There are feared, powerful, and cruel men. And then there are men like Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal. He headed Venezuelan Military Intelligence between 2004 and 2011, and between 2013 and 2014, under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro. The late dictator Hugo Chávez, suspicious of his own influence, tasked him with monitoring senior military commanders, ministers, and propagandists of the Venezuelan regime.

Since 2023, Carvajal, whose head was offered rewards of up to $10 million by the State Department’s Narcotics Rewards Program, has been in a U.S. prison, and now he seems ready to crow about everything he knows about the dirty dealings of Chavismo and a vast international network of high-ranking officials stretching from the Caribbean and South America to Europe.

According to recent documents, the sentencing of the former Venezuelan military intelligence chief will not be handed down on the originally scheduled date. The defense and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York jointly requested that Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein postpone the hearing, scheduled for October 29, to November 18, 19, or 20.

The 20-day intermission, according to the judicial letter sent to the court, would allow the defense to prepare objections to the pre-sentencing report, after which a “Fatico” hearing would likely be held to resolve disputes about facts relevant to the conviction.

However, analysts with inside information emphasize that Carvajal has, in fact, promised to cooperate even more with U.S. authorities in order to obtain a lesser sentence. Perhaps, he would release microfilms and other documentary evidence about the connections between Caracas and the electoral campaigns that brought other socialist governments to power.

Current and former leaders of Latin America who courted Chavismo are like cats among fireworks. Their nerves can be heard behind the diplomatic curtain. They sense that if Carvajal or another member of the Venezuelan leadership speaks out, the scum of the crime will also touch them and, consequently, the Trump Department of Justice will come after them.

In Argentina, the “Briefcase Case“ is well-known, involving a businessman of Venezuelan origin who traveled to Buenos Aires with a suitcase containing almost a million dollars to, according to him, support the presidential campaign of leftist Cristina Kirchner.

In Colombia, the former Marxist guerrilla and now president, Gustavo Petro, received money from drug lords and people linked to drug trafficking to advance his presidential campaign, as his own son has confessed to that country’s justice system.

Another 21st-century socialist, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, a fugitive from justice in his own country, allegedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Maduro government through the Eloy Alfaro Foundation.

But the potential extension of the funding network to some of the most successful Latin American leftist movements of the last three decades is not limited to the Americas; it extends to the other side of the Atlantic.

In Spain, ruled by a Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government and with communist alliances since 2018, it has also implicated former Vice President Pablo Iglesias, who allegedly received a considerable sum from Caracas in an offshore account.

Not to be outdone, Chavismo’s friendship with Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, former Spanish president and PSOE leader, and his family’s flourishing businesses in that South American country, have put him under scrutiny. To the point that a few weeks ago, Undersecretary of State Christopher Landau publicly suggested revoking his visa to enter the U.S. due to his connections to Chavismo, particularly Maduro.

According to information from Diario Las Américas, Rodríguez Zapatero, Chavista general Miguel Rodríguez Torres, and former congressman Eudoro González Dellán presented a “transition plan” in Madrid that would sacrifice Maduro but leave other high-ranking Chavista officials in his place. In other words, change everything so that nothing changes, a paper transition where neo-Chavismo and even the Cartel of the Suns (the criminal organization made up of high-ranking Venezuelan officials) preserve their interests.

Carlos Ruckauf, former Argentine vice president, added in a recent interview that the trail of corruption would surely reach Havana. “If drug dollars had gone to the Cuban government, there would have been money laundering, punishable by the U.S. justice system,” he said. It’s no secret that Havana has ideologically occupied and controlled Venezuela since the beginning of the 21st century and has plundered and treated that South American country as an overseas possession.

In the next 20 days, whatever comes out of the mouth of Carvajal, a long-time fugitive until his arrest in Madrid, and finally extradited to the United States in July 2023, could shake up some of the most radical and high-ranking left-wing actors throughout Latin America.

Now, just two years after setting foot on American soil and already under Donald Trump’s second term, Carvajal admitted to belonging to the Cartel of the Suns, acknowledged his collaboration with the Colombian guerrilla group FARC in trafficking tons of cocaine to the United States, and pleaded guilty to charges related to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

Now, let El Pollo sing! Let the concert begin!