Raphael John-Lall

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s joint mil­i­tary drills with the Unit­ed States could “threat­en peace” in the Caribbean.

On Fri­day, T&T’s Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers an­nounced that the US Ma­rine Corps’ 22nd Ma­rine Ex­pe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) will con­duct train­ing ex­er­cis­es with the T&T De­fence Force from No­vem­ber 16–21.

“They say they’re go­ing to do it from Mon­day to Thurs­day… Well, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will see if they con­tin­ue to tol­er­ate the use of their wa­ters and land to se­ri­ous­ly threat­en the peace of the Caribbean,” Maduro de­clared.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny of the Bo­li­var­i­an Base Com­mit­tees of the rul­ing Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty (PSUV) in the Petare parish of Mi­ran­da state.

Maduro ac­cused T&T of once again au­tho­ris­ing “ir­re­spon­si­ble mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es” in wa­ters off the Venezue­lan state of Su­cre, claim­ing the drills project a threat­en­ing pos­ture to­ward Venezuela. He urged cit­i­zens in the east­ern states of Bolí­var, Mon­a­gas, Su­cre, An­zoátegui and Nue­va Es­par­ta to mo­bilise in a “pop­u­lar, mil­i­tary and po­lice ef­fort” to main­tain a per­ma­nent vig­il and take to the streets with the na­tion­al flag “in the face of new threats.”

He called for a na­tion­al mo­bil­i­sa­tion to send a clear mes­sage: “Out with im­pe­ri­al­ist ships, out with mil­i­tary threats! Venezuela de­mands re­spect… This peo­ple has con­sid­er­able pow­er in the streets, in every city.”

Maduro fur­ther re­peat­ed his long­stand­ing al­le­ga­tion that the US aims to seize Venezuela’s nat­ur­al re­sources. “They want to steal our oil. Are we go­ing to let them? They want to steal our gas. Are we go­ing to let them?”

The mil­i­tary drills come at a time of se­vere diplo­mat­ic strain be­tween Port of Spain and Cara­cas. Re­la­tions have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed sharply in re­cent weeks, with Venezuela de­clar­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter per­sona non gra­ta and sus­pend­ing all on­go­ing en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions.