Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

As ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela con­tin­ue, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo is ac­cus­ing both T&T and Guyana of al­low­ing them­selves to be used by the Amer­i­cans to launch an at­tack against Venezuela.

Re­fer­ring to his­tor­i­cal ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­putes, he al­so claimed T&T and Guyana have been “Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ries.”

Venezuela has pre­vi­ous­ly made claims to the oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion of Guyana, which is rough­ly two-thirds of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry.

“There are those coun­tries, our neigh­bours, who want to get in­to a fight with Venezuela. And I speak specif­i­cal­ly right now of Trinidad and Guyana. They lend them­selves to the Amer­i­cans to launch an at­tack. Take it as you want. Guyana is tru­ly Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry. Trinidad has al­ways been Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry,” Ca­bel­lo said on his week­ly tv pro­gramme, Con El Ma­zo Dan­do, on Wednes­day night.

Ob­servers around the re­gion quick­ly took no­tice of Ca­bel­lo’s threats. Ed­uar­do Menoni, a jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor at Lib­er­tad Me­dia based in El Sal­vador, on his X plat­form, up­loaded a video clip of Ca­bel­lo’s ref­er­ence to T&T, in which Menoni called it a “threat” against T&T. He al­so pre­dict­ed that Ca­bel­lo and Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s days are num­bered.

Ca­bel­lo al­so warned that the Amer­i­can pres­ence in the Caribbean is not on­ly about Venezuela but the rest of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.

“Any pres­i­dent who thinks this is on­ly about Venezuela is a fool,” he said, while cit­ing the ex­am­ple of for­mer Bo­li­vian pres­i­dent Luis Arce, an al­ly of Venezuela who was ar­rest­ed on Wednes­day on cor­rup­tion charges. In Oc­to­ber, T&T’s Gov­ern­ment, in a joint state­ment with the US, con­grat­u­lat­ed Bo­livia’s new pro-Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment. Ca­bel­lo al­so con­demned the US Gov­ern­ment for seiz­ing a Venezue­lan oil tanker ear­li­er on Wednes­day evening, say­ing the Amer­i­cans want Venezuela’s oil and gold with­out pay­ing for it.

“The Amer­i­can em­pire is a mur­der­ous, thiev­ing, high-seas crim­i­nal,” he said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on Ca­bel­lo’s com­ment, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­salves said while he would not call Venezuela an “im­pe­ri­al­ist coun­try,” he was shocked at Ca­bel­lo’s claim that Guyana and T&T his­tor­i­cal­ly have both be­longed to Venezuela.

“This claim on T&T by Venezuela is par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing com­ing from such a high-rank­ing (Venezue­lan) min­is­ter and af­ter long years of ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries in which there was mu­tu­al ter­ri­to­r­i­al recog­ni­tion and land and mar­itime bound­aries were am­i­ca­bly set­tled. As far as I am aware, there is at present no land and ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute, so I don’t un­der­stand what the min­is­ter (Ca­bel­lo) is talk­ing about,” Gon­salves said.

Gon­salves said Venezuela’s claim about Guyana is not new and un­for­tu­nate­ly, it has been used as a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball by some Venezue­lan pres­i­dents.

“As for Guyana, Venezuela has long claimed the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion when the British were there and that mat­ter went to ar­bi­tra­tion, where it was set­tled and the two coun­tries abid­ed by the agree­ment for over 60 years un­til at the time of Guyana’s in­de­pen­dence, Venezuela went back on its word. What is hap­pen­ing here is that some Venezue­lan pres­i­dents, not all, con­ve­nient­ly keep mak­ing these ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims when they en­ter in­to some con­flict with these two coun­tries. They just have to be ig­nored.”

Gon­salves al­so played down al­le­ga­tions that T&T will al­low its ter­ri­to­ry to be used by the US as a launch­ing pad for a mil­i­tary at­tack.

“As for T&T be­ing a stag­ing area for US troops to at­tack Venezuela, there are no US troops sta­tioned here and the T&T Gov­ern­ment has re­peat­ed­ly said that T&T will not be a launch­ing pad for the US. The tem­po­rary pres­ence of a US mil­i­tary radar in T&T in the con­text of US/TT and US/Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty co­op­er­a­tion does not con­sti­tute a suf­fi­cient ba­sis to con­sid­er T&T as a US stag­ing area. Oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion are of­fer­ing the US much stronger as­sets than this and are not re­gard­ed as US launch­ing pads,” he said.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er, Gary Grif­fith, took to so­cial me­dia to com­ment on Ca­bel­lo’s claims, not­ing the claims were dan­ger­ous.

“I ask yet again for every­one to care­ful­ly read what has been stat­ed by this in­di­vid­ual. For them to be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go is Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry re­veals both their per­cep­tion and their in­ten­tion. Be­cause if some­one gen­uine­ly be­lieves that a place be­longs to them, they will even­tu­al­ly pur­sue it—and then at­tempt to take it,” Grif­fith said.

“And if that is in­deed their true in­ten­tion, this com­ment pro­vides full jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the Unit­ed States, and in turn, we hope that they will al­so sup­port us in pre­vent­ing such war­mon­gers from pur­su­ing their goals.” For­mer For­eign Af­fairs min­is­ter dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Win­ston Dook­er­an, al­so said Ca­bel­lo’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims were un­jus­ti­fied.

“Dur­ing my tenure as For­eign Min­is­ter, Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties re­drew a map show­ing T&T be­ing on the con­ti­nent. We, T&T, drew it to their at­ten­tion, called for a back chan­nel meet­ing with their min­is­ter, and the mat­ter was re­solved by nul­li­fy­ing the map—my rec­ol­lec­tion,” he said in a What­sApp mes­sage.

How­ev­er, Dook­er­an de­clined to com­ment on if T&T will be used as a mil­i­tary base in the event of a war with Venezuela, sug­gest­ing that those ques­tions should be for­ward­ed to the present Gov­ern­ment in pow­er.