Venezuelan officials defiant as US military activity continues in Caribbean

Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro made it clear yes­ter­day that no for­eign “threat or ag­gres­sion” will in­tim­i­date the Venezue­lan peo­ple, fol­low­ing what he called 17 weeks of threats from the US, as he com­mem­o­rat­ed the 105th an­niver­sary of the Bo­li­var­i­an Mil­i­tary Avi­a­tion of Venezuela and the 33rd an­niver­sary of the No­vem­ber 27, 1992 at­tempt­ed coup.

“If we have to take up arms, we will do so, and we would have a des­tiny of tri­umph and dig­ni­ty,” Maduro said dur­ing a mil­i­tary cer­e­mo­ny in Cara­cas.

He al­so said that “im­pe­ri­al­ism” has un­leashed psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and im­moral pres­sures.

How­ev­er, he added that this sit­u­a­tion has yield­ed “great in­sights that, in pre­vi­ous years filled with ap­par­ent calm, we could not clear­ly dis­cern from our cur­rent per­spec­tive”.

Oth­er se­nior of­fi­cials ad­dressed is­sues that have been re­port­ed in the in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia.

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo re­vealed that a US plane land­ed in Venezuela yes­ter­day, con­tra­dict­ing warn­ings that Venezue­lan air­space is un­safe.

“By the way, how is it so dan­ger­ous that a US plane brought Venezue­lan mi­grants here to­day? It’s the im­moral­i­ty of those who gov­ern the US. They say things to oth­ers, and then they brought a plane here to­day that land­ed with 175 peo­ple,” he said dur­ing the broad­cast of his pro­gramme, Con el Ma­zo Dan­do, on Wednes­day night.

The flight Ca­bel­lo re­ferred to is flight num­ber 92 of the Plan Vuelta a la Pa­tria (Re­turn to the Home­land Plan), through which Venezue­lan mi­grants are brought back home.

The flight yes­ter­day re­turned 175 Venezue­lan na­tion­als: 142 men, 26 women, two boys and five girls.

Last Fri­day, the US gov­ern­ment is­sued a NO­TAM (No­tice to Air­men), de­clar­ing Venezuela a zone of “po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment”.

The Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment al­so an­nounced the re­vo­ca­tion of the con­ces­sions of six in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines af­ter they “uni­lat­er­al­ly sus­pend­ed their com­mer­cial air op­er­a­tions to and from the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela”.

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López, al­so sent greet­ings to mem­bers of Venezuela’s air force on Venezuela’s Mil­i­tary Avi­a­tion Day.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, Padri­no López said the Bo­li­var­i­an Mil­i­tary Avi­a­tion has dis­tin­guished it­self by “tak­ing on great chal­lenges, re­new­ing goals and over­com­ing enor­mous dif­fi­cul­ties”, and that in this com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 105th an­niver­sary of “air pow­er”, they reaf­firm their com­mit­ment to fight for the de­fence of Venezuela’s in­de­pen­dence.

Mean­while, out­side of the ten­sions be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Venezuela and the US, most Venezue­lans con­tin­ue to work, play and car­ry out Christ­mas-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

From Fri­day un­til Mon­day, Venezuela will host the In­ter­na­tion­al Tourism Fair of Venezuela 2025 (FitVen) in the city of Puer­to Ca­bel­lo, where in­ter­na­tion­al tourism op­er­a­tors will be present.

Just last week, DAM­AS­CO, a Venezue­lan elec­tron­ics and ap­pli­ance man­u­fac­tur­er, opened its new­ly con­struct­ed cor­po­rate head of­fice in Cara­cas, a US$10 mil­lion sky­scraper.

On Wednes­day, Pres­i­dent Maduro al­so launched new­ly re­fur­bished hos­pi­tals and health clin­ics through­out the coun­try, as the coun­try’s econ­o­my slow­ly re­cov­ers.