Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Stand­ing un­der the warm weath­er yes­ter­day, the Venezue­lan shore­line could be seen clear­ly with the naked eye from Ica­cos Bay. Even as the waves crashed rhyth­mi­cal­ly as fish­er­men re­turned with their catch, be­neath the calm was a grow­ing un­ease.

It came af­ter the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary killed 11 al­leged drug traf­fick­ers in a pre­ci­sion airstrike off the Venezuela coast on Tues­day. The US mil­i­tary launched a strike in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, de­stroy­ing a pirogue al­leged­ly op­er­at­ed by mem­bers of the Tren de Aragua car­tel and killing the sus­pect­ed traf­fick­ers.

Wash­ing­ton framed the ac­tion as a counter-nar­cotics mis­sion against transna­tion­al threats. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar quick­ly voiced sup­port, call­ing for vi­o­lent ac­tion against traf­fick­ers.

But for res­i­dents of Ce­dros and Ica­cos, the strike raised ur­gent con­cerns about the safe­ty of fish­er­folk work­ing close to Venezue­lan wa­ters.

Videos of the at­tack, which showed the ves­sel be­ing blown apart, have left res­i­dents wor­ried their fish­er­men could one day be mis­tak­en for drug traf­fick­ers. Some even fear the op­er­a­tion could es­ca­late ten­sions be­tween Wash­ing­ton and Cara­cas, drag­ging T&T in­to the con­flict.

Fish­er­man Tony John re­called be­ing at sea when the airstrike like­ly oc­curred. Sit­ting on a pirogue at Fuller­ton Bay yes­ter­day, he ad­mit­ted the in­ci­dent left him con­cerned.

“I feel so wor­ried be­cause when you feel you are go­ing to make an hon­est dol­lar and you reach in that state when you have to run with some­thing, you have to run, you can­not re­main there,” John said.

He ex­plained that while the Coast Guard usu­al­ly checks doc­u­ments and warns fish­er­men about un­safe wa­ters, the Amer­i­cans act­ed with dead­ly force. He said this was sim­i­lar to Venezuela’s Guardia Na­cional, whose pa­trol boats they call “grey­hounds”.

“Some­times, when we are work­ing right here and you see a boat com­ing from the main side, you have to come out of the area. You can­not re­al­ly stay in the area; you have to move out,” John said, adding that he and his crew will re­turn to sea to­day but must be care­ful about how far they go.

For Ica­cos res­i­dent Mar­garet Ish­mael, the prox­im­i­ty of her home to Venezuela, just half an hour across the sea, is now un­set­tling.

“I think it is scary be­cause they said it was a Venezue­lan boat. What if it were not a Venezue­lan boat, but one of ours go­ing in there? Now, I am against drugs to­tal­ly… Sup­pose they are the ones go­ing out there to work, and this thing hap­pened to them, and they are un­aware that this is go­ing to hap­pen to them. There are peo­ple who are go­ing out there to make an hon­est liv­ing, and there are peo­ple who are do­ing what they are say­ing they are do­ing,” Ish­mael said.

Ish­mael al­so fears that if war breaks out, more Venezue­lans could at­tempt to en­ter T&T, even try­ing to take over what cit­i­zens have built. She said her daugh­ter has al­ready urged her to move to Ch­agua­nas.

“My daugh­ter told me, ‘mum­my, if you hear any­thing more than that, get up there be­cause look at where we are. The sea is right out there. Venezuela is about an hour away from us.’”

Not all res­i­dents trust the of­fi­cial nar­ra­tive. One Ica­cos vil­lager, scep­ti­cal of Wash­ing­ton’s ac­tions, asked why the Gov­ern­ment would sup­port the US strike.

“For Trump to over­throw Maduro? I don’t be­lieve any­thing the Amer­i­cans say. Where are the drugs? They just blew up the boat. Look at what is go­ing on in Pales­tine. Chil­dren look­ing like skin and bones. All they want is Maduro’s oil,” the res­i­dent said.

Oth­ers, like res­i­dent Akash Sanatan, sym­pa­thised with the fight against nar­cotics but con­demned the use of mis­siles at sea, say­ing such tac­tics risk killing in­no­cent peo­ple.

“You want the peo­ple, there are he­li­copters and all dif­fer­ent kinds of things for you to hold them. Do not use a bomb be­cause it could be fish­er­men you are do­ing that to,” Sanatan said.

Sanatan al­so warned that T&T’s off­shore oil in­stal­la­tions, ly­ing close to Venezue­lan wa­ters, could be vul­ner­a­ble if ten­sions es­ca­late.

“For now, every­body is mov­ing nor­mal­ly. We do not know about lat­er on,” he said.

De­spite Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s en­dorse­ment of the US strike, res­i­dents are call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to in­crease Coast Guard pa­trols. They say Venezue­lan boats of­ten chase fish­er­men dan­ger­ous­ly close to shore, some­times open­ing fire.

“That is wrong. That is not nice,” Ish­mael said.

Still, not every­one is alarmed.

In Bonasse Vil­lage, Venezue­lan-born fish­er­man Jesús Díaz said he was not wor­ried about be­ing caught in US-led op­er­a­tions, since he does not ven­ture be­yond the Gulf of Paria.

“I am not wor­ried be­cause I do not see any US ships around here. We usu­al­ly go near shore, so we do not think we are in dan­ger. Maybe they can come clos­er, but we can­not see them be­cause they are so far away. If you go to the next side from Guiria, it is more the Caribbean Sea where you might see the big ship,” Díaz said.

An­oth­er fish­er­man re­called that the Guardia Na­cional once ad­vised lo­cals to car­ry their pass­ports at sea and warned them not to cross the bor­der. While some obey to avoid en­coun­ters with Venezue­lan or US forces, oth­ers still take the risk, he said.