Rhon­dor Dowlat

Very few Venezue­lans are tak­ing the chance to en­ter T&T il­le­gal­ly through un­of­fi­cial ports of en­try as the coast­line along the South West­ern penin­su­la is be­ing manned around-the-clock by a T&T Coast Guard ves­sel.

The ves­sel, ac­cord­ing to vil­lagers at Ica­cos, has been an­chored off the coast for the past two months.

Vil­lagers at Ce­dros al­so con­firmed that and said that on a sun­ny and clear day one could see the an­chored ves­sel. It is al­leged that a he­li­copter and an in­ter­cep­tor "work along­side" the Coast Guard ves­sel.

"We see them pa­trolling in the air and over the ocean be­tween Venezuela and here (T&T)," a vil­lager (who wished anonymi­ty) from Ce­dros said.

Dur­ing a trip to the penin­su­la last Fri­day, some Ica­cos fish­er­men, who all wished to be uniden­ti­fied, al­leged that they were ha­rassed by Coast Guard of­fi­cials.

"Be­cause of this we are un­able to ply our trade prop­er­ly. We can­not fish and right now we are all suf­fer­ing as a re­sult," one fish­er­man, aged 54, said.

His son claimed that things were so hard that he could not take care of his chil­dren and feared that he would be sent to the courts for child main­te­nance.

How­ev­er, T&T Guardian un­der­stands that some Venezue­lan na­tion­als take the chance to "bribe" T&T fish­er­men by hand­ing over drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion in ex­change to be brought in­to T&T through il­le­gal ports of en­try.

Some fish­er­men even take the Venezue­lan women as wives and have them liv­ing with them here in T&T.

It is said that since the height­ened coastal pa­trols along the coast­line by the Coast Guard, this kind of trade/ hu­man traf­fick­ing is be­com­ing more and more dif­fi­cult.

"There are one or two that still slip in. Just this morn­ing (Fri­day) I saw two Venezue­lans com­ing aboard a fish­er­man's pirogue," an­oth­er Ica­cos vil­lager said.

Since the crip­pling of the Venezue­lan econ­o­my, es­pe­cial­ly in re­cent times, even food and wa­ter have be­come scarce ne­ces­si­ties.

Scores of Venezue­lans, both men and women, sac­ri­fice 60,000 Venezuela bo­li­vars, which is equiv­a­lent to just un­der US$100, to trav­el to T&T via a pas­sen­ger fer­ry from Venezuela. An av­er­age of 350 Venezue­lan na­tion­als, ac­cord­ing to un­named Im­mi­gra­tion sources, ar­rive on a month­ly ba­sis at the port in Ce­dros.

How­ev­er, that same trip from T&T to Venezuela would cost TT$1,200 but very few Trin­bag­o­ni­ans ac­tu­al­ly make that trip, ac­cord­ing to Im­mi­gra­tion sources.

Some days, ac­cord­ing to 58-year-old Ce­dros vil­lager, Mo­han Ser­aj, scores of Venezue­lans line the street and erect ta­bles where they sell clothes, footwear, jew­el­ry, or­na­ments and ham­mocks. Their prices start from TT$100.

Dur­ing the vis­it to Ce­dros on Fri­day, the T&T Guardian met with two Venezue­lan women who were sell­ing items that they brought from Venezuela.

When asked to com­ment why they came here to sell, both Span­ish-speak­ing women de­clined to an­swer. How­ev­er, a close friend of theirs said that be­cause of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis Venezue­lans come here on a dai­ly ba­sis to trade their goods for mon­ey in an at­tempt to bet­ter their liveli­hood back in Venezuela.

"Some of them come for a day or two. Some of them stay for months. Some­times they rent a room from some­one here for TT$250 a day or some vil­lagers here in Ce­dros feel very sor­ry for them and keep them in their homes for free. Some of them even spread out to oth­er ar­eas in Trinidad and stay per­ma­nent­ly, most of the times il­le­gal­ly," one Ce­dros vil­lager said.

"They come to sell ei­ther here in Ce­dros or Point Fortin or as far as San Fer­nan­do. What can you re­al­ly do? They are des­per­ate and look­ing for a means to sur­vive. You can't blame them for try­ing," the vil­lager added.

When asked how the Coast Guard bat­tled il­le­gal en­try by Venezue­lans and how many of them have been tak­en in­to cus­tody or sent back up­on in­ter­cep­tion out in the high seas when they at­tempt to come to T&T to trade drugs, arms and am­mu­ni­tion for food and ba­by stuff, pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer Lt Com­man­der Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste would on­ly say:

"I am fail­ing to un­der­stand where the con­cerns are be­cause Venezue­lans have been trad­ing by sea for decades up­on decades, in droves be­fore you and I were born and it is con­tin­u­ing. That trade does not end. I sup­pose now that there is an eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion and they have prob­a­bly in­ten­si­fied their trade be­cause they need to eat but there is noth­ing strange about those move­ments in terms of them trad­ing and go­ing back."

An email list­ing sev­er­al ques­tions sent to Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador Coro­mo­to Godoy-Calderon last week went unan­swered. Sev­er­al calls to the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in an at­tempt to speak with her were un­suc­cess­ful as she was said to be not in of­fice.

Ar­rival sta­tis­tics

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta re­ceived, ar­rivals from Venezuela jumped by 6,000 be­tween 2013 and 2014, from 15,008 to 21,052.

In 2015, the Gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and T&T agreed to ex­pand their strate­gic and co-op­er­a­tive part­ner­ship in sev­er­al ar­eas.

Venezuela Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro re­port­ed­ly said both na­tions will set in mo­tion co-op­er­a­tion agree­ments in en­er­gy, trade, tourism, se­cu­ri­ty, ed­u­ca­tion and cul­ture.

US Trav­el Ad­vi­so­ry to Venezuela

Armed rob­beries take place through­out the coun­try, in­clud­ing ar­eas gen­er­al­ly pre­sumed safe and fre­quent­ed by tourists. Street crime can oc­cur any­where and at any time of the day or night. Even up­scale res­i­den­tial ar­eas are not im­mune from street crime and home in­va­sion rob­beries.

While vis­it­ing Venezuela, US cit­i­zens are en­cour­aged to main­tain a low pro­file and car­ry as lit­tle US cur­ren­cy as pos­si­ble. Avoid con­spic­u­ous dis­plays of wealth, such as wear­ing ex­pen­sive watch­es or jew­el­ry, and avoid hav­ing cell­phones or oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vices vis­i­ble to avoid be­com­ing a tar­get of crime.

In­ci­dents of pira­cy off the coast of Venezuela re­main a con­cern. Yachties should note that an­chor­ing off­shore is not con­sid­ered safe. While the ma­jor­i­ty of re­ports in­volve lo­cal fish­er­man, for­eign­ers have been tar­get­ed. Some of these at­tacks have been es­pe­cial­ly vi­o­lent and re­sult­ed in the deaths of the pas­sen­gers aboard the ships.

Mari­nas, in­clud­ing those in Puer­to La Cruz and Mar­gari­ta Is­land (Por­la­mar), pro­vide on­ly min­i­mal se­cu­ri­ty, and US cit­i­zens should ex­er­cise a height­ened lev­el of cau­tion in Venezue­lan wa­ters.