Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezue­lan De­fence Min­is­ter Vladimir Padri­no López has sent a strong mes­sage to T&T’s Gov­ern­ment that cur­rent mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es demon­strat­ed an “ag­gres­sion” against Venezuela.

T&T and its part­ner, the Unit­ed States, car­ried out joint mil­i­tary drills this week.

“There may be planned ma­noeu­vres in the world, but here in this case, it is an ag­gres­sion against the dig­ni­ty of the peo­ple of Venezuela. And it is sad that the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go lends its ter­ri­to­ry, de­grades its ter­ri­to­ry, its sov­er­eign­ty, so that in­stru­ments for the death and mass de­struc­tion of the peo­ples are placed there,” he said yes­ter­day evening in a mes­sage on In­sta­gram.

He was dressed in a com­bat uni­form in the video.

In Sep­tem­ber, he had is­sued an­oth­er threat say­ing that Venezuela would “re­spond” if T&T al­lowed the Unit­ed States to use it as a launch­ing pad in a mil­i­tary in­va­sion.

He al­so said, “The wa­ters that we have his­tor­i­cal­ly shared with Trinidad and To­ba­go for trade, co­op­er­a­tion and de­vel­op­ment of peo­ples, to­day move un­nat­u­ral­ly by war­ships that Amer­i­can im­pe­ri­al­ism has de­ployed to sow di­vi­sion and threat­en Venezuela. Alert!”

He lament­ed that the close re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries no longer ex­ist­ed.

“We see there, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the wa­ters that bare­ly dis­tance us from a broth­er­ly peo­ple like Trinidad and To­ba­go, a ter­ri­to­ry that, from a ge­o­graph­i­cal point of view, is a ge­o­log­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity of the Gulf of Maria Penin­su­la. A ter­ri­to­ry that…is worth the ex­pres­sion, of the provinces of Venezuela.”

This was now in the past, he said, as there were now mil­i­tary ves­sels in the wa­ters that sep­a­rat­ed T&T and Venezuela.

“And then those wa­ters don’t move right now be­cause of their nat­ur­al tide, but they move be­cause there is a pres­ence of de­stroy­ers mov­ing those wa­ters in a counter-nat­ur­al way, in­vad­ing the in­ti­ma­cy, the tran­quil­li­ty of the T&T peo­ple, and on­ly for the de­sire and the ob­jec­tive of threat­en­ing.”

He con­tin­ued by say­ing that this mil­i­tary ac­tion “dis­turbs” re­gion­al peace.

“There, the peo­ple of T&T, dis­joint­ed, dis­turbed by the ac­tions of un­planned mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es. com­plete­ly de­lib­er­ate to threat­en Venezuela. And when they threat­en Venezuela, they are threat­en­ing a whole con­ti­nent. I mean the South Amer­i­can con­ti­nent and the Caribbean, of course, and its peo­ple. In­no­cent ma­noeu­vres that do not ex­ist.”