Raphael John-Lall

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López, has strong­ly con­demned the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go over re­cent state­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said her ad­min­is­tra­tion would al­low the Unit­ed States to use T&T as a base if Venezuela at­tacked Guyana.

Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing in Cara­cas yes­ter­day, Padri­no López ac­cused T&T of align­ing it­self with Wash­ing­ton’s agen­da against Venezuela. His re­marks fol­lowed com­ments made on Sun­day, when he claimed that “Trinida­di­an mafias” were desta­bil­is­ing Venezuela through hu­man traf­fick­ing and oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The T&T Gov­ern­ment has said it would lend its ter­ri­to­ry to the US em­pire to at­tack what they call the Car­tel of the Suns,” Padri­no López said. He went on to ref­er­ence colo­nial his­to­ry, cit­ing British and Napoleon­ic-era views of T&T as a strate­gic mil­i­tary out­post against Venezuela.

The min­is­ter fur­ther ac­cused Port-of-Spain of be­ing sub­servient to Wash­ing­ton.

“So, we deeply re­gret the ster­ile, use­less, vas­sal-like pro­nounce­ment of these gov­ern­ments (Guyana and T&T) that have lent them­selves to the nar­ra­tive of US im­pe­ri­al­ism … caus­ing em­bar­rass­ment to the peo­ples that these vas­sal gov­ern­ments lead.”

Padri­no López al­so de­scribed T&T’s stance as “shame­less,” say­ing his­to­ry would judge the coun­try harsh­ly.

“It takes a lot of shame­less­ness for these coun­tries to lend them­selves to this nar­ra­tive from Wash­ing­ton… His­to­ry will not for­give this; it will take its toll on these oli­garchies, on these gen­u­flect­ing, vas­sal gov­ern­ments that have no shame.”

Lat­er yes­ter­day, Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro host­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al press con­fer­ence with more than 330 me­dia hous­es. The brief­ing fo­cused on Wash­ing­ton’s de­ploy­ment of mil­i­tary as­sets to the Caribbean.

Ahead of the event, Guardian Me­dia sub­mit­ted a ques­tion through the Venezue­lan Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain, ask­ing Maduro to re­spond di­rect­ly to T&T’s stat­ed po­si­tion on po­ten­tial­ly host­ing US troops.

Dur­ing the press con­fer­ence’s fi­nal round of ques­tions, a jour­nal­ist raised the is­sue, but Maduro avoid­ed a di­rect an­swer. In­stead, he stressed the im­por­tance of uni­ty with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) to safe­guard re­gion­al peace and ad­dress shared chal­lenges.