Nicolás Maduro, ‘El Chapo’, García Luna and a Light Aircraft Loaded with Cocaine

In April 2006, the unexpected landing in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, of a plane loaded with cocaine brought together three very different people: then-Venezuelan legislator and future president Nicolás Maduro, former head of the Federal Preventive Police and future Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna, and drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. One plane, three names, and a criminal route. MILENIO tells you how it happened.

The story, recounted in the Mexican file PGR/SIEDO/UEIDCS/071/2006 and in the indictment 1:25-cv-20040 against Nicolás Maduro in the Southern District of New York, begins on April 9, 20 years ago: a twin-engine DC-9 aircraft takes off from Maiquetía Simón Bolívar International Airport, the airport serving Caracas, Venezuela.

Instead of passengers, the Venezuelan co-pilot, Miguel Vicente Vázquez Guerra, notices that the plane is carrying stacks of blue and black suitcases.

It seems like a cargo flight like many others, so he doesn’t ask the pilot about the contents. Hours later, after being arrested, he regrets not having questioned the purpose of the trip: the suitcases contain a total of 5.5 tons of cocaine that were to be delivered to the Sinaloa Cartel.

The Federal Police’s Failed Plan

While the plane is in the air, at least four Federal Preventive Police (PFP) agents, promoted during the time Genaro García Luna served as general coordinator, put into motion the plan for landing in Mexico: they need an airport where they have bribed customs inspectors so that they won’t inspect the contents of the plane arriving from Venezuela.

The original plan is to use Toluca International Airport, but the financial offer to the inspectors was rejected at the last minute, so they implement a contingency plan: the plane will make a stop at another Mexican airport so that the flight is registered as domestic and the Customs Police—responsible for inspecting international flights—won’t interfere until the final destination and delivery point of the drugs, which is the State of Mexico.

The unexpected change causes the PFP agents to make a hasty decision and choose Mérida International Airport in Yucatán for the landing.

They communicate this to the pilot, who announces the change of destination to the airport authorities.  As soon as he does, he receives new instructions: it’s better to arrive at a “territory” controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. So now he must fly to Ingeniero Alberto Acuña Ongay International Airport, located in Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche.

These are two changes of destination in minutes, which the crew cannot justify with a false mechanical failure. The plane is in perfect condition.  Therefore, the changes in the flight plan trigger alarms in the Mexico offices of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which issues a warning to its Mexican counterparts.

When the plane reaches the runway, it is already surrounded by agents from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Aided by military personnel and canine units specialized in narcotics detection, the agents remove 128 suitcases full of compressed white powder from the plane. At the same time, they handcuffed the Venezuelan co-pilot Vázquez Guerra and the Mexican pilots Fernando Poot Pérez and Marcos Pérez de Gracia, who were officially assigned to the National Water Commission, despite having criminal records for drug trafficking.

The indecision of the corrupt PFP (Federal Preventive Police) agents cost the Sinaloa Cartel a shipment worth approximately $700 million.

Despite the financial blow, three individuals involved in that operation would rise to prominence in the following months of 2006: Nicolás Maduro would become Venezuela’s Foreign Minister and, eventually, president, succeeding Hugo Chávez; Genaro García Luna would become the “architect of the war on drugs” and a presidential right-hand man before being imprisoned in the United States for aiding the Sinaloa Cartel; and Joaquín Guzmán Loera would consolidate his position as the most famous and powerful drug trafficker in the world.

Maduro and the Venezuela-Mexico-US Axis

The formal indictment against President Nicolás Maduro, drafted in 2020 in New York, alleges that the DC-9 aircraft loaded with cocaine was conducting regular drug trafficking operations from the Caracas airport in Venezuela and was protected by the Cartel of the Suns, an alleged drug trafficking organization that, since November 24, 2025, has been designated as a terrorist organization by the government of President Donald Trump.

According to the U.S. State Department, the Cartel of the Suns “is based in Venezuela and is led by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking officials of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted the Venezuelan military, intelligence services, legislature, and judiciary.”

The name of the alleged criminal group comes from the sun-shaped insignia worn by Venezuelan generals of the Bolivarian army, one of the most important pillars of Chavismo, the political movement with which Nicolás Maduro identifies.

These high-ranking military officers were allegedly allied with major Latin American drug lords, such as El Chapo Guzmán, who ensured that he received the drug shipments arriving from South America and distributed their contents on the streets of the United States, “poisoning” the population by causing everything from serious illnesses to, of course, deaths from overdoses.

In return, the Venezuelan military officers, the indictment alleges, received millions of dollars that ended up in their bank accounts, in tax havens, and in financing the socialist regime.

A dirty business whose heart was the Venezuela-Mexico-United States drug trafficking route, in which Colombian cartels also participated as suppliers of cocaine.

The indictment includes another Mexican cartel, Los Zetas, because, according to U.S. prosecutors, although the DC-9 plane was seized, the drug trafficking route continued to operate for several years with more aircraft flying from Caracas to Campeche, a state that had been taken over by the paramilitary guard of the Gulf Cartel.

Between 2008 and 2011, Los Zetas began a process of independence from their founders and sought new strongholds outside of Tamaulipas.  Thus, they traveled south with their founders, Heriberto Lazcano, El Z3, and Mauricio Guízar Cárdenas, El Amarillo, who led the incursions into Veracruz, Tabasco, and Campeche, attracted primarily by the oil boom in those states. While searching for oil and gasoline, Los Zetas discovered another business: drug trafficking on a continental scale, thanks to the possibility of establishing clandestine airstrips in poorly monitored areas like the Campeche jungle, where the low salaries of police officers and public officials in general created ideal conditions for corruption.

In a short time, Los Zetas were receiving planes and small aircraft in Campeche from Venezuela, which departed from airports such as Caracas, loaded with drugs, without the authorities conducting even minimal security checks.

Maduro’s Trial for Narco-Terrorism

Now, with Nicolás Maduro’s not-guilty plea this Monday in the Southern District Court of New York to charges associated with transnational narco-terrorism, the U.S. government will attempt to prove to a jury that this drug trafficking route had the blessing of the Venezuelan government.

Specifically, they will try to prove that Nicolás Maduro, before becoming president, was a drug trafficker who for two decades served as the strategic head of a criminal enterprise based in his country, and that his wife, Cilia Adela Flores, is an active participant with independent criminal liability.

They will attempt to document, among other things, that planes like the DC-9 in April 2006 departed from Venezuela because the South American country had become a center for criminal protection, where drugs have been consolidated and shipped for years using official resources, including airports, military personnel, escorts, and diplomatic passports bearing the signature and approval of Nicolás Maduro.

Source: Milenio