Raphael John-Lall

Venezue­lan in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert An­drés Pieran­toni is crit­i­cis­ing T&T for dis­man­tling its tra­di­tion­al re­la­tion­ship with most of Cari­com as its re­la­tion­ship with the US gets deep­er.

Pieran­toni gave this view on Fri­day night on the Venezue­lan pro­gramme “Cara a Cara” in an in­ter­view with Venezue­lan jour­nal­ist Clodoval­do Hernán­dez.

Last week Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­mit­ted that she no longer con­sid­ers Cari­com a re­li­able part­ner and there will be a re­align­ment of T&T’s for­eign pol­i­cy in the fu­ture.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, when asked if T&T will be used as a proxy by the US in the event of a war, Pieran­toni ar­gued that T&T’s Gov­ern­ment is al­low­ing the coun­try to be used by the Amer­i­cans as a base, which sep­a­rates it from the rest of the re­gion.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is tak­ing a po­si­tion sim­i­lar to that of Guyana and very far re­moved from the rest of the Caribbean, and even from Cari­com and the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. It is strik­ing, for ex­am­ple, that small is­lands like An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Vin­cent and St Lu­cia have tak­en a dig­ni­fied stance in this geopo­lit­i­cal con­text,” Pieran­toni ex­plained.

Speak­ing about T&T’s strug­gling econ­o­my, he said T&T was en­coun­ter­ing prob­lems due to its huge de­pen­dence on nat­ur­al gas, which has led to its de­posits be­ing de­plet­ed, and so it needs Venezuela’s re­sources.

“Hence the pres­sure ex­ert­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter her­self to ac­ti­vate the agree­ment in or­der to con­nect to the Drag­on Field through the Hi­bis­cus plat­form, which they or Shell own north­east of Trinidad. It’s just a few kilo­me­tres away, be­cause with­out Venezue­lan gas, Trinidad’s econ­o­my would col­lapse,” Pieran­toni com­ment­ed.

He gave the view that the lack of re­sources has re­sult­ed in chal­lenges in elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in T&T as well as in the pro­duc­tion of urea, methanol and steel.

“Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment in Trinidad and a num­ber of oth­er fac­tors have al­ready been ob­served. For Trinidad and To­ba­go, the gas sup­ply is tru­ly vi­tal. So we are in a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, since on the one hand the Unit­ed States us­es Venezuela to guar­an­tee Trinidad’s sur­vival, be­cause ev­i­dent­ly, with the cost of US gas sup­plies, they would not al­low Trinidad to ex­port the prod­ucts it ex­ports, which gen­er­ate its for­eign ex­change bal­ance,” Pieran­toni stat­ed.

He be­lieves that the Unit­ed States al­so im­pos­es strict and max­i­mum mil­i­tary co­op­er­a­tion on T&T’s Gov­ern­ment, the re­sult of which has been that T&T is dis­tanc­ing it­self sig­nif­i­cant­ly from Venezuela.

“It is not sur­pris­ing that, af­ter the Trinida­di­an fish­er­men were killed af­ter be­ing mis­tak­en for peo­ple from Cumaná, the Unit­ed States em­bassy in Trinidad has tak­en the step of re­in­forc­ing its se­cu­ri­ty so that no one ap­proach­es them, be­cause there is a re­al grow­ing aver­sion among the Trinida­di­an peo­ple against the Amer­i­can pres­ence,” he em­pha­sised.

Life goes on for Venezue­lans de­spite ris­ing ten­sions

De­spite ris­ing ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela and the talk of war, life for many Venezue­lans con­tin­ues as nor­mal, from cul­tur­al to busi­ness to gov­ern­ment events.

Base­ball is Venezuela’s na­tion­al sport, and the base­ball sea­son kicked off this week with a game be­tween Nave­g­antes del Ma­g­a­l­lanes y Leones del Cara­cas. The base­ball sta­di­um in Cara­cas was packed with thou­sands of base­ball-crazy fans, based on YouTube videos.

Last week, CBS re­porters were in Venezuela do­ing a show for 60 Min­utes, and their re­porters spoke to Venezue­lans on the ground, some of whom said they were ner­vous but at the same time said they have to make a liv­ing and were go­ing about their dai­ly lives.

At the busi­ness and gov­ern­ment lev­el, con­fer­ences and meet­ings con­tin­ued.

Venezuela’s Gov­ern­ment held an in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on its space pro­gramme where Chi­na, Brazil and oth­er coun­tries were present.

From Oc­to­ber 24 to 26, there was the “Aut­ofest” au­to show in Cara­cas, where au­to com­pa­nies showed off new ve­hi­cles from Chi­na and oth­er coun­tries that are en­ter­ing the Venezue­lan mar­ket. Ac­cord­ing to Venezue­lan so­cial me­dia pages with videos and pho­tos, thou­sands of Venezue­lans pa­tro­n­ised the event.