Raphael John-Lall

As ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the U.S. soar, on Wednes­day night, Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López an­nounced that Venezuela’s army along with the mili­tias have be­gun “Sov­er­eign Caribbean” mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es.

On Sun­day, López warned T&T and Guyana that there would be a strong re­sponse if both coun­tries al­low the U.S. to use any of them as a base.

The three-day mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es are tak­ing place on the Venezue­lan is­land of La Or­chi­la which is al­so used as a mil­i­tary base, sit­u­at­ed north of Cara­cas.

La Or­chi­la is lo­cat­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 564 kilo­me­tres north­west of Trinidad.

He ex­plained that the joint aero­space task force will de­ploy air de­fence us­ing sur­veil­lance, sub­marines, and aer­i­al drones to mon­i­tor the sec­tor and eval­u­ate their of­fen­sive ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The ex­er­cis­es will in­volve 12 ships, 22 air­craft and 20 small boats from the "Spe­cial Naval Mili­tia."

There will al­so be the de­ploy­ment of the Buk an­ti-air­craft mis­sile sys­tems and ZU-23 ar­tillery sys­tems.

Re­gard­ing the de­ploy­ment of the joint mar­itime task force, López said, "there will be a sig­nif­i­cant de­ploy­ment of Bo­li­var­i­an Navy ves­sels to car­ry out coastal fire, am­phibi­ous land­ings, and cap­ture beach­heads," among oth­er op­er­a­tions.

Twice on Wednes­day, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo crit­i­cised T&T’s Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Caribbean say­ing it is now en­dan­ger­ing the lives of fish­er­folk in the Caribbean re­gion.

Ear­li­er this week U.S. Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced that the U.S. mil­i­tary  struck an­oth­er Venezue­lan boat that he claims was be­ing op­er­at­ed by a drug car­tel and was head­ed to the Unit­ed States.

Trump said three men were killed in Mon­day’s at­tack.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day and re­spond­ing to a ques­tion about T&T from a Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist, Ca­bel­lo ac­cused T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “sen­tenc­ing fish­er­men to death.”

“The first one who came out to thank the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment was the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T. She was sen­tenc­ing her fish­er­men to death and yet she came out to thank the Unit­ed States for that ac­tion. I think she de­clared that around 5 a.m. in the morn­ing af­ter a day of joy or a night of joy. But what have the fish­er­men done?”

Lat­er on Wednes­day night on his week­ly tv pro­gramme “Con El Ma­zo Dan­do” Ca­bel­lo once again con­demned T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter claim­ing that her Gov­ern­ment sup­ports the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions against fish­er­folk.

“There are pres­i­dents, like the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad, who are hap­py with that. The fish­er­men's protests have al­ready be­gun, de­mand­ing jus­tice. Be­cause there has been no de­fence of that sec­tor by that Gov­ern­ment of T&T that ap­plaud­ed im­pe­ri­al­ism when it at­tacked a fish­ing boat. But, well, that's how they are. That's how they are. Then they threat­en us, they at­tack us.”