Raphael John-Lall

Thou­sands of Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers took to the streets of Mi­ran­da on Tues­day, hold­ing plac­ards bear­ing the im­age of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and call­ing on her not to “de­stroy the peace” in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Among those lead­ing the march was Car­men Melén­dez, May­or of Cara­cas and vice pres­i­dent for Re­gion­al Af­fairs of Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty. Melén­dez ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of align­ing with Wash­ing­ton against Venezuela.

“Venezuela con­tin­ues to send a mes­sage of peace. How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go is join­ing Wash­ing­ton in mur­der­ing chil­dren, the el­der­ly, and an en­tire pop­u­la­tion,” Melén­dez de­clared dur­ing the ral­ly.

She said while “some shout for war,” the Nico­las Maduro gov­ern­ment re­mains fo­cused on ad­dress­ing the needs of the peo­ple.

“We are peo­ple of peace,” she added, call­ing for “so­cial in­tel­li­gence” to guide the pop­u­la­tion’s aware­ness and de­ci­sion-mak­ing as ten­sions con­tin­ue to rise be­tween Venezuela, the Unit­ed States and T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s state-run dai­ly El Úl­ti­mas Noti­cias, first vice pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Pe­dro In­fante re­mind­ed demon­stra­tors that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was de­clared per­sona non gra­ta in Venezuela. He ac­cused her of be­ing “a trai­tor, sell­ing out her coun­try, and lend­ing her ter­ri­to­ry to the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment as an air­craft car­ri­er to at­tempt to at­tack Venezuela.”

Nahum Fer­nán­dez, vice pres­i­dent of Mo­bil­i­sa­tion for the So­cial­ist Par­ty, told the crowd Tues­day’s protest in Petare mir­rored sim­i­lar demon­stra­tions across oth­er re­gions, where “or­di­nary peo­ple have mo­bilised to de­fend peace and sov­er­eign­ty.” He al­so praised the Venezue­lan Armed Forces and Pres­i­dent Maduro for what he de­scribed as “the right po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions” to safe­guard the na­tion.

“Who­ev­er mess­es with Venezuela will be ru­ined, be­cause we are de­ter­mined to be free,” Fer­nán­dez said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed Venezuela’s per­sona non gratade­c­la­ra­tion and to sus­pend en­er­gy agree­ments with T&T, say­ing the de­ci­sions do not af­fect her or her Gov­ern­ment.