Raphael John-Lall

Ar­gen­tine jour­nal­ist Mar­cos Sal­ga­do, based in Venezuela, is warn­ing that T&T has be­come a “dan­ger” to the en­tire Caribbean re­gion af­ter al­low­ing the Unit­ed States to car­ry out mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria, a mar­itime space bor­der­ing T&T with Venezuela and oth­er Cari­com coun­tries.

On Fri­day night, dur­ing the broad­cast of the Venezue­lan pro­gramme “Ma­pa de con­flic­to” Sal­ga­do said that T&T has com­pro­mised its in­tegri­ty as a state by vi­o­lat­ing the procla­ma­tion of Caribbean wa­ters as a Zone of Peace with­in the frame­work of Wash­ing­ton’s mil­i­tary threat un­der its nar­ra­tive of “fight­ing drug traf­fick­ing”.

“T&T is once again deeply com­pro­mised by US pol­i­cy. It has be­come a dan­ger, not on­ly for Venezuela, but for Cari­com as a whole, which has al­ready stat­ed that the area must be pre­served as a Zone of Peace. How­ev­er, in this con­text of US ag­gres­sion against Venezuela, T&T is go­ing to al­low one of the frigates in­volved in the ag­gres­sion to con­duct ex­er­cis­es,” he not­ed.

Sal­ga­do made these com­ments as the US war­ship, the USS Grave­ly, which is an Ar­leigh Burke-class guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­er, is about to dock in Port-of-Spain to­day.

The USS Grave­ly will be in Port-of-Spain from Oc­to­ber 26 to 30 and is ex­pect­ed to car­ry out joint drills with T&T’s mil­i­tary forces.

One lo­cal Venezue­lan ac­tivist gave her own opin­ion on the ar­rival of US mil­i­tary as­sets in T&T. Yese­nia Gon­za­lez told Guardian Me­dia that she sup­ports the ar­rival of the US naval ship and US mil­i­tary pres­ence in T&T, as Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is a “mon­ster” who must be re­moved to “free Venezuela”.

“I sup­port Amer­i­ca and their mil­i­tary in Trinidad and To­ba­go and any­thing to get those crim­i­nals out of pow­er, like Maduro, his al­lies and that ter­ror­ist regime.”

Gon­za­lez backs US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s al­le­ga­tions that the Maduro regime is traf­fick­ing drugs.

“But this has been some­thing that has been hap­pen­ing in the sense of drugs, car­tels, and ter­ror­ists be­ing in Venezuela. They are com­ing in from Colom­bia, the FARC guer­ril­las, the Tren de Aragua, all those big gang­sters and ter­ror­ists that re­al­ly have been de­stroy­ing a lot of peo­ple with their drugs. Maduro sends the drugs across Mex­i­co. He’s got drugs go­ing to the Unit­ed States. It’s bad poi­so­nous drugs, and they have been killing peo­ple.”

Gon­za­lez pre­dict­ed that once Maduro was gone from pow­er, that Venezuela would re­turn to be­ing a peace­ful and pros­per­ous coun­try.

“This is go­ing to be over any­time soon, and Maduro will be out of pow­er in Venezuela. We’re go­ing to cel­e­brate our democ­ra­cy and start a new Venezuela with pros­per­i­ty.”

She praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for stand­ing with the Unit­ed States and wel­com­ing its mil­i­tary in­to the Caribbean.

“I am thank­ful to our Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for stand­ing with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and stand­ing with Pres­i­dent Trump.”