Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Vladimir Padri­no López, has an­nounced the launch of Op­er­a­tion Cumanago­to 200, aimed in part at block­ing il­le­gal trade in arms and hu­man traf­fick­ing from T&T.

“There’s a lot of smug­gling of fu­el, weapons, am­mu­ni­tion, and hu­man traf­fick­ing along the ax­is be­tween Macuro, La Pun­ta, Paria Promon­to­ry, and Trinidad and To­ba­go,” López said.

Cumaná, the cap­i­tal city of the Venezue­lan state of Su­cre fac­ing the Caribbean Sea, is the launch point for the new op­er­a­tion. López al­so vowed to “clear out” any ter­ror­ist groups or drug traf­fick­ing gangs op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly in the re­gion.

“This is an or­der from our com­man­der-in-chief. The strate­gic com­man­der is al­ready ex­e­cut­ing it and di­rect­ing all means and forces to en­sure Op­er­a­tion Cumanago­to 200 is car­ried out in the east­ern Caribbean,” he added.

The De­fence Min­is­ter high­light­ed on­go­ing ef­forts by se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies to com­bat hu­man traf­fick­ing, fu­el and food smug­gling, and drug traf­fick­ing syn­di­cates.

“Re­cent­ly, we de­tect­ed the ex­port of weapons, in­clud­ing rock­et launch­ers, ri­fles, and grenades. What could be the pur­pose of this? What do they in­tend?” he asked.

The an­nounce­ment comes amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela. Last Sun­day, López promised a strong re­sponse if T&T or Guyana al­lowed the Unit­ed States to use their ter­ri­to­ries as a launch­ing pad against Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, crit­i­cised com­ments by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der re­gard­ing In­dia’s po­ten­tial use of nu­clear weapons against Venezuela—a re­mark the min­is­ter lat­er down­played.

That same day, Venezuela con­duct­ed mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es in the Caribbean, de­ploy­ing thou­sands of sol­diers, fight­er jets, mis­siles, and oth­er so­phis­ti­cat­ed mil­i­tary equip­ment as a warn­ing to the Unit­ed States.