Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Threats made against Trinidad and To­ba­go by Venezuela’s Maduro ad­min­is­tra­tion must be treat­ed with ur­gency and cau­tion, ac­cord­ing to Yesina Gon­za­lez, so­cial ac­tivist and spokesper­son for the Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty in T&T.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Gon­za­lez warned that the sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate rapid­ly, with se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions for re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

She said there are ac­tive ef­forts to desta­bilise T&T’s Gov­ern­ment.

Gon­za­lez added that a high­ly dan­ger­ous Venezue­lan crim­i­nal net­work is op­er­at­ing with­in T&T, in­volved in ac­tiv­i­ties such as rob­beries, kid­nap­pings, as­sas­si­na­tion plots and oth­er or­gan­ised crimes, which could sig­nif­i­cant­ly wors­en the lo­cal crime sit­u­a­tion.

She al­so cau­tioned that Venezuela may be head­ing to­wards civ­il war or an in­ter­nal coup, not­ing that in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion re­mains a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Such a sce­nario, she said, would have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for the re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­za­lez, crim­i­nal gang lead­ers are al­leged­ly be­ing sent to T&T to un­der­mine po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, claim­ing they have lo­cal con­nec­tions and are op­posed to both the cur­rent T&T ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tors al­lied with it. She said the re­cent threats made by Venezue­lan lead­ers have caused in­creased xeno­pho­bia against Venezue­lan im­mi­grants.