Caracas.- The Minister of Interior and Justice of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, said this Monday that the United States will not spoil the New Year for Venezuelans, amid the US military deployment in the Caribbean to supposedly combat drug trafficking and which Caracas denounces as a threat seeking a change of Government.
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The minister maintained that there have been 27 weeks of “imperial madness”, of “harassment, threats, attacks, persecutions, robberies, piracy, assassinations”, in reference to the attacks against boats that allegedly transported drugs and in which more than a hundred people have died and the confiscation of two oil tankers with Venezuelan crude. “They don’t like dignified people, they don’t like people who command respect and demand respect, they like the submissive, they like the groveling, and the Venezuelan people, for the most part, were not born that day, the Venezuelan people were born the day of the libertarians,” he added. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced that his country destroyed a “large facility” last week within its campaign against a drug trafficking network led, according to Washington, by Venezuela, although he did not specify whether the attack occurred within Venezuelan territory. “We just destroyed, I don’t know if you read it or saw it… They have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we destroyed it. So we hit them very hard“, Trump said on Friday in an interview on a radio podcast that has been picked up this Monday by American media. The president did not specify the nature of the installation and so far his Administration has not acknowledged the strike. If confirmed, it would be the first ground attack in an anti-drug campaign that has so far been carried out in international waters of the Caribbean. U.S. officials cited by The New York Times stated that the president was referring to a drug production plant in Venezuela and specified that it was destroyed last Wednesday, without elaborating on details. The U.S. has maintained a large air and naval deployment in the Caribbean since August, near Venezuelan waters, which, it claims, aims to combat drug trafficking, but which Caracas interprets as “threats” and an attempt to promote a regime change. Tensions escalated after Trump’s announcement of a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving to and from the South American country, and the confiscation of two ships carrying Venezuelan crude in recent weeks.
