OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton

@cnc3.co.tt

As the Unit­ed States de­ploys more mil­i­tary pow­er to the south­ern Caribbean to tar­get drug traf­fick­ers, spark­ing re­newed un­cer­tain­ty across the re­gion, Venezue­lan na­tion­als liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go are re­flect­ing on how such geopo­lit­i­cal shifts rip­ple through their dai­ly lives.

For An­drea Ruiz, a Venezue­lan mi­grant who has lived in T&T for the past eleven years, this mo­ment is one of deep re­flec­tion — not just on pol­i­tics, but on hu­man­i­ty, faith, and re­silience.

“Af­ter I have seen what my coun­try has turned in­to, I have seen the suf­fer­ing of peo­ple,” Ruiz said in a heart­felt mes­sage shared on­line. “But I have heard tes­ti­monies, and I be­lieve that what­ev­er has to hap­pen will hap­pen. At the end of the day, God is in con­trol.”

Her words come as the Caribbean feels the tremors of re­newed diplo­mat­ic strain, with Wash­ing­ton ramp­ing up mil­i­tary and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure on Cara­cas while re­gion­al lead­ers call for re­straint and sta­bil­i­ty.

“The on­ly thing we can do is work on our­selves so we can have a bet­ter re­sponse to­ward what­ev­er is the out­come. And I think it’s time for a change.

For Ruiz, it be­gins with prayer. “Prayer is a way to vent,” she said soft­ly. “If you feel over­whelmed, do some­thing that gets your mind out of that be­cause there is noth­ing we can do.”

An­oth­er Venezue­lan mi­grant, Joan­na, who has lived in Trinidad for over ten years, shared a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment but with a sharp­er edge of long­ing.

“I am very thank­ful to God that I am here in Trinidad and feel­ing safe. Trinidad has been treat­ing me well. But not un­til (Nicolás) Maduro is out can I feel that I have peace for my coun­try.”

Venezue­lan ac­tivist Yessi­na Gon­za­les, mean­while, of­fered a more crit­i­cal as­sess­ment of the cri­sis, de­scrib­ing it as the in­evitable re­sult of years of cor­rup­tion and crim­i­nal con­trol in Cara­cas.

She ex­pressed deep frus­tra­tion over what she de­scribed as pro­longed re­pres­sion, eco­nom­ic hard­ship, and re­gion­al com­plic­i­ty in Venezuela’s de­cline.

“Maduro has rigged elec­tions be­cause they had the pow­er of mon­ey,” she said. “They al­ways blame the Amer­i­cans, but if sanc­tions caused the pover­ty, why is Maduro so rich? He wears the most ex­pen­sive watch­es while peo­ple suf­fer.”

Gon­za­les al­so al­leged links be­tween Venezue­lan crim­i­nal net­works and re­gion­al drug traf­fick­ing routes, warn­ing that in­sta­bil­i­ty could have broad­er im­pli­ca­tions for Caribbean na­tions. “Why do you think crime is so bad even here? Drugs,” she said.

In re­cent months, the Unit­ed States has launched a se­ries of mil­i­tary strikes on ves­sels near Venezuela which it claims were car­ry­ing nar­cotics — part of a wider cam­paign aimed at dis­man­tling what it calls “nar­co-ter­ror­ist net­works.”