Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Two more Venezue­lan sur­vivors from the Delta Amacuro boatwreck have been res­cued from the high seas, while a body, be­lieved to be that of a ship­wrecked pas­sen­ger, resur­faced at Fuller­ton Beach, Ce­dros, yes­ter­day.

The bloat­ed corpse of a Venezue­lan male washed ashore be­fore mid­day. The man has not yet been iden­ti­fied but Ce­dros po­lice said they will li­aise with the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy him.

The boat­load of over 25 mi­grants had been bound for Trinidad but while at­tempt­ing to cross the strait of the sea known as Bo­ca de Ser­pi­ente, a strip of wa­ter that sep­a­rates Venezuela from Trinidad, their boat cap­sized throw­ing every­one in­to the sea. A to­tal of four bod­ies have been found so far—two men, a woman and a child.

Venezuela’s Tane­tanae Delta’s Face­book page list­ed the names of the sev­en sur­vivors.
Com­mis­sion­er Noel Valder­ra­ma, Sec­re­tary of Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty of the Delta Amacuro state, was quot­ed as say­ing, “So far, there are sev­en sur­vivors, they were eval­u­at­ed by med­ical per­son­nel and they are in good health, we are ver­i­fy­ing their iden­ti­ties and then re­turn­ing them to their homes. It is a nor­mal pro­ce­dure that does not im­ply any com­mit­ment for them, it is what is done in these cas­es.”

He al­so is­sued a warn­ing to Venezue­lans not to take the risk to trav­el il­le­gal­ly to Trinidad.
“You should not trav­el il­le­gal­ly, there is no guar­an­tee of reach­ing your in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion, nor is there any­one to en­sure your safe­ty and pro­tect you,” he said.

The re­port re­vealed that one of the sur­vivors had been wear­ing a life jack­et and had held on to an­oth­er ship­wrecked man, sav­ing both their lives.

“If de­spite the risk they run, the high sums they pay for leav­ing and the il­le­gal­i­ty of the trip, they de­cide to do so, they must take care of them­selves, it is in­cred­i­ble that they pay so much mon­ey and not even have a life­guard, it is al­most a sui­cide,” Valder­ra­ma said in the pub­li­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, Venezue­lan na­tion­als were in­censed by Valdera­ma’s com­ments.

Mon­i­ca Bira­bal de Ben­itez said the peo­ple who were ship­wrecked had been search­ing for a bet­ter life. 
“What do you think? Who risk their lives for the love of art? They leave with­out think­ing be­cause of the “rulers” scoundrels, who in the end are not even think­ing about the garbage of the coun­try that they are leav­ing to their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren,” she wrote.