attorney-General Tarek William Saab, President Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores and Maduro himself—would become “criminal objectives” with no diplomatic protection. On January 12 2025, Prince sent a message of support to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, urging her to “stay resolute.”

Prince had pushed for the bounty to be raised to $100m, but when the Biden administration ignored him, he secured backing from Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, who share his objectives. On September 20 2024, Scott and Rubio introduced the Securing Timely Opportunities for Payment and Maximising Awards for Detaining Unlawful Regime Officials Act of 2024 (the STOP Maduro Act), allocating $100m — taken from seized Venezuelan assets — to fund Prince’s efforts to depose Maduro.

The US charges against President Maduro are not only preposterous but entirely false and slanderous. He is accused of being one of the world’s largest drug traffickers, a threat to US national security, and the leader of the Cartel de los Soles, allegedly responsible for shipping hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US while collaborating with “narco-terrorists,” the Tren de Aragua gang, and Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yvan Gil dismissed Bondi’s “pathetic” bounty as “the most ridiculous smokescreen we have ever seen.”

Despite persistent propaganda about the Cartel de los Soles, drug trafficking, and “narco-terrorism” — used to justify labelling Venezuela a “narco-state” — the US has never provided credible evidence to support these claims.

The DEA itself reports that over 80 per cent of cocaine entering the US comes via the Pacific, with only 7 per cent passing through the eastern Caribbean (see DEA maps; notably, Venezuela has no Pacific coastline).

This confirms Colombia as the region’s true narco-state, while Venezuela is, at worst, a transit route. The US also falsely accuses Venezuela of money laundering, despite the country being almost entirely cut off from the international financial system. And Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has just declared that Mexico has no evidence linking Venezuela’s Maduro to the Sinaloa cartel.

Bondi’s bounty against Venezuela’s democratically elected president is part of a broader US strategy targeting Latin America, ostensibly centred on combating drug cartels but threatening far more drastic measures. The New York Times revealed that Trump “secretly signed a directive ordering the Pentagon to use military force against certain Latin American drug cartels designated as terrorist organisations by his administration.” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded unequivocally: “The US will not send its military into Mexico. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.”

This outrageous US aggression against a Latin American head of state must be condemned unreservedly. The “pathetic” $50m bounty consciously incentivises unsavoury actors to launch militaristic, murderous ventures—such as the 2020 mercenary incursion into Venezuela contracted by Guaido. It marks an escalation in US efforts to overthrow a democratically elected leader, weaponising bounties to force regime change.

Trump’s secret directive authorising military force against cartels — effectively threatening unilateral intervention in Latin America — must also be unequivocally rejected. While ostensibly targeting Mexico, the policy could easily be weaponised against governments the US seeks to topple, such as Venezuela, Cuba, or Nicaragua (or any other nation, for that matter).

The Trump administration is clearly intent on intimidating — and, given the opportunity, militarily intervening against — Latin American governments it opposes, using the “war on drugs” as a pretext. Worse, Bondi could issue similar bounties against other regional leaders. The US mercenary industry is well-developed, and such bounties would inevitably attract takers, further destabilising the region.

When we consider the US’s highly aggressive tariffs against Brazil alongside its hundreds of sanctions targeting Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, it becomes clear that Washington is testing a new cocktail of threats designed to force nations south of the Rio Bravo into submission to US geopolitical demands. This is classic US behaviour—with one key difference under Trump: the abandonment of any pretence behind hollow justifications like “democracy” or “human rights,” though such rhetoric still features in official statements.

The true objective is to stifle multipolarity and prevent Latin America from participating in it, all while reinforcing US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere under the guise of Make America Great Again. In reality, this is simply the Monroe Doctrine repackaged — an attempt to sever Latin America’s trade and exchanges with China, or more precisely, to expel Chinese influence from the region entirely. The abject capitulation of Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino, who withdrew from the Belt and Road Initiative under Trump’s threats of a US military takeover of the Canal — despite the economic costs to his nation — stands as stark confirmation of this strategy.

Trump’s objectives stand in direct opposition to what progressive movements and governments across Latin America have sought to build: a fairer world without social exclusion, with reduced inequality and poverty, where policies prioritise people over private interests, and where universal rights to education, healthcare, and housing are upheld — all within a framework of strong national sovereignty that has enabled the region to resist US imperialist bullying.

This vision entails:

• An end to US lawfare against President Maduro and all aggression toward Venezuela or any regional government;
• No arbitrary US tariffs against Brazil or any other Latin American nation;
• The cessation of US military threats — let alone interventions — in Mexico, Venezuela, or elsewhere in the region;
• A Latin America free from US meddling in its internal affairs.

The struggle, then, is not merely about resisting individual policies but defending the very principle of self-determination against a US administration intent on rolling back decades of regional progress.