Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The Bo­li­var­i­an Al­liance for the Peo­ples of Our Amer­i­ca (AL­BA-TCP) has con­demned the re­cent mil­i­tary buildup by the Unit­ed States in the Caribbean, warn­ing it could “desta­bilise” the re­gion.

The AL­BA bloc, aligned with Venezuela, in­cludes Caribbean coun­tries such as Do­mini­ca and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, as well as Latin Amer­i­can na­tions like Hon­duras and Nicaragua.

“These are dis­cred­it­ed fig­ures, lack­ing moral au­thor­i­ty, who re­sort to ridicu­lous false­hoods and pre­texts to try to fab­ri­cate a sce­nario that our peo­ple al­ready know all too well,” the al­liance said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

AL­BA-TCP warned that if the US es­ca­lates its psy­cho­log­i­cal and me­dia op­er­a­tions as part of a mod­el of ag­gres­sion against Venezuela, the Caribbean could face a pe­ri­od of un­prece­dent­ed desta­bil­i­sa­tion. “No pow­er should threat­en re­gion­al peace or un­der­es­ti­mate the con­science of the peo­ple,” the state­ment added.

The bloc al­so stressed that any at­tempt to use force against a sov­er­eign na­tion would im­me­di­ate­ly im­pact the po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and so­cial sta­bil­i­ty of all of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, which it said must re­main a Zone of Peace.

Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Yván Gil, echoed the warn­ing, say­ing that sta­bil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is at risk due to the US mil­i­tary de­ploy­ment in the re­gion.

“What is at stake to­day in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is pre­cise­ly glob­al sta­bil­i­ty and peace; the vi­o­la­tion of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean peace zone… threat­ened with an un­usu­al de­ploy­ment of mil­i­tary as­sets,” he said dur­ing the Meet­ing of Ju­rists in De­fence of In­ter­na­tion­al Law in Cara­cas on Fri­day.

Gil added that the threat “is not on­ly against Venezuela.” He clar­i­fied that “we are not fac­ing a con­fronta­tion here,” cit­ing a UN spokesper­son’s call for “de-es­ca­la­tion” of what was de­scribed as a con­fronta­tion be­tween two states.

“Venezuela has no dis­pute with the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Venezuela is a free and sov­er­eign coun­try that is be­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly at­tacked by a mem­ber state of the Unit­ed Na­tions, which is us­ing its ca­pac­i­ty to gen­er­ate death and de­struc­tion to threat­en an­oth­er coun­try. There are no ten­sions here that need to be re­solved, nor is there a di­a­logue that needs to be es­tab­lished be­tween two par­ties in dis­pute over an in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue,” Gil em­pha­sised.