Raphael Lall

Thou­sands of gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers marched through the Venezue­lan state of Mi­ran­da on Tues­day, hold­ing plac­ards of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and call­ing on her “not to de­stroy the peace” in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Among those lead­ing the demon­stra­tion was Car­men Melén­dez, May­or of Cara­cas and Vice Pres­i­dent for Re­gion­al Af­fairs of Venezuela’s rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty. Melén­dez ac­cused the Trinidad and To­ba­go leader of align­ing with the Unit­ed States against Venezuela and went as far as claim­ing she was “mur­der­ing chil­dren.”

“Venezuela con­tin­ues to send a mes­sage of peace; how­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go is join­ing Wash­ing­ton in mur­der­ing chil­dren, the el­der­ly, and an en­tire pop­u­la­tion,” Melén­dez de­clared.

She added that while some “shout for war,” Venezuela re­mains com­mit­ted to solv­ing its peo­ple’s is­sues peace­ful­ly. Melén­dez urged cit­i­zens to ex­er­cise “so­cial in­tel­li­gence” and to de­fend the na­tion’s “peace and sov­er­eign­ty with dig­ni­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to Venezuela’s state-aligned news­pa­per Úl­ti­mas Noti­cias, First Vice Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Pe­dro In­fante re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been de­clared per­sona non gra­ta by Venezuela’s leg­is­la­ture. He ac­cused her of be­ing a “trai­tor” and of “lend­ing her ter­ri­to­ry to the Unit­ed States as an air­craft car­ri­er to at­tack Venezuela.”

Nahum Fer­nán­dez, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mo­bil­i­sa­tion for the So­cial­ist Par­ty, said that sim­i­lar march­es were be­ing held across the coun­try to “de­fend peace and sov­er­eign­ty.” He al­so praised the Venezue­lan Armed Forces and Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro for their “cor­rect po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions” in pro­tect­ing the na­tion.

“Who­ev­er mess­es with Venezuela will be ru­ined, be­cause we are de­ter­mined to be free,” Fer­nán­dez warned.

Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for her part, has said that Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to bar her en­try and sus­pend all en­er­gy re­la­tions with Trinidad and To­ba­go will not af­fect her gov­ern­ment.