As the world wonders how thuggish Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro manages to cling to power, we received a fresh reminder that the problems plaguing Venezuelans started long before him.

It was Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, who set Venezuela on the road to ruin almost two decades ago.

We have also learned that, as part of that journey, Chávez initiated a campaign to flood the United States with cocaine. That’s just one more reason why the Trump administration must keep pressing to rid the Western Hemisphere of Chavismo.

U.S. federal prosecutors have claimed that, shortly before his death from cancer, Chávez directed his top lieutenants to work in tandem with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to weaken the U.S. via an epidemic of drugs.

With Chávez’s backing, the guerrillas became a major producer of hard drugs, distributing them to Latin American cartels and splitting the profits with el presidente and his cronies.

Chávez’s handpicked successor, Maduro, inherited his criminal enterprise as well as the presidency. Today, it’s not just the support of China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba that keeps Maduro in power—it’s his criminal network and the cash it provides.

There is little doubt that the unholy alliance between the Venezuelan regime and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is still in operation.

Recently, guerrilla commander Luciano Marin,a key figure in the peace talks with Colombia,renounced the peace deal he helped broker and declared he was taking up arms again.

Guess where he has been operating. If you said “Venezuela,” go to the head of the class. Maduro has declared that Marin  and another guerrilla commander were “leaders of peace who would be welcomed in Venezuela.”

The documents filed by federal prosecutors were not public before this month. But the Trump administration has long labeled Maduro a de facto drug lord. One of the officials cited by prosecutors, Diosdado Cabello, was already under sanctions for trafficking and money laundering.

And it is not just the U.S. that suffers from the regime’s drug war on us. Colombia, Panama, and several Caribbean states have to deal with the debilitating influence of criminal cartels—their violence, mayhem, and corrupting riches.

Meanwhile, the entire region struggles under the responsibility of caring for the millions of Venezuelans who have fled from Maduro’s despotic and economically ruinous rule.

Maduro has dug in deeper than an Alabama tick, but that shouldn’t deter the U.S. from continuing its campaign to isolate, punish, and hopefully convince the strongman to finally let go and let the people of Venezuela have a future.