How a DEA Sting Sparked a Colombian Insurgency

When the Trump administration launched its bombing operation in January to abduct former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, it accused him in an indictment of dealing drugs with the intent to enrich seven U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, including Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, the Colombian left-wing National Liberation Army, and a little-known insurgent group called the Segunda Marquetalia.

But the Segunda Marquetalia, a band of Colombian militants based along the Venezuelan border, has a unique backstory: It was brought into being by the U.S. government.

Founded in 2019 by former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Segunda Marquetalia was spawned by an obscure U.S. government Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting that derailed the Colombian peace process, pushing a top FARC negotiator back into the jungle and the drug trade, and ultimately into the arms of the Venezuelan government.

In a sleight of hand familiar from decades of disastrous U.S. policy in Latin America, the actions of the Segunda Marquetalia were used in part to justify January’s Delta Force raid in Caracas, which killed at least 47 Venezuelans and 32 Cuban members of the president’s security detail, and culminated in the arrests of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The former Venezuelan president is being held in a Brooklyn prison, awaiting trial in a Manhattan federal court.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/dea-colombia-segunda-marquetalia-venezuela-maduro-santrich-petro