Caribbean Roundtable  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: Caribbean Roundtable - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f82cada8-cb3a-499e-87ae-7f9a62a3cc29 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **US Strikes Target Migrant Networks, Not Big Cartels** - The US has been conducting drone strikes on small Caribbean vessels claiming narco-terrorism links. - Tren de Aragua mainly traffics people and extorts migrants, not large international drug shipments. Transcript: James Stout Because something quite substantial is going on what's going on is that the united states is carrying out a campaign of drone strikes against small vessels in the caribbean as far as We know there have been seven strikes at least 32 people have been killed two people have been detained and then repatriated. And a number of vessels have been struck. The US, it's bringing its war on terrorism logic to the Western Hemisphere. It's claiming that it's fighting narco-terrorism. Claiming that these boats are, for the most part, carrying Venezuelan nationals coming out of Venezuela. We've heard from Colombia that one Colombian national has been killed. The two people who were detained were Ecuadorian and Colombian. Two Trinidadian or Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been killed as well. And this has sparked something of a, well, it was a war of words. Now it seems to be a war of more than that, like tariffs and sanctions. And I believe Columbia has withdrawn their diplomats from DC as of today or yesterday. So it sparked significant political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere. I think we have a really good panel to talk about that. So to begin with, I guess we should start, Michael, can you explain the accusation here, right? So these people are members of Tren de Aragua, or potentially that some other cartels that the Trump administration likes to talk about. We've talked about the prevalence of those groups, but can you explain very briefly what they are? Michael Paarlberg And then I suppose, the function that they have in Venezuela or what they're doing there versus what's being claimed that they're doing. Sure. I do research on organized crime in Latin America, and Tren de Aragua is a real organized criminal group in Venezuela and now all over Latin America. It is a street gang that started out as a prison gang. It does not primarily engage in international drug trafficking, moving large quantities of drugs across national borders or across oceans. It is primarily engaged in human trafficking and extortion rackets. And it primarily follows the Venezuelan diaspora, people who have left Venezuela. And at this point, it's an incredible 20% of the population over the last 10 years of Maduro's presidency. So nearly 8 million people, wherever they go, and they take advantage of them. They extort them for money. They will also take money to move them across borders. But they're not a cartel in the way that we traditionally think about cartels like the Sinaloa cartel or some of the Colombian cartels that are engaged in international cocaine trafficking. And so it's highly unlikely that if the Trump administration is striking boats that they claim to be vessels transporting cocaine or fentanyl, which is not made in Venezuela. It's primarily made in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China, and increasingly it's actually made in the United States, even though it's an entirely synthetic drug, that's Possible. And Venezuela, of course, is not one of the countries where coca is grown and therefore cocaine comes If they are indeed striking drug boats, then they probably wouldn't be traded at Agua. And if they're striking boats with traded at Agua, they would be most likely striking migrant smuggling vessels, in which case the death count would likely be much higher. ([Time 0:03:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bf929f85-79a4-4e84-becc-a6a09c9cc5e4)) - **Petro: From Guerrilla Roots To Complex Security Posture** - Colombia's President Gustavo Petro has a guerrilla background but moved into mainstream politics and governs with complex ties to security policy. - Petro criticizes the US drug-war approach while inheriting deep Colombia–US security cooperation. Transcript: James Stout I want to talk about Trinidad and Tobago, but we should probably cover Colombia first, right? Because we've seen significant pushback from Petro, president of Colombia. And then we've recently seen the president of the United States accuse Petro, who is again, president of Colombia, of being a drug trafficker himself, which is a fairly ludicrous claim On the face of it. But let's talk about Petro because he has some background in opposition to organized crime and drug smuggling, actually, right? He's been in this for a while. Can you explain a little bit of his career and then his recent stances? Yeah. Michael Paarlberg So Petro is a mercurial figure in Colombian politics, has been for a long time he is known for starting his career as a guerrilla with a minor anti-government guerrilla movement called The m19 movement now this is the movement which i don't know maybe western audiences are familiar with from the netflix series narcos uh for participated, carried out the Palace of Justice siege at the Colombian Supreme Court, which was a major disaster in which the Colombian military went in guns blazing to rescue hostages, Supreme Court justices and other People just employed in the Palace of Justice. And most everyone died in a fire as a result. Petro was not involved in that operation. As far as anyone knows, he was not involved in