Venezuelan minister: T&T, Guyana are our territories

As tensions between the US and Venezuela continue, Venezuelan Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello is accusing both T&T and Guyana of allowing themselves to be used by the Americans to launch an attack against Venezuela.Referring to historical territorial disputes, he also claimed T&T and Guyana have been “Venezuelan territories.”

Venezuela has previously made claims to 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,” Cabello said 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. He also predicted that Cabello and Venezuela 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.