Peace, friend­ship, pros­per­i­ty.

Let us take note of the fact that a sig­nif­i­cant cross­ing has been made in terms of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and Trinidad and To­ba­go with the re­cent meet­ing be­tween For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers and Venezue­lan For­eign Min­is­ter Fe­lix Pla­cen­cia in Cara­cas.

The shout­ing match be­tween two lead­ers across the Gulf of Paria as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as­sumed of­fice, and as the stage was be­ing set by the US to get Nico­las Maduro out as Venezuela’s pres­i­dent, has died down.

Del­cy Ro­driguez, Maduro’s loy­al deputy, de­fend­ed Venezuela’s sov­er­eign­ty and as­sert­ed the Maduro gov­ern­ment’s re­sis­tance to ex­ter­nal pres­sure. Per­sad-Bisses­sar sought to se­cure T&T’s in­ter­est, in a sit­u­a­tion where she felt the De Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion had com­pro­mised it­self with the Maduro regime and alien­at­ed the US gov­ern­ment.

The T&T Prime Min­is­ter, there­fore, dis­tanced her­self from Maduro by align­ing with US pol­i­cy against the regime in Venezuela. She did so by break­ing with the Row­ley/Stu­art Young dis­po­si­tion to the Maduro regime and al­tered her ap­proach to US en­gage­ment.

She was at odds with Cari­com on its tra­di­tion­al ap­proach to the sov­er­eign­ty ques­tion in the con­text of a Caribbean-Latin Amer­i­can re­gion over­run by guns, gangs, drugs and transna­tion­al crime. She was firm in her stance on Venezue­lan bor­der ag­gres­sion in the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion to­wards Guyana, a Cari­com coun­try shar­ing a bor­der with Venezuela.

The ten­sion be­tween the two women lead­ers con­tin­ued af­ter the oust­ing of Maduro. Per­haps the fact that Ro­driguez, as Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent, had been very cosy with for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young, may have been on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mind.

Act­ing Pres­i­dent Ro­driguez, for her part, may have thought the T&T Prime Min­is­ter com­plic­it in fa­cil­i­tat­ing US ac­tiv­i­ties tar­get­ing Venezuela and its lead­ers. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two lead­ers tensed up.

The de­c­la­ra­tion of Per­sad-Bisses­sar as “per­sona non gra­ta” on Oc­to­ber 25, 2025, but­tressed by a res­o­lu­tion of the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly, drew a line in the sand long be­fore Maduro was force­ful­ly tak­en by the US on Jan­u­ary 3, 2025 and set the tone of Ro­driguez’s ap­proach to­wards the T&T leader.

But Ro­driguez knows when to sabre-rat­tle and when to dance. She has made a U-turn from de­fend­ing Maduro to co­op­er­at­ing with Don­ald Trump. And in a sit­u­a­tion where her coun­try is mil­i­tar­i­ly in the hands of the US, where her oil in­dus­try had be­come de­crepit but strate­gi­cal­ly valu­able to the US, and where she need­ed to ease the eco­nom­ic stress on the Venezue­lan peo­ple and the po­lit­i­cal stress on her­self and her gov­ern­ing regime, she is tak­ing steps to en­sure she has the US gov­ern­ment be­hind her. She needs some lev­el of lo­cal po­lit­i­cal con­trol. The com­pre­hen­sive deal with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on Venezuela’s oil re­serves makes that pos­si­ble.

But fate of­ten plays a hand in hu­man af­fairs and in po­lit­i­cal mat­ters. Venezuela had two se­vere earth­quakes in June in which 6, 500 peo­ple lost their lives. The T&T Gov­ern­ment ral­lied to of­fer hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance. NGOs here al­so sup­port­ed. They worked with Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T to en­sure that needs were met. Ro­driguez pub­licly de­clared her ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

Since April 2026, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had de­clared her in­ten­tion to send a del­e­ga­tion to Venezuela. It has tak­en her four months. But Sobers met Pla­cen­cia last week and a joint press re­lease cov­er­ing six ar­eas was is­sued last Fri­day.

April 2026 would have been nine months af­ter the “per­sona non gra­ta” de­c­la­ra­tion. The hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to Venezuela has been well ex­e­cut­ed, the Ro­driguez hard­ness has soft­ened, and with the US-Venezuela oil agree­ment for­mal­ly an­nounced by US Pres­i­dent Trump last month, the tim­ing of the vis­it by Min­is­ter Sobers and his del­e­ga­tion could not have been more per­fect. Qui­et talks would have pro­gressed things in the months be­fore.

The press re­lease iden­ti­fies an over­ar­ch­ing un­der­stand­ing cov­er­ing six ar­eas, not just en­er­gy. It is fit­ting that it be so. T&T and Venezuela are two neigh­bour­ing coun­tries joined by the wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria and by the Orinoco Riv­er. We now have thou­sands of Venezue­lans here as part of our pop­u­la­tion. And the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the oil in­dus­try in Venezuela will at­tract T&T na­tion­als and com­pa­nies to Venezuela. The ex­e­cu­tion of cross-bor­der gas arrange­ments is of mu­tu­al ben­e­fit and val­ue.

Time to build peace, friend­ship and pros­per­i­ty across the Gulf.