any violent confrontations. And this organization, unlike the FARC and the ELN, never really got on the cocaine and money train and therefore didn't last as long as those other organizations did. They did demobilize, they did turn to peaceful politics, and Petro began his political career at the local level, became mayor of Bogotá, and then eventually reached the presidency. So he is someone with a long political career, and does have a constituency, does have a base, and he is the first truly left-wing leader of Colombia, a country that has been famously Both ruled by the right and also very closely allied to the U.S. It's really the U.S.'s top ally in Latin America, well, in South America, at least, specifically on security, given Plan Colombia and the long history of the U.S. Giving as much as $10 billion over time to beef up Colombia's counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics fights on our behalf. Yeah, to accuse the president of being a drug trafficker is fairly ludicrous. James Stout He's been, even in his time as a senator, I think he was chairing some investigations or committees that to drug smuggling, if I remember correctly. Yeah. Michael Paarlberg And so I would say Petro has been very critical of the war on drugs approach generally, but he does still inherit this longstanding deep relationship with the United States. And he's not exactly a full-on peacenik when it comes to his own internal security. He did come at office promising what he called total peace, PASPAPAL, a platform that was meant to put an end to all armed incertencies in the country by making a deal with the remaining Combatant groups, namely the ELN, the dissident bar guerrillas, those who did not agree to the peace deal signed by Santos in 2016, and what's in different terms called the Clan del Golfo, or the AGC, the Gaetanist Self-Defense Forces, but one of the largest national narco paramilitary group that descends from the old AUC. And he has failed in that. And talks have broken off with those other armed groups. Colombia has gone back to war against them. The ELN has engaged in some pretty horrific violence, including a suicide car bombing, police barracks, and the dissident FARC as well, taking down a helicopter and a drone attack. So there has been a return to fairly high level armed insurgency in Colombia, even if it's nowhere near the level it was from the late 90s and early 2000s. ([Time 0:07:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ab8833c2-23a9-43c1-bdb5-b95a1bbce275)) - **Trinidad Fishermen Killed Amid Government Silence** - Andrew described two Trinidadian fishermen killed after a US strike and lack of government response. - He said Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar openly aligned with the US and invited military cooperation. Transcript: James Stout It's not a great situation, right? Because Trinidadian people are being killed, at least two, and the government is apparently completely unconcerned with this. Yes. Andrew Sage I suppose I should provide some context. So there have been seven strikes to date and the fifth strike resulted in the deaths of two fishermen from the village of Las Cuevas in Trinidad Tobago being claimed among the victims. The government of Trinidad Tobago has not made a statement about it and the families have not really been contacted or provided any sort of support. Now, for those who are listening who may not know where Trinidad and Tobago is, it is an independent Twin Island Republic in the Caribbean. And it's actually geographically an extension of South America. There's a gulf that separates it, but it's about 11 kilometers away from Venezuela itself. And our elections that took place this year led to the removal of the incumbent party and the return of the United National Congress, the political party, led by Kamala Persad-Besessa, Claiming the government in a sweep, a landslide, really. But despite that landslide, it wasn't really the result of popular support for the United National Congress. It was more so the lack of support for the previous party, the People's National Movement, which lost, I believe, 200,000 or so of their usual voters. Just didn't show up to vote for them this election. So the opposition party came into power. When the opposition party was in the opposition, they in many ways appeared to just oppose for opposing sake. They were in power previously from 2010 to 2015, but they were voted out due to, among other things, corruption. Since then, the party has further evolved into a sort of personality cult centered around Kamala Prasad-Basasa. And her politics have also evolved in that time to align further and further toward the United States position. She's become something of a Trump stan. You know, she was kind of towing his line on a lot of issues. She supported Guaido, Juan Guaido, as the president of Venezuela, and actually went so far, while she was an opposition leader, to call on the United States to sanction Trinidad and Tobago after the vice president of Venezuela had made a visit to the country to meet with the then prime minister, Keith Rowley. So she has made her pro-Washington stance clear for a very long time. And as she's come into power, she has diverted our alignment with our regional bloc, the Caribbean community, CARICOM, and their call for the Caribbean to remain a zone of peace and Emphasized her continued endorsement for the U.S. Military's deployment outside of Venezuela's territorial waters, but still very much belligerent in her approach to this issue. You know, we have gone from a state that was respected as a non-aligned entity that was able to approach various diplomatic partners from the US to China to the EU to India to Venezuela As well. Diplomatic approach to a very clear pro-West stance that has really alienated us from the rest of the region and really placed us almost in the position of being a satellite state for U.S. Policy. You know, she's been inviting the U.S. Military if they want to base the operations out of Trinidad. She has opened our doors to that. ([Time 0:11:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/195382a9-15b2-4015-80eb-c4fcefbe721a)) - **Strikes Don’t Match Counter‑Narcotics Logic** - A large military buildup near Venezuela exceeds counter-narcotics needs and echoes past US regime-change patterns. - Killing suspects at sea undermines criminal prosecutions and intelligence-gathering. Transcript: Michael Paarlberg The moment with this concentration of forces? Well, it's unlikely to happen because Venezuela is a very large country and it would take a lot more troops than what are currently deployed, which is approaching 10,000 now, but that's Actually, that includes all sorts of logistical support. The actual fighting force, the Marine Expeditionary Unit is actually much smaller. I lived in Panama as a kid, and I was not old enough to be there for the invasion, but I lived there some years after that. That's probably the closest analog to this, at least the way that the Trump administration is promoting this, which is to say a regime change operation that is disguised as a counter-narcotics Operation. Famously, Noriega was, it was not a war. It was an arrest of a foreign leader who was indeed involved in drug trafficking. And we knew that because he was literally a CIA asset whose drug trafficking was being protected as long as he was allied with the U.S. Against Cuban-backed rebel groups in Central America. But at some point later, he became too much of embarrassment for the U.S., was genuinely a brutal guy, pulled off the torture, murder of Hugo Spadafura, all sorts of nasty things. But the big difference is, at that time and when I lived there, the U.S. Had multiple military bases in Panama. Panama was the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command, the Western Hemisphere headquarters of the Pentagon. We had 13,000 troops already there, ready to go. I think they doubled that for the invasion, which was officially termed Operation Just Cause, originally called Operation Blue Spoon, but they had to come up with a sexier name. And, of course, Panama's a tiny country, and Venezuela is 20 times larger than Panama. Yeah, it's fast. So it's very odd. It's obviously, they have deployed many more troops in a much larger fleet than is necessary for a counter-narcotics operation. Incidentally, it's the U.S. Coast Guard that carries out counter-narcotics interdictions and does it very effectively. And incidentally, does it with the cooperation of other countries which coordinate intelligence or just simply surveillance of suspicious ships or boats or planes and tip off the U.S. Coast Guard. Even the Cuban government does that. In fact, it's the Coast Guard that is the U.S. Agency that has the best relationships with Cuba. It's oftentimes diplomacy kind of starts with the Coast Guard's ties with Cuba. But anyway, that aside, it doesn't make sense from a counter-narcotics standpoint because, look, if you actually wanted to break up a cartel, what do you do? I mean, if you are a prosecutor, investigator, right? You capture the smugglers, you seize the cargo, the contraband, which is evidence, then you try to flip them up for immunity for whoever your real targets are. Maybe your target is Maduro or someone else in the regime. But you can't do that when you kill everyone on the boat, right? And I think the fact that in, I think, the latest boat strike, they didn't manage to kill everyone, and a couple of them got away, and then the U.S., rather than charge them with a crime, They just turned them back around. And you would think that if the U.S. Is so certain that the people on those boats are drug trafficking terrorists, they want to kill them, then you'd think they would have enough evidence to charge them, to prosecute them. But apparently not. So this is all to say the idea that this is a counter-narcotics operation doesn't hold up. Clearly, it is meant to be more of a regime change operation. ([Time 0:24:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6100a303-b69b-4350-b0cf-1bcdc8ae7b22)) - **Dubious Counter-Narcotics Justification** - The U.S. Coast Guard effectively conducts counter-narcotics interdictions with international cooperation, even from Cuba. - A real cartel investigation involves capturing smugglers, seizing contraband, and flipping them to target higher-ups. - Killing everyone on the boat prevents this intelligence gathering, undermining the stated counter-narcotics goal. - The U.S. didn't charge the survivors of a recent boat strike, suggesting a lack of evidence for drug trafficking or terrorism. - Michael Paarlberg argues that these actions point to a regime change operation, not counter-narcotics, driven by Trump's belief that saber-rattling and decapitation strikes will collapse the regime. - Maduro has taken extensive security precautions, making a successful decapitation strike unlikely to cause the regime to fall. Transcript: Michael Paarlberg It's oftentimes diplomacy kind of starts with the Coast Guard's ties with Cuba. But anyway, that aside, it doesn't make sense from a counter-narcotics standpoint because, look, if you actually wanted to break up a cartel, what do you do? I mean, if you are a prosecutor, investigator, right? You capture the smugglers, you seize