By Tony Deyal
Deep-sea diving is so dangerous that most people can’t fathom it. And if you think that is bad, consider if, or when, you end up between the deep, blue sea and the Devil. Trinidad & Tobago is now caught in the middle of sinking or slinking between more than one Devil. In fact, it might be facing many more and needs help to protect its front and back sides.
One option is what is known as “Trump and Follow Suit.” I grew up with my father, his family and friends playing the game, which demands that you must play a card with the led suit, and if you cannot, you can play a “trump” instead. They call it “Metaphorically” or “follow suit” and it means that you do what someone else has done.
The word “Trump” is and seems, to many, to be a “Trump card.” It is a card which can beat any card or a non-Trump suit. What I heard, and found out over many years, is that you can’t beat Trump even if you think you could or even do. From what I heard about Trump and cards, is that even if it is not a Cadillac (or caddy-lack), you can get a Bullitt, a Coupe, a Cruze in the deep sea or run like heck in a Fleetwood. This is why so many people do exactly as they were told or what is known as the Trump and Swallow Suit.
Unfortunately, if you don’t follow suit and try to scoot, you’ll be facing a place extremely close to the northern coast of South America, where Trinidad & Tobago lies off its coast. And who is on the other side, not just of the sea but of the Trump, is Venezuela. Even though Guyana is very much closer, from what I hear and know from my days working with a few international organisations, the folks there will not let anybody try to take Guyana and all it is, has and doing. As they say, “Money talks and bull-smiths talk.”
Worse, Trinidad & Tobago has been too close to Venezuela for a very long time. Many just came and went whenever they wanted, and a few years ago, the Trinidad government seemed to be extremely close to that country and its leaders.
In fact, the Venezuelan “counterpart” of Trump, Nicholas Maduro (called by some ‘Mud-oro’ or ‘Mad-oro’) said “Caracas would defend itself against US ‘aggression’.” This was the US accusing Maduro of leading a drug known as the “Cartel of the Suns”. Maduro also went after the Trinidad & Tobago prime minister saying the PM “went crazy because she was threatening that she was going to authorise attacks from Trinidad and Tobago against Venezuela.”
He made it clear: “This is like against Venezuela” and questioned ‘who was whispering into the ears’ of Persad-Bissessar, and speculated on US involvement. In fact, Venezuela’s defence minister, General Vladimir Padrino López, told Trinidad & Tobago not to allow US forces to use its territory as a base to attack Venezuela and, should they or Guyana lend their territories to potential US military aggression against Venezuela, they would face a forceful response in legitimate defence. He added, “It is necessary to warn that if any attack against Venezuela is launched from these territories, we will respond proportionally, in legitimate defence of our sovereignty.”
But while this was happening, Trump and his people struck and destroyed two Venezuelan boats and the people involved. They called them “terrorists.” The Venezuelan leader, Maduro, saw it as “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country.” He accused the US of trying to provoke Venezuela into war. He saw it as the major and final goal of the US for a regime change, for oil, and not just a crackdown on drug cartels.
However, to give the impression that oil was “secondary” if at all important, US president, Donald Trump, listed four Caribbean countries that have been listed as “Determination on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2026.” The “foursome” in the mix were The Bahamas, Belize, Haiti and Jamaica, which added to a whole bunch in the world but, nearest to our region, were Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and, guess the last of the Mohicans, Venezuela.
Worse, Trump said that Venezuela and some of the others failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months to both adhere to their obligations. He saw them as organised crime trafficking on fentanyl and other deadly illicit drugs into the US, which causes death for Americans aged 18 to 44. Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid that is 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
The response from Trinidad & Tobago to the Venezuelan leaders by the foreign and CARICOM affairs minister, Sean Sobers, was that “We do not respond well to threats at all.” This was his way of letting the defence minister of Venezuela know what he taught about hard talk, like, “I say to you, well, if they (Guyana and T&T) attack from your territory, you will also receive a response, and that is legitimate defence” and the Venezuelan vice president caution, “Don’t even think about it.”
What was most interesting is the Trinidad & Tobago position as stated by Sobers. First, he insisted that Trinidad & Tobago was “in 100 percent support of American intervention in this particular case” and then stressed that relations with Caracas remained intact. In fact, he reached out to them with, “To the government and the people of Venezuela, as far as I’m concerned, we are still on very good terms.”
While that was a double-talk, two-fold comment with a who-the-cat-fits, there was one like a cat with nine tales instead of tails. According to the Daily Express Newspaper of Trinidad & Tobago, “Minister: India could ‘nuke’ Venezuela” and the article by Khamari Rodriguez, “After several warnings from the Venezuelan government were directed at Trinidad and Tobago over the past few days, minister in the ministry of housing Phillip Edward Allexander took to his social media yesterday, suggesting the government of India would “nuke” Venezuela in defence of the Caribbean island.
While the Venezuelans did not respond, a Trini on the other side said: “When a deranged minister publicly boasts that because Trinidad & Tobago has an Indo majority population, ‘Modi will nuke Venezuela’. And of course, to even begin to understand the concept of nuclear fallout, one would have to possess a working and functional brain.” Obviously, this is two for the price of one.
*Tony will have a Carnival band named “Who there? Fallin or Fallout?”
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