Dear Editor,
We have all read the news over the past few days of the Trump government mobilising a significant presence of US Naval fire power and with troops on board, in the Caribbean seas, close by to Venezuela
The US President has also put a bounty of US$50M on Nicholas Maduro’s head, which is about to be doubled by legislation in the US Congress. The Trump government has also declared that they do not recognise Maduro as the President of Venezuela, nor his party as the legitimate government of Venezuela.
With typical bravado, Maduro, has announced a creation of “a new people’s militia”, which he claims to be one million four hundred thousand (1.4M) people, for the purpose of defending against any American military attempt to enter Venezuela and arrest him. According to Maduro, he has also armed the People’s Militia with missiles and guns.
Maduro has also claimed to have mobilised some 4.5M troops to fight any American invasion, though there has been no detectable evidence of any such mobilization.
All at the same time, US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has stated that “Maduro’s government” is, in fact, a “masquerade” and is, nothing but, the Venezuelan Cartel de los soles also called the “Cartel of the sun”, a criminal enterprise which now threatens “ US oil companies that are operating lawfully in Guyana”.
Mr Rubio, of course, is referring to EXXON. He further announced at the State Department, that the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Control (OFAC), on 25TH July 2025, has designated the Cartel as a “specially designated global terrorist” headed by Nicholas Maduro.
We are all very familiar with OFAC which has sanctioned Presidential Candidate Azruddin Mohammed, along with his father Nazar Mohammed, and all of their businesses.
There has been a number of misleading stories and headlines in the Stabroek and Kaieteur News about this matter. OFAC has in fact stated unequivocally, in response to the Mohammeds lawyers, that “non-US persons”, Guyanese for instance, could “face sanctioned risk for certain activities involving sanctioned persons, such as providing material support to them”. The OFAC statement goes on to define” material support” as “including any property, tangible or intangible or service”.
Highly respected lawyer, Sanjeev Datadin, in a recent post by him, underlines the fact that those persons who support Mohammed and his party WIN “believe wrongly, that this path would somehow free them…of offering material support”. Put simply and practically, if you join and support a political party you are offering it “material support”.
To return, however, to the action being taken by the US government against Venezuela’s Maduro. When we vote on 1st September, we need to ask ourselves this question : “which of the contesting parties and contesting Presidential candidates command the unreserved respect of the US government and which does not”? The answer, of course, is staring us in the face.
The Trump government, for which US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, spoke, when he visited Guyana, manifestly demonstrated the respect it has for President Mohammed Ali and his government. We can, on the other hand, take it as a given that the support of the US government for and the protection it offers Guyana against Venezuela, would disappear overnight if, by some miracle, the likes of Azruddin Mohammed were to become President of Guyana. We can also take it as a given, that if Mohammed were to become President, it would not be long before Exxon would also disappear from Guyana.
Yours truly,
Kit Nascimento