the cargo, the contraband, which is evidence, then you try to flip them up for immunity for whoever your real targets are. Maybe your target is Maduro or someone else in the regime. But you can't do that when you kill everyone on the boat, right? And I think the fact that in, I think, the latest boat strike, they didn't manage to kill everyone, and a couple of them got away, and then the U.S., rather than charge them with a crime, They just turned them back around. And you would think that if the U.S. Is so certain that the people on those boats are drug trafficking terrorists, they want to kill them, then you'd think they would have enough evidence to charge them, to prosecute them. But apparently not. So this is all to say the idea that this is a counter-narcotics operation doesn't hold up. Clearly, it is meant to be more of a regime change operation. But again, I don't see how the one leads to the other. I believe that Trump thinks that if he just saber rattles a little bit and possibly tries some decapitation strikes the way that the U.S. Did on Soleimani and Iran, that somehow the regime is going to collapse. And that does not make any sense. Maduro has surrounded himself with security, a lot of it, including through Cuban advisors. ([Time 0:27:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/33955667-1a9d-4034-ad83-239de5e4c263)) - **Stolen Vote And A Divided Opposition** - 2024 Venezuelan elections were brokered under the Barbados Agreement and widely seen as stolen by Maduro. - The opposition remains fragmented, reducing coherent post-election strategy. Transcript: Michael Paarlberg Place last year. It was brokered largely by the U.S. The U.S. Under the Biden administration was pushing for some kind of negotiations between the opposition, the Venezuelan government. They convinced enough people in the opposition to stand for elections under what was called the Barbados Agreement in 2023. And this was meant to be an exchange of partial lifting of the sectoral sanctions that have been in place on Venezuela for a long time, in which the Trump administration, the first Trump Administration, really tightened in exchange for the Maduro government agreeing to stand for elections. And those elections happened last year. It was pretty clear from pre-electoral surveys and from exit polls and from the vote returns that were coming in at the time that the opposition candidate was going to win by an enormous March, about a 35-point margin. The candidate was officially Edmundo Gonzalez, but he was candidate mostly because Murillo Cornelio Machado, the now Nobel Prize laureate, was barred from running. So she gave her blessing to González to be basically her proxy, and people were more or less voting for both of them, so to speak. But both he and her are much more popular. Maduro, who, by all accounts, is an extremely unpopular leader, especially in contrast to, as you said, Hugo Chavez, who, for all his faults, was a genuinely charismatic leader. And, you know, he did stand for elections and win them, you know, pretty convincingly. Incidentally, the price of oil was about $100 a barrel when he was president, and he was able to spend a lot of social programs. But that aside, Maduro is pretty, pretty unpopular at this point. He is pretty widely seen as both a tyrant and also quite incompetent at managing basic state services. So he was going to lose unless he stole the election, which he did. The CNE, the Venezuelan election board, announced that he had won with just 51% of the vote, which is, I have to say, I give him credit for being subtle. I expected them to announce that he had won with like 99% of the vote. James Stout Yeah, and a sad margin. Michael Paarlberg Yeah, yeah. No one believed it. Yeah, that helped. And I have to say, one of my critiques of the Biden administration is that I think the whole thing was rather naive. I think they calculated that somehow Maduro would let himself be voted out of office. Maduro is, we talked about under a bounty, has a bounty on his head. Many people in the US, politicians in the US, Republicans in particular, have promised that they're going to send him to jail. So why would someone in that position, you know, give up power? I think, you know, he saw what happened to Gaddafi and he's, you know, he doesn't want to be jailed or killed. And at the same time, the stick part of the carrot and stick mechanism was that they would simply go back to the sanctions that existed before, which was called a snapback. And these are sanctions that the Venezuelan government has weathered for many, many years. So it's not really that much of a disincentive. ([Time 0:29:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7bc14774-651f-4f93-8cbf-aca381ea2896)) - **Act Regionally: Organize And Protest Unitedly** - Caribbean activists organized a region-wide day of action and ongoing campaigns defending the zone-of-peace ideal. - Participate in protests, sign declarations, and build local support systems for potential fallout. Transcript: Andrew Sage From a small island, I think the US's superpower status is almost akin to an eldritch horror. It feels like it's unfathomable how you could even go about approaching that at times. You know, I try to remind myself that people have fought and won. You know, people have resisted and won. You know, currently there isn't that much going on. There are moomers. There are moomers of fear, of disdain, of disagreement, of distrust. In terms of grassroots effort, there's a lot still to be done. The leader of the Move On for Social Justice, which is a small progressive political party in Toronto, it's a guy named David