Nine men, humble people from the village, were sailing on the fishing boat Carmen Rosa, 48 nautical miles northeast of the island of La Blanquilla, within Venezuela's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). With no other occupation than fishing for tuna, they did not expect, last Friday, any other surprise than what the sea, in its immensity, could offer.
Imagine the astonishment—not to mention the shock—of those Venezuelans when the US Navy missile ship USS Jason Dunham deployed 18 armed men to storm the small vessel and prevent them not only from carrying out their usual fishing activities, but also left them incommunicado.
In Hollywood style, but with the real possibility of death staring them in the face, they were held for eight hours, as a direct provocation and disproportionate use of force against the Venezuelan people. They did not address the state, which they insist on accusing of drug trafficking and paramilitarism.
In this regard, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the PCC and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, condemned the assault, describing it as "an illegal act, contrary to international law, and a cowardly and dangerous provocation."
However, the Bolivarian nation has not fallen for these vile provocations. In an official statement, the government demanded that the United States "immediately cease these actions that jeopardize the security and peace of the Caribbean," while calling on "the American people to recognize the seriousness of these maneuvers and reject the use of their soldiers as sacrificial pawns to sustain the desires of a greedy and predatory elite."
Not to mention the recent alleged deadly attack on a boat that they claimed, without proof, was trafficking drugs. The incident was described by a senior Pentagon official, who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, as a criminal act. Nor should we overlook the disclosure on social media of the alleged presence of a U.S. helicopter in the vicinity of one of the South American country's island territories, which the Ministry of Defense said would serve to fabricate an accident and justify an escalation of war.
The truth is that international law and peaceful coexistence were violated. The lives of innocent people and regional peace should never be put at risk as if filming a movie. Reality does not allow for rehearsals or erasing images. Weapons kill, men die.
But why attack the Venezuelan people? The White House's strategies of economic suffocation, which include asset freezes, oil embargoes, transaction bans, restrictions on access to financial markets, and capital theft, have not worked.
Nor have diplomatic pressure on the international stage or the media war, through which they seek to delegitimize the government and tarnish the Revolution and its leaders. Even less effective has been the constant support for the extreme right to destabilize the country.
Each of these forms of aggression is directed directly at the people, because they have proven that only the people have the power to give the empire what it so desires: what they call regime change. That is why today the attacks on the psyche, as part of the cognitive war, have escalated to the level of military and geopolitical pressure, to instill fear and generate chaos.
It bothers them—it threatens the expansionist Yankee hegemon—that a country in the global South is implementing an alternative political model of social, economic, and sovereign development, in which the priority is the people, the same people who have been preparing for days to defend their country.
