Venezuela Justice Minister: T&T is Venezuelan territory

Raphael John-Lall

As ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela con­tin­ue to rise, Venezue­lan Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo is ac­cus­ing both T&T and Guayana of al­low­ing them­selves to be used by the Amer­i­cans to launch an at­tack against Venezuela.

Re­fer­ring to his­tor­i­cal ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­putes, he al­so claimed that both T&T and Guyana have been “Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ries.”

Venezuela claims the oil-rich Es­se­qui­bo re­gion of Guyana which is rough­ly two-thirds of Guyana’s ter­ri­to­ry.

“There are those coun­tries, our neigh­bours, who want to get in­to a fight with Venezuela. And I speak specif­i­cal­ly right now of Trinidad and Guyana. They lend them­selves to the Amer­i­cans to launch an at­tack. Take it as you want. Guyana is tru­ly Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry. Trinidad has al­ways been Venezue­lan ter­ri­to­ry,” he said.

He made these star­tling claims on his week­ly tv pro­gramme, Con El Ma­zo Dan­do on Wednes­day night.

Ob­servers around the re­gion quick­ly took no­tice of Ca­bel­lo’s threats.

Ed­uar­do Menoni, a jour­nal­ist and ed­i­tor at Lib­er­tad Me­dia based in El Sal­vador on his X plat­form, up­loaded a video clip of Ca­bel­lo’s ref­er­ence to T&T in which Menoni called it a “threat” against T&T and he al­so pre­dict­ed that Ca­bel­lo’s and Venezuela’s Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro’s days are num­bered.

Ca­bel­lo al­so warned that the Amer­i­can pres­ence in the Caribbean is not on­ly about Venezuela but the rest of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can re­gion.

“Any pres­i­dent who thinks this is on­ly about Venezuela is a fool,” he said while cit­ing the ex­am­ple of for­mer Bo­li­vian pres­i­dent Luis Arce, an al­ly of Venezuela who was ar­rest­ed on Wednes­day on cor­rup­tion charges.

In Oc­to­ber, T&T’s Gov­ern­ment in a joint state­ment with the US con­grat­u­lat­ed Bo­livia’s new pro-Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment.

Ca­bel­lo al­so con­demned the US Gov­ern­ment for seiz­ing Venezuela’s oil tanker ear­li­er on Wednes­day evening say­ing the Amer­i­cans want Venezuela’s oil and gold with­out pay­ing for it.