Abdullah. He has been part of this assembly of Caribbean people who have been signing and issuing a declaration, reasserting our desire for peace and that has been signed by various progressive Organizations, social movements and figures across the Caribbean. And there was also an effort last week, Thursday, that's October 16th, to organize a region-wide day of action in defense of the Caribbean. And so different actions were taking place all over in 15 countries. We had press conferences, we had statements, and we had pickets at certain U.S. Embassies and public demonstrations. It was kind of in the middle of the day on a Thursday, so there wasn't that big of a turnout from what I saw when I had gone. ([Time 0:40:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/41b7ea72-2081-458e-9504-a0d61d49faf0)) - **Back Venezuelan Civil Society, Not Regimes** - Show solidarity with Venezuelan civil society rather than with political leaders or foreign states. - Support local NGOs, labor unions, and human-rights groups to help Venezuelan people directly. Transcript: Michael Paarlberg I've been calling for people broadly throughout the world to have solidarity uh more with people than with states um and certainly with the venezuelan people as opposed to uh the venezuelan State i wrote something for the center for international policy about this and listen you know it's not my place to police the left uh so to speak but you know as someone speaking personally Who comes from the labor movement you know comes from the b allied left, so to speak. You know, I do think it's been a little bit uncomfortable to observe how certain elements of the global left have stood up for the Maduro regime, or at the very least been the criticism Of it has been taboo. And I think a lot of that is the legacy of Chávez. Chávez having this strong personal charisma, but also that he was willing to confront the United States, the Bush administration, at a time of the Iraq war, you know, especially low Point in the U.S.'s global reputation. Also, Venezuela's oil rents at the time, which were financing a lot of not just social programs in Venezuela, but a lot of financial largesse to allied states and movements around the Region. So a lot of left parties reflexively defended Maduro, even as his repression and mismanagement just ramped up. I will say that's fading. You know, we were seeing this within Latin America. First of all, there's kind of a generational divide. And some of the older generation of Latin American left, like Lula or like Petro, have not been overwhelmingly anti-Maduro, but have expressed skepticism about the electoral results. But then there's a younger generation, such as Boric and Chile and Arevalo and Guatemala, who have been openly very critical of Aldo and want to just not let him or his camp, so to speak, Define what it means to be on the left. And really, the only countries that have unquestionably backed him at this point are Bolivia and Cuba, but also outside of the region, Russia, Iran, China. So I think that we should ask ourselves, who do we think is a more credible arbiter of progressive values? Is it Boric and Chile or is it Putin? You know, even, even the Communist Party of Venezuela no longer. Yeah, that's one of my favorite facts, you know, like he has, he has had their, their militants killed, you know, allegedly as well. So it's just, it's not helpful to view the world in this campus lens. You know, I think that if people, whether they identify as on the left or, or whatever, want to show solidarity, I think it should be with the Venezuelan people, which means listening To voices within civil society in Venezuela. There are a lot of NGOs, there are a lot of labor unions, there are a lot of human rights advocates that are not opposition parties that are not running for office. They're not necessarily calling for regime change, made them very critical of sanctions. But they have tried to push for better changes, you know, quality of life, you know, reforms that might lead to less repression, open up more space for civil society. ([Time 0:43:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75a93843-a006-4761-9b40-b01185136835)) - **Seek Regional Sources For Fuller Coverage** - International media coverage frames the story from the US perspective, often neglecting local Caribbean impacts. - Read Latin American outlets and specialty sites like InsightCrime for deeper context on groups and regional reaction. Transcript: Michael Paarlberg I don't really have any go-to sources on this. I would say that it's enough of an international incident that all the major news sources are covering it. So you can read really any news source in Latin America, if you speak Spanish Portuguese, and see how that reporting is different. Also, incidentally, El País in Spain, you know, conos on the side, they do pretty good reporting. Yeah, they've been doing pretty good reporting. And there's lots of blogs as well. And, you know, newsletters that you can check out. I will say, just made this unbiased because I focus a lot on crime. The site Insight Crime is pretty good in terms of looking into specific criminal groups like Tren de Aragua and calling a question if, you know, if this really is a, you know, it's something That is controlled by the puppet master from Miraflores, you know, like Maduro and some of these narratives that are justifying this. I'd also just as a recommendation, I would say, you know, maybe we should be a little bit skeptical too about the timing and the purposes of these things. ([Time 0:50:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/954f1ac0-e4df-4db4-b3e5-3d6eec4a923d))