Dear Editor,
The Organization of American States (OAS) held a foreign ministers’ meeting from June 19-21 in Cancun, Mexico, for the principal purpose of addressing “the situation in Venezuela”. However, on the eve of the said OAS meeting, a most startling and unprecedented thing happened!
Every single United States ambassador assigned to the nations of CARICOM secured the publication (in the newspapers of the country they are assigned to) of a newspaper article that was designed, inter alia, to circumvent the political leadership of CARICOM and to speak directly to the people of the CARICOM countries; to attack and slander Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his administration; and to cajole and persuade the people of the CARICOM nations to put pressure on their political leaders to support the USA that the OAS might adopt a particular resolution on Venezuela that the US favoured.
In Barbados, this article was attributed to US Ambassador Linda Taglialatela and it was published in all three national newspapers – the Nation, the Barbados Advocate, and Barbados Today!
The said article – with minor changes here and there – was similarly published right across the CARICOM region, and was attributed to a variety of US ambassadors.
Now, the critical question that arises is this: Why would the US State Department engage in such a comprehensive and determined effort to secure the adoption of ‘their’ resolution at the said OAS meeting?
Why would the US State Department make this unprecedented, coordinated effort, if the resolution that was being proposed at the OAS meeting was the harmless creature that the foreign ministers of Barbados, Jamaica, St Lucia, The Bahamas, Belize and Guyana – the six CARICOM countries that supported the resolution – made it out to be? (And incidentally, why was virtually every single newspaper editor in the CARICOM region so willing to accommodate this US propaganda effort?)
Clearly, the USA regarded the adoption of ‘their’ resolution by the OAS as being of utmost importance to them and considered it to be a critical part of their ongoing ‘regime change’ strategy against Venezuela.
Thank God that the political leadership of St Vincent and the Grenadines possessed the wisdom and political acumen to recognise the dangers inherent in having the OAS adopt the poisoned resolution that six lost CARICOM member states were ‘carrying’ on behalf of the purveyors of imperialism, and took decisive action to thwart this effort to impose a Trojan horse resolution on the Venezuela situation.
Also to be congratulated are the political leaders of St Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Dominica for their wise and principled actions at the OAS meeting in Cancun.
Yours faithfully,
David Comissiong
