The United States on Wednesday shared images of joint military exercises in the Trinidad and Tobago region as troops converge on the region and increase pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The deployment has received logistical and diplomatic support from multiple Latin American countries, ranging from limited assistance to open cooperation with the U.S. military.
Detailed information on who supports U.S. operations in the Caribbean. The US government claims it is aimed at combating drug trafficking in the region.
trinidad and tobago
Trinidad and Tobago, which is just 11 kilometers (7 miles) away from Venezuela at its closest point, declared full support for the U.S. operation.
Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said in early September, after the United States launched its first attack on a drug smuggling ship in the Caribbean, that he was “delighted, like most of the country, that the U.S. naval deployment is succeeding in its mission.” “I have no sympathy for human traffickers. The US military should violently kill them all,” she added.
After the U.S. began its deployment in August, Persado-Bissessar also warned that he would grant the U.S. government access to defensive operations if Venezuela attacked Guyana, with which it has a territorial dispute. This declaration signaled an intention to abandon a long-standing policy of neutrality and a pragmatic relationship with Venezuela based on economic interests.
In late October, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Gravely conducted several days of military training in Trinidad and Tobago, a move the Venezuelan government called a “hostile provocation.” President Maduro responded by announcing the suspension of a bilateral gas agreement with Trinidad and Tobago, claiming the prime minister was threatening to turn Trinidad and Tobago into “an aircraft carrier of the American empire against Venezuela.”
Guyana supported the deployment of U.S. troops to the Caribbean from the start of August and said it supported a “cooperative and integrated approach to combating transnational organized crime.”
It added that transnational organized crime is a “threat to regional peace and security” and involves networks such as “Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles.”
The US government claims that the Cartel de los Soles is led by President Maduro and is responsible for drug trafficking to the US and Europe. The city of Caracas dismissed the charges as “fabricated.” But experts and former U.S. officials say the group is not a formally organized cartel and that it is a stretch to think that Maduro is leading it, even though there is government involvement in the drug trade.
Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of U.S. Southern Command, visited Guyana this month to promote regional security and met with senior commanders to discuss the long-standing defense alliance between the two countries, the U.S. Embassy said.
In early November, an AC-130J military aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force was spotted at Comalapa Joint Security Base in El Salvador, according to photos and satellite images obtained by CNN.
This gunship can carry Hellfire missiles, but is primarily equipped with large-caliber cannons. The AC-130J seen in El Salvador was equipped with two cannons, including a 105mm howitzer on the left side.
Until recently, the base in El Salvador was used almost exclusively for unarmed aircraft, according to U.S. Southern Command. Because the reach of bases in the Caribbean is limited, being located near the coast provides a strategic location for U.S. operations in the Pacific.
“Operations from Comalapa provide more options and allow us to monitor and defend a larger swath of the Pacific Ocean through which much of the cocaine trafficked to the United States passes,” Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN in early November.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has not commented specifically on the US military deployment, but he has close ties with US President Donald Trump.
President Jose Raul Mulino’s government has tried to downplay the issue, but U.S. military personnel are training in Panama.
The president last week denied his country was taking part in “hostile acts against Venezuela” and insisted the military exercises were part of a bilateral cooperation agreement with the United States.
Panama has not had an army since 1990, but has hosted military exercises since the 1989 US invasion. In April, Panama signed a memorandum of cooperation that allows for an expanded U.S. military presence and allows the use of air and naval bases for joint exercises. Mulino again denied that the activity was related to White House pressure on Venezuela.
President Luis Abinader said Monday that the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will launch “wider and more thorough” action in the fight against drug trafficking.
On the same day, Dominican authorities announced that a speedboat was loaded with 806 packages of suspected cocaine off the coast of Pedernales. The National Drug Control Directorate said the intervention was in support of Operation Southern Spear, the name used by the Pentagon for military deployments to the region.
The cooperation already began on Saturday, when authorities seized another shipment of nearly 500 boxes of cocaine on a speedboat.
Puerto Rico and other locations
Puerto Rico, a U.S. autonomous territory in the Caribbean, also plays an important role in this deployment, as it is home to the largest number of U.S. military bases in the Caribbean.
Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, which has been closed since 2004, is now back in operation, and U.S. Marines supporting the Southern Command mission participated in amphibious landing exercises on the islands in late September, according to satellite images and photos taken in the area.
The United States has two other bases in and around the Caribbean, but in both cases the countries where the bases are located object to their deployment.
The Guantanamo naval base in southeastern Cuba has been used for logistics, surveillance and other operations since 1903, but the Cuban government, an ally of Venezuela, has repeatedly rejected the presence of U.S. troops and recent deployments of U.S. forces.
Washington also has an air base in Honduras that is home to more than 500 U.S. military personnel and more than 500 Honduran and American civilians, according to the government’s website. In January, before Trump took office, Honduran President Xiomara Castro threatened to reconsider using the base if the United States carried out mass deportations. In August, she said some of the US government’s accusations against Maduro were “baseless” and subsequently spoke out against the deployment of US troops to the Caribbean.
South American countries have shown political support for the US pressure campaign against Venezuela.
In August, Ecuador designated the Cartel de los Soles as an “organized criminal terrorist group.” The decree was signed by President Daniel Novoa, an ally of Washington whose attempt to lift the ban on foreign military bases was defeated in a recent referendum.
Other White House allies, Paraguay and Argentina, have also designated the Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization.
