The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, responded to Donald Trump’s threats on Wednesday by affirming that his country was ready “to break the teeth of the North American empire if necessary.”
In a speech after a farmers’ march in Caracas, Maduro asked the Venezuelan people to be “like warriors, like warriors”: “The same productive hands that we have are those that take up the guns, the tanks, the missiles to defend this sacred land from any invading empire, from any aggressor empire. »
The Trump administration maintains a military deployment in the Caribbean, arguing that it is a way to combat drug trafficking. Hours before Maduro’s speech, the US military seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a new step in escalating tensions between the two countries.
“We have just seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela,” Trump announced at the White House. “A very large tanker, the largest ever seen, and there are other things happening that you will see later.” According to Bloomberg, the United States took “legal action against an unflagged ship” which had docked in Venezuela.
Caracas called the US deployment a “threat”. “It should be noted that a powerful movement of public opinion has formed around the world to reject the military aggression of the United States against Venezuela and the Caribbean,” Maduro assured in his speech.
The mobilization in Caracas also coincided with the presentation, in Oslo, of the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opponent María Corina Machado, who was absent from the ceremony. The Nobel Institute announced that the Venezuelan politician would be present in the Norwegian capital, although she has not yet arrived at the event, during which her daughter received the prize on her behalf.
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