The ’80s ghost

The indictment cites the _’80s ghost’
The briefing notes list cartels.
The planes arrive,
bodies crested Justice,
as if a word could sanctify
their appetite.

Back home, a senator’s son
buys his eighth gram
from a man
whose business license
is a badge.

The problem was never
the powder in the plastic bag.
The problem was the gasoline
in the plastic jug—
the kind your refinery
must sell for pennies,
without hoisting a flag.

They don’t raid houses in Miami
where the money is washed
whiter than hospital linen.
They raid ministries in Caracas
where the maps are marked
in a colour they can’t control:
the deep, stubborn red
of a soil that won’t lease its soul.

A man falls in a D.C. alley,
needle in his arm, before noon.
No satellites turn for him.
No assets are frozen.
His death is a local statistic,
not a geopolitical pretext.

It was never about the drug.
It was about who gets to mix
the remedy,
and who is declared
the disease.

***

The U.S. accusation that the Venezuelan government is involved in drug trafficking is a geopolitical strategy with a darkly ironic precedent. In the ’80s, during the Contra war in Nicaragua, it was revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies had themselves been involved in cocaine trafficking to fund the anti-Sandinista rebels. This scandal, exposed in the late 1990s by journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series, created a lasting “ghost” in U.S. foreign policy—a proven template where drugs and covert war intertwine.

Majekodunmi O. Ebhohon is a Nigerian poet and playwright. He is the author of ‘The Great Delusion’, winner of the ANA Prize for Drama, 2025. He writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria
_sankara101010@gmail.com_