There would be no co­caine in­dus­try as lu­cra­tive as the kind we have now if the de­mand by co­caine users was not so strong as it is in North Amer­i­ca, es­pe­cial­ly the US and Eu­rope. But it is al­so true that the co­caine in­dus­try could not con­tin­ue to grow on the pro­duc­tion side, and as a thriv­ing, pros­per­ous busi­ness on the dis­tri­b­u­tion side, if there was not com­plic­i­ty by gov­ern­ments, pub­lic ser­vice and law en­force­ment per­son­nel in pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing coun­tries, and if the chain of val­ue across coun­tries in this Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion was not so well greased by cor­rup­tion.

The drugs, guns, gangs and ter­ror­ism as­pect in the un­der­bel­ly of so­ci­eties in the Amer­i­c­as is re­al. The in­sti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion and com­plic­i­ty which make it pos­si­ble is al­so re­al. Nico­las Maduro’s vi­o­la­tion of every as­pect of the Bar­ba­dos Ac­cord, meant to fa­cil­i­tate a free and fair elec­tion, is al­so re­al and no elec­tion tal­ly sheet has been pro­duced by the au­thor­i­ties in Venezuela for the 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion up to this day.

In the Guyanese elec­tion of 2020, the US in­ter­vened, as did Cari­com, to en­sure the elec­toral will of the Guyanese peo­ple was ho­n­oured af­ter months of dis­pute. Some prime min­is­ters in Cari­com recog­nised Maduro as pres­i­dent the day af­ter dis­put­ed elec­tion re­sults were de­clared, and be­fore Cari­com could even dis­cuss the mat­ter, on­ly to end up di­vid­ed on the ques­tion of ask­ing the elec­tion au­thor­i­ty in Venezuela to pro­duce the tal­ly sheet on the floor of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

Cari­com lead­ers have for­gone the prin­ci­ples of free and fair elec­tion and democ­ra­cy it­self with re­gard to Venezuela, as some are per­son­al­ly be­hold­en to Maduro be­cause of Petro Caribe debt for­give­ness, and oth­ers have re­ceived Venezuela’s high­est na­tion­al award. So, per­son­al loy­al­ty and self-in­ter­est are per­haps fac­tors in this. One nev­er knows.

Is the prin­ci­ple of sov­er­eign­ty valu­able? Cer­tain­ly it is. Is the prin­ci­ple of non-in­ter­fer­ence in the in­ter­nal af­fairs of oth­er states im­por­tant? Yes it is. Is the con­cept of a Zone of Peace im­por­tant, mean­ing, a zone free of mil­i­tary ac­tion. Ab­solute­ly. Small states, above all else, and peace­ful states in par­tic­u­lar, would see this as a valu­able prin­ci­ple of pro­tec­tion.

Does T&T want to sup­port a dic­ta­tor­ship sev­en miles away with un­pre­dictable con­se­quences? I think our PM is say­ing no. Does T&T sup­port free and fair elec­tions next door? I think that our PM is say­ing, yes. Is in­sta­bil­i­ty in Venezuela a threat to T&T cit­i­zens and to democ­ra­cy and sov­er­eign­ty here? I think our PM is say­ing yes, it is. Does our Prime Min­is­ter want US help with drugs and gangs in T&T? And does she want pro­tec­tive help from the US with re­gard to Maduro and his pos­si­ble ex­cess­es? I think that the PM’s an­swer in both in­stances would be yes. Maduro has been in con­flict with Guyana, Colom­bia, Brazil, all bor­der coun­tries and with T&T.

And quite frankly, that is where the stand-off is with­in Cari­com. All Cari­com lead­ers at the time, in­clud­ing T&T’s lead­er­ship at that time, sup­port­ed Forbes Burn­ham, who op­pressed his peo­ple, rigged elec­tions, sup­pressed op­po­si­tion, fa­cil­i­tat­ed the ex­e­cu­tion of Wal­ter Rod­ney and gave life and op­por­tu­ni­ty for the sac­ri­lege of the Jim Jones com­mune. Burn­ham was sim­ply em­braced by Cari­com as one of the boys.

Maduro, like Burn­ham, is ex­treme­ly charm­ing and full of guile and deft at fi­nesse. But he is a bru­tal dic­ta­tor.

Eight mil­lion peo­ple have fled Venezuela; five mil­lion un­der him. Op­po­si­tion politi­cians have been per­se­cut­ed. Thou­sands of peo­ple im­pris­oned. His an­ti-Amer­i­can stance might be de­fen­sive, but it might al­so be pure pop­ulist and geopo­lit­i­cal align­ment strat­e­gy. Such stances, how­ev­er, should not buy our com­plic­i­ty with his ex­cess­es. And it should not fa­cil­i­tate Maduro’s hid­ing be­hind no­tions of sov­er­eign­ty, non-in­ter­fer­ence and a Zone of Peace, all things which should be cher­ished, but which Maduro has sur­ren­dered the right to claim by his ac­tions and be­hav­iour with­in his own coun­try and with his neigh­bours.

By the same to­ken, Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean peo­ple have no de­sire to be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age in an un­de­clared war against Maduro and US in­ter­ven­tion may trig­ger peo­ple’s sol­i­dar­i­ty in the re­gion, even if their gov­ern­ments are silent. There is a lev­el of com­plex­i­ty here that needs to be ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is not a knight in shin­ing ar­mour in this. He wants Venezue­lan oil. And he is un­com­fort­able with the in­tense re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cu­ba and Venezuela, and the deep­en­ing in­volve­ment of Chi­na and Rus­sia in Venezuela. And in such things, we are en­ter­ing dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry, not just for the West­ern Hemi­sphere but for the wider glob­al pol­i­tics.