The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces before the international community the dangerous “military exercises” being carried out by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago between the 26th and 30th of this month, under the coordination, financing, and control of the United States Southern Command—an action that constitutes a hostile provocation against Venezuela and a serious threat to peace in the Caribbean.
Venezuela reports that it has captured a mercenary group with direct information from the
U.S. intelligence agency, the CIA, determining that a false-flag operation is underway from waters bordering Trinidad and Tobago, or from either Trinbagonian or Venezuelan territory, intended to generate a full-scale military confrontation against our country.
This planned action clearly evokes the provocations of the USS Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin incidents, which led to the war against Spain to seize Cuba in 1898, and later enabled the
U.S. Congress to authorize a war against Vietnam in 1964—conflicts from which the United States emerged defeated by the Vietnamese people after causing immeasurable destruction and tragic human losses.
The Government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has renounced the sovereignty of Trinidad and Tobago to act as a military colony subordinated to U.S. hegemonic interests, turning its territory into a U.S. aircraft carrier for war throughout the Caribbean—against Venezuela, against Colombia, and against all of South America.
By aligning itself with Washington’s militarist agenda, Persad-Bissessar not only seeks to attack Venezuela—a country that has always maintained a policy of energy cooperation, mutual respect, and Caribbean integration, and that shares deep historic ties of brotherhood—but also violates the Charter of the United Nations, the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace approved by CELAC, and the principles of CARICOM, which protect all Caribbean peoples.
This is not a defensive exercise; it is a colonial operation of military aggression intended to transform the Caribbean into a space for lethal violence and U.S. imperial domination.
This submissive and treacherous policy, betraying the constitutional principles of Trinidad and Tobago, has ultimately struck its own people: innocent fishermen have fallen victim to extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean Sea, revealing the repressive and criminal nature of the current government, which orders its own people to be shot under the command “kill them all,” and celebrates when Trinbagonian citizens are summarily executed while opening its doors to foreign invading troops.
Venezuela does not accept threats from any U.S. puppet government. We are not intimidated by military exercises or war rhetoric. The Bolivarian National Armed Force will remain alert and mobilized in perfect Popular–Military–Police unity in the face of this grave provocation. Our Republic, heir to Bolívar and Chávez, will always defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and its right to live in peace against foreign enemies and their vassals.
