The ill-fat­ed boat car­ry­ing 41 Venezue­lans which cap­sized off Guiria three weeks ago on­ly had the ca­pac­i­ty for eight peo­ple and had no life jack­et or nav­i­ga­tion equip­ment.

The over­loaded boat—car­ry­ing just over five times the amount it should have car­ried—was cit­ed as the main cause of the ship­wreck. This in­ci­dent oc­curred af­ter the ves­sel left Venezuela on De­cem­ber 6. At last count last week, 28 bod­ies had been found.

The re­sult fol­lowed a probe of the in­ci­dent which was de­tailed in a com­mu­niqué from the Venezue­lan Gov­ern­ment. The re­port was is­sued on Christ­mas Day by A Car­men Tere­sa Melén­dez Ri­vas, Min­is­ter of Peo­ple's Pow­er for In­ter­nal Re­la­tions, Jus­tice and Peace. The state­ment re­ferred to the re­sults of the tech­ni­cal and foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out by spe­cialised Venezue­lan agen­cies. Ri­vas stat­ed, "The tragedy that oc­curred in Güiria has caused im­mense sor­row to the Venezue­lan peo­ple."

The boat had been head­ing to T&T, but nev­er got close. Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties which launched in­ves­ti­ga­tions stat­ed it in­volved a hu­man traf­fick­ing/smug­gling ring. Each of the 41 peo­ple had paid (US)$150 for the trip. The ves­sel's own­er and the own­er of the farm from where pas­sen­gers left were both ar­rest­ed. Ten oth­ers were al­so sought. Luis Ali Mar­tinez, the 56-year-old own­er of the wa­ter­craft, will be charged with al­leged hu­man traf­fick­ing on the Venezue­lan coast.

The in­ci­dent caused T&T to be blamed false­ly for its oc­cur­rence. There were al­le­ga­tions that the boat was de­tained in Trinidad and re­turned to Venezuela. How­ev­er, the T&T Coast Guard said that it had not in­ter­cept­ed any boats from Guiria.

Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion mem­bers and their sup­port­ers in and out of T&T and at the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States at­tempt­ed to blame T&T, some us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to try to pres­sure this coun­try for "open-door" ac­cess by un­lim­it­ed Venezue­lans. Some claimed the un­for­tu­nate pas­sen­gers were flee­ing per­se­cu­tion in Venezuela or the boat had been "turned back" from here.

How­ev­er, in the of­fi­cial probe re­sults, Ri­vas stat­ed that on De­cem­ber 6, 2020, the ship iden­ti­fied as "My Mem­o­ry" was wrecked in the Gulf of Paria, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 nau­ti­cal miles from the de­par­ture point, lo­cat­ed in the El Rincón sec­tor, Güiria, in the Su­cre state.

"On the boat was a group of peo­ple who were go­ing to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to spend the Christ­mas hol­i­days with their fam­i­lies and oth­ers were go­ing to work in pre­vi­ous­ly arranged po­si­tions.

"The main cause of the wreck was the over­load­ing of the fi­bre­glass rock-type boat, which, hav­ing a ca­pac­i­ty for eight peo­ple and a max­i­mum weight of two tons, car­ried 41 peo­ple and a weight of ap­prox­i­mate­ly four tons.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they did not have life jack­ets or the nec­es­sary safe­ty equip­ment for nav­i­ga­tion; cou­pled with the pre­vail­ing bad weath­er in the area at the time the ac­ci­dent oc­curred, in­flu­enc­ing the in­ci­dence of north­west­er­ly trade winds, which caused a surge of two to three me­ters."

Ri­vas al­so stat­ed, "The ves­sel left an il­le­gal place and covert­ly at night, with the in­ten­tion of evad­ing the mar­itime con­trols es­tab­lished by the se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies of (Venezuela).

"The Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ment, in or­der to guar­an­tee the due pro­tec­tion of the Venezue­lan peo­ple, has pro­vid­ed greater con­trols and se­cu­ri­ty de­vices so that these events do not oc­cur again."

Ri­vas said, "Like­wise, com­pre­hen­sive so­cial sup­port to the af­fect­ed fam­i­lies, ac­com­pa­ny­ing them in their pain for these ir­repara­ble loss­es in such a re­gret­table ac­ci­dent, in­clud­ing the com­mu­ni­ties where they lived, all our sol­i­dar­i­ty for the Peo­ple of Güiria."

Ri­vas al­so stat­ed, "Fi­nal­ly, we re­ject the po­lit­i­cal ma­nip­u­la­tion of ex­trem­ist sec­tors that, with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion for the pain of the Venezue­lan fam­i­lies who lost their loved ones, have used the im­age and mem­o­ry of the de­ceased, in their at­tempt to af­fect the sta­bil­i­ty of the coun­try, as well as the ad­e­quate co­or­di­na­tion re­la­tions be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and T&T."

'Rest in peace...'

A De­cem­ber 18 ACN Cana­da ar­ti­cle claimed Venezue­lan mafias charge US$500 to trav­el "the dan­ger­ous routes used by traf­fick­ers in the past to move gaso­line and drugs and now, to traf­fic hu­man be­ings."

The T&T Gov­ern­ment has stepped up sur­veil­lance and crack­down on traf­fick­ing. Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­cent­ly told Par­lia­ment over ten peo­ple in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty agency peo­ple have ap­peared in re­cent months be­fore the courts for traf­fick­ing.

Be­fore Christ­mas, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley warned that up­com­ing laws will tight­en an­ti-traf­fick­ing laws and Venezue­lans in­volved in the traf­fick­ing prob­lem will be among the first to be sent back to their coun­try in the up­com­ing re-reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cise for the 16,523 reg­is­tered Venezue­lans here in T&T. This be­gins in Jan­u­ary. Their stay in T&T will be ex­tend­ed to Ju­ly 2021. That leg­is­la­tion is a pri­or­i­ty item for Par­lia­ment ahead. Op­po­si­tion whip David Lee didn't an­swer Sat­ur­day on if the Op­po­si­tion would sup­port this bill to pro­tect T&T.

Up to Sat­ur­day, some of the T&T-based rel­a­tives of the vic­tims, in mourn­ing, were re­call­ing their loved ones and what might have been if they had lived to cross the 100 KM to T&T and spend the Christ­mas with them. Among the dead were chil­dren, a preg­nant woman, and youths.

"Que Dios les con­ce­da des­can­so en paz y nos ayude a to­dos..." said one man whose part­ner was among the dead. This means "May God grant you rest in peace and help us all."

She was buried in Guiria.