Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela grew up together, geologically, biologically and culturally. Deep veins of oil connect our rocks and soil. Our densely speciated biota owes its origins to the Orinoco Delta. It is from Venezuela that Ortonoid Man, Saladoid Man, Barrancoid Man, Arauquinoids, over thousands of years, crossed into Trinidad to people the “oldest settled island in the Caribbean”. (Arie Boomert)

I too grew up with Venezuela. Growing up on a hill in Claxton Bay, I lived next to the Hearnes. We called them the White Man and White Lady. They owned a jukebox, a relic from Club Bamboo in San Fernando, which they owned during World War II. Sometimes their old customers wandered by. Among them was Serrano, as red as a bottle of Correia’s Spanish Wine. From him I first heard the singsong rattle of the Spanish tongue. He was Venezuelan.

My form one Naparima College Spanish teacher Victor Cowan gave meaning to the rattle. In Form 6 I thought I had enough Spanish to flee to Venezuela. I had spent my time in the college library, reading — not studying my subjects. I could not face failing my exams. Venezuela was my escape. When I reached Icacos in a Government bus, it was dark. Spooky. The hurly-burly sea tossed the boats anchored close to shore. I had imagined a different picture. And I was penniless. I spent the night in a ditch, surveyed by snorting bison (behind a barbed-wire fence) and returned home the following day to face relieved parents and, eventually, economics, geography and history.

Ten years later, I met my wife: Dr Sylvia Moodie, a UWI lecturer. We were attending a calypso symposium at UWI. She was telling the anthropologist JD Elder that she knew of calypsos with Venezuelan influence. Her father had lived in Venezuela. One of her Spanish supervisors in Spain had called her La Bandera de Espanol en Latin America. She was researching the Trinidad Venezolanos. We visited the valleys of the Northern Range, Lopinot, Caura, Morne-La-Croix, Brasso Seco; Mundo Nuevo in the Central Range; and in South, Rio Claro.

There I learnt from generations of fascinating folk whose ancestors had migrated to Trinidad from Venezuela in the 19th century to build the cocoa industry. They came with their language, religion, music, medicine, and agrarian skills; between them and my wife’s books The Cocoa Panyols of Trinidad, Maljo, Bush Teas and Secret Prayers, Parang Canciones, I learnt Venezuela.

Our nation’s dim grasp of its geopolitical surrounds is historical. Venezuela is run by a revolutionary Government. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has broken its historical alignment with the US/Western Europe; that is, white power, the global imperialists. It has disengaged from the unipolar world and realigned with the multipolar world; with emerging nations, such as India, China, Russia, Iran, South Africa and institutions such as BRICS. The US Government gets its knickers in a twist over this.

The US grooms an entire court of Venezuelan puppets, pawns, panderers, puppets, poodles to retake Venezuela; to incite internal rebellion; to facilitate infiltration. It has frozen Venezuelan assets in US banks, sanctioned businesses and political officers of the republic. It is anxious to get its hands back (Chevron and ConocoPhillips for example) on the planet’s largest proven crude oil reserves (over 3 billion barrels).

Our prime minister seems to have enjoined the US: “He [Dr Rowley] and Young have to answer to US authorities regarding their dealings with narco-trafficking Maduro. They may soon have to flee the country…” Who told Kamla Persad-Bissessar that the Venezuelan president was a narco-trafficker? Does she, seasoned attorney, have evidence of this? Or is she parroting the gospellers of white power CNN, BBC, the Western mainstream global media?

In early May, the prime minister declared: “The Dragon is dead.” What gave the prime minister the liberty to so willy-nilly scuttle a potentially lucrative deal, especially given her Government’s self-admitted fiscal difficulties? To so casually concede to Marco Rubio and his licence regime? No single Government has the legal authority to sanction another; this right has been designated to the United Nations, a collective body. And how could you claim licensure over territorial jurisdictions over which you have no lease, ownership, or legal right?

Attacking Caracas on the strength of US power is short-sighted. Attacking Dragon is self-defeating. The Dragon field is not a mcf field. It is a tcf field (3.2-4.2 tcf). A trillion cubic feet of gas is equivalent to 172 million barrels of oil. The OFAC ‘licence’ is not for five years. It is for 30 years! To renege on trying, on legal and diplomatic engagement with Caracas and Washington, is reckless. And, gun-talking Venezuelans, some of whose ancestors were slaughtered or ethnically cleansed from these islands, is neither civil nor nice.

Caracas is concerned that Trinidad territory might be used by the imperialists to infiltrate the Bolivarian Republic. Or that neighbouring leaders become pawns of the US to target the Revolution. On June 5, the prime minister declared: “We stand solidly with the American Government on the issues concerning Venezuela. That will not change.” You mean you support Trump and Rubio for cutting our nation’s proverbial economic throat?

It is disturbing to see the prime minister so blithely and exhilaratingly take the wrong side of history. The side of imperialism, unipolarity and illegal actions against our nation. And against neutrality, non-alignment and our economy.

Wayne Kublalsingh has served as university professor, writer, and activist and has worked tirelessly to promote authentic economic development. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or wbkubla@yahoo.com.

Wayne Kublalsingh