DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The De­fence Min­istry has ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed claims by Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro that Colom­bian para­mil­i­tary groups have in­fil­trat­ed east­ern Venezuela via Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The al­le­ga­tion was made by Maduro dur­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny of Jhoan­na Car­il­lo as the new gov­er­nor of Su­cre state – a coastal re­gion in north-east­ern Venezuela that lies across the Gulf of Paria from T&T - on Tues­day.

Maduro said, “Yes­ter­day, a group of ter­ror­ists was cap­tured try­ing to en­ter the east of the coun­try from T&T, with a batch of weapons of war, among which there are Colom­bians.”

“Be vig­i­lant, be­cause you have not been able and will not be able to im­ple­ment vi­o­lence in the coun­try,” he added.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the De­fence Min­istry, head­ed by Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, said there was no ev­i­dence to sup­port the al­le­ga­tions but said it was tak­ing the mat­ter se­ri­ous­ly.

“In re­sponse to these claims, the Min­istry of De­fence has ini­ti­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Pre­lim­i­nary find­ings in­di­cate that there is cur­rent­ly no ev­i­dence to sup­port these al­le­ga­tions. How­ev­er, the min­istry is tak­ing im­me­di­ate and de­ci­sive steps to ad­dress the mat­ter with the ut­most se­ri­ous­ness and ur­gency.”

The min­istry al­so con­firmed it is en­gag­ing with Venezuela to gath­er any ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion that could as­sist in the probe.

“As part of our on­go­ing com­mit­ment to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, the min­istry is work­ing in close co­or­di­na­tion with law en­force­ment agen­cies and se­cu­ri­ty forces to en­hance sur­veil­lance and re­in­force bor­der se­cu­ri­ty in crit­i­cal ar­eas. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we will be en­gag­ing with our Venezue­lan coun­ter­parts through the ap­pro­pri­ate diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to gath­er any rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion or ev­i­dence that could as­sist in this mat­ter.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the lack of ev­i­dence, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les ad­vised that the claim should be tak­en with cau­tion, not­ing that such state­ments can of­ten be po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“Gov­ern­ments say all kinds of things. He (Maduro) could be say­ing all kinds of things to whip up sup­port in Venezuela.”

Dr Gon­za­les be­lieves the bur­den of proof lies with the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties. He said if Maduro wants the re­gion or in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to take these claims se­ri­ous­ly, he must pro­vide de­tails such as the iden­ti­ties of those cap­tured, which groups they be­long to, and the cir­cum­stances of their ap­pre­hen­sion.

“If he (Maduro) is im­ply­ing that the gov­ern­ment was in­volved with them or if he’s im­ply­ing some­thing, then the gov­ern­ment has to come out and de­ny this. If he’s just say­ing some peo­ple come from Trinidad, but, you know, you can’t say who they are and all this sort of thing, I would just leave that right there.”

How­ev­er, crim­i­nol­o­gist and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lyst Dau­rius Figueira is warn­ing that T&T can no longer ig­nore its role in what he de­scribes as an es­ca­lat­ing se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis af­fect­ing the Caribbean. Figueira be­lieves the al­le­ga­tions, though un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed, point to deep­er, sys­temic fail­ures that re­quire im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion.

“What we must un­der­stand is that our fail­ure to con­trol our bor­ders is con­tribut­ing to the lit­er­al de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the se­cu­ri­ty com­plex of the en­tire Caribbean. T&T is now a linch­pin in the desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the Caribbean. And what we in T&T must nev­er for­get, in 2021, it was the Colom­bian mer­ce­nary team that as­sas­si­nat­ed Hait­ian pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se in his Petion-ville res­i­dence, which was then the pres­i­den­tial palace. So, they have shown their propen­si­ty to desta­bilise Caribbean coun­tries. And when your neigh­bour’s house is on fire, you wet yours.”

Figueira said these de­vel­op­ments must be un­der­stood in the con­text of on­go­ing ef­forts to desta­bilise the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment, in which Colom­bian crim­i­nal net­works, par­tic­u­lar­ly “Colom­bian dons,” play a cen­tral role.

“The Colom­bian dons are a ma­jor part of the regime change agen­da in Venezuela. Trinidad is now a for­ward op­er­at­ing lo­ca­tion for these groups in the Caribbean,” Figueira stat­ed.

He claims the com­mand and con­trol cen­tres for these op­er­a­tions are es­tab­lished with­in the il­lic­it Span­ish-speak­ing mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad, par­tic­u­lar­ly stretch­ing from cen­tral to south­ern Trinidad. From there, he says, transna­tion­al crim­i­nal ac­tors op­er­ate with im­puni­ty, us­ing the coun­try as a lo­gis­ti­cal hub for arms, nar­cotics, and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

He said the new Gov­ern­ment must now put the nec­es­sary as­sets in place to bring the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry to deal with mod­ern day transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime threats.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain for more in­for­ma­tion on the mat­ter but the em­bassy de­clined to com­ment.

Venezue­lans re­spond on­line

Pres­i­dent Maduro’s claims that for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies, in­clud­ing Colom­bians, at­tempt­ed to in­fil­trate east­ern Venezuela via T&T have sparked a wave of mixed re­ac­tions across the so­cial me­dia pages of ma­jor Venezue­lan me­dia out­lets.

The com­ment sec­tion of La Igua­na, one of the coun­try’s promi­nent news plat­forms, quick­ly be­came a bat­tle­ground be­tween sup­port­ers and crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment.

One pro-gov­ern­ment sup­port­er wrote: “We must stop them! With these for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies and the lo­cal trai­tors of the coun­try and ap­ply the death penal­ty by de­cree... be­cause at any mo­ment they can suc­ceed in all their at­tempts to plant ex­plo­sives, at­tacks on in­sti­tu­tions, state of­fi­cials, etc.”

On the oth­er end of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum, a crit­ic com­ment­ed: “You Maduro are a vi­o­la­tor of hu­man rights. Ha ha ha ha.”

Ref­er­enc­ing the US$25 mil­lion boun­ty the US gov­ern­ment placed on Pres­i­dent Maduro ear­li­er this year, an­oth­er user added cryp­ti­cal­ly: “$25 mil­lion + $25 mil­lion = $50 mil­lion. That’s a lot of re­al stuff, and there’s a lot of crazy stuff in the world.”

Sim­i­lar de­bates erupt­ed on the In­sta­gram page of Globo­visión, an­oth­er ma­jor Venezue­lan me­dia house.

One com­menter mocked the gov­ern­ment’s nar­ra­tive: “They (the Gov­ern­ment) al­ready start­ed with its sci­ence fic­tion movie where they dis­cov­er every­thing…”

An­oth­er user ques­tioned the lack of trans­paren­cy in the gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions: “Some­one ex­plain to me how this gov­ern­ment catch­es ter­ror­ists and doesn’t in­tro­duce them to so­ci­ety. They cap­ture a chick­en thief and present it to the press.”

The po­lar­is­ing re­ac­tions on­line high­light the deep di­vi­sions in Venezue­lan pub­lic opin­ion re­gard­ing the Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion, as well as grow­ing scep­ti­cism around the ve­rac­i­ty and mo­ti­va­tion be­hind high-pro­file se­cu­ri­ty claims.