Raphael John-Lall

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil has con­demned US in­ter­fer­ence in the Petro­caribe en­er­gy al­liance, fol­low­ing Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio’s on­go­ing tour of Ja­maica, Guyana, and Suri­name this week.

In a state­ment pub­lished on Telegram on Wednes­day, Gil stat­ed that Wash­ing­ton pro­motes an en­er­gy mod­el root­ed in “ex­tor­tion and sub­mis­sion,” con­trast­ing it with Venezuela’s ap­proach of “sov­er­eign en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion free from black­mail or for­eign mil­i­tary bases.”

On Wednes­day, Ru­bio called on Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to sup­port moves against Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro’s ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing in Kingston, Ja­maica.

The Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en a hard stance against Venezue­lan oil and gas ex­trac­tion, pro­duc­tion and sales, by threat­en­ing heavy sanc­tions against coun­tries that do en­er­gy busi­ness with the Maduro regime. Trump re­cent­ly or­dered sanc­tions against coun­tries that pur­chase oil and gas from Venezuela, im­pos­ing tar­iffs of 25 per cent.

Af­ter tales in Ja­maica on Wednes­day, Ru­bio left for oil-rich Guyana, which has a bor­der dis­pute with Venezuela.

Gil crit­i­cised the US, stat­ing, “It is shame­less to lec­ture on democ­ra­cy while fund­ing count­less coups in Latin Amer­i­ca.”

Gil framed re­cent US in­ter­fer­ence ef­forts as that coun­try’s frus­tra­tion over failed at­tempts to dis­man­tle the Petro­caribe arrange­ment, as­sert­ing, “They couldn’t de­stroy Petro­caribe, so now they re­sort to lies.”

He dis­missed US-backed oil projects in Guyana and Suri­name as a “hoax to jus­ti­fy Exxon­Mo­bil’s plun­der,” ac­cus­ing US cor­po­ra­tions of ex­ploit­ing re­gion­al re­sources.

The for­eign min­is­ter em­pha­sised Petro­caribe’s role in pro­vid­ing en­er­gy sup­plies with­out po­lit­i­cal strings, un­like what he termed “colo­nial US aid.”

“Petro­caribe guar­an­tees en­er­gy sov­er­eign­ty to­day and to­mor­row,” he added, fram­ing the al­liance as a mod­el of “true sol­i­dar­i­ty among peo­ples” that de­fies US hege­mo­ny.

Gil al­so con­demned Ru­bio’s re­cent state­ments in which he called the de­ploy­ment of Cuban med­ical mis­sions “atro­cious.”

On his Telegram ac­count, Gil said this Cuban med­ical pro­gramme has saved mil­lions of lives around the world.

“On­ly the ‘atro­cious’ en­vy and ex­treme ha­tred of some­one like Mar­co Ru­bio could lead him to ques­tion a mis­sion of love and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the en­tire world,” Gil said.

On Wednes­day, Maduro as­sert­ed that in the face of the eco­nom­ic sanc­tions im­posed by the Unit­ed States on the Venezue­lan peo­ple, his gov­ern­ment will re­spond with an in­de­pen­dent, sov­er­eign, and free eco­nom­ic mod­el.

“Right now, I’m in a phase of re­or­gan­is­ing and op­ti­mis­ing all the plans, all the mis­sions, ma­jor mis­sions, and pub­lic works. Be­cause much more and bet­ter can be done with the re­sources we have,” Maduro said dur­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Gen­er­al-in-Chief Eleazar López Con­tr­eras Cul­tur­al Cen­ter in Cara­cas.

Tar­iff im­po­si­tion de­nounced

Venezue­lan econ­o­mist Car­los Men­doza Potel­lá al­so added his voice to the de­bate and con­demned the US gov­ern­ment. He said the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion to im­pose 25 per cent tar­iffs on coun­tries that buy Venezue­lan oil “must be de­nounced col­lec­tive­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

In an in­ter­view with Venezue­lan ra­dio sta­tion Unión Ra­dio, he al­so stat­ed that this an­nounce­ment “is a war against the coun­try and must be ac­cept­ed as such by the en­tire na­tion.”

“It’s not about ne­go­ti­at­ing bet­ter con­di­tions or prices, but rather a po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion that is ex­pressed in con­tin­ued ag­gres­sion, even tak­en to new lev­els, against Venezue­lans in the Unit­ed States,” Potel­lá said.

The Venezue­lan econ­o­mist said in his view, Trump’s de­ci­sion has noth­ing to do with oil but rather that they are us­ing crude oil “be­cause it is the most im­por­tant re­source for Venezue­lans, in the fun­da­men­tal pro­duc­tion that sus­tains the coun­try.”

Re­gard­ing the con­se­quences of the cur­rent “block­ade,” Potel­lá em­pha­sised that the coun­try will feel the con­se­quences.

“Venezuela’s ex­ports to In­dia and Chi­na are min­i­mal com­pared to im­ports from those coun­tries, which could eas­i­ly sup­ply them with oil from Iraq, Iran, or any of those clos­er coun­tries,” he ar­gued.

Mean­while, the AL­BA group of Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries which falls un­der Venezuela’s sphere of in­flu­ence, al­so crit­i­cised the Unit­ed States’ lat­est moves against Venezuela.

This group in­cludes St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Do­mini­ca, Bo­livia, Hon­duras, Cu­ba and Hon­duras.

In a state­ment, the group said the mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed by the US gov­ern­ment un­der­mine the peace and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty of the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela.

“Such a mea­sure vi­o­lates the most ba­sic rules of in­ter­na­tion­al trade, cre­at­ing bla­tant dis­crim­i­na­tion against Venezuela, with the ob­vi­ous goal of harm­ing its na­tion­al in­come and the health of its econ­o­my, caus­ing suf­fer­ing among its pop­u­la­tion,” the doc­u­ment reads in part.