As in other similar episodes, apart from aerial video footage, the Trump administration does not provide evidence about the vessel’s affiliation.
Guilherme Botacini
The United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, announced this Sunday (19) that the military destroyed another vessel in the Caribbean and killed three crew members. The boat, which was reportedly destroyed on Friday (17), was believed to be linked to the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerrilla group in Colombia.
This is the first time, since Washington began bombing vessels in the Caribbean Sea weeks ago, that President Donald Trump’s government claims to have destroyed a boat linked to a Colombian organization – until now, the targets were reported as allegedly Venezuelan.
“These cartels are the Al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threatening national security and poisoning our people. The US military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are – they will be hunted down and killed, like Al Qaeda,” wrote Hegseth, in a post on X with a video of the alleged action.
As in other similar episodes, apart from aerial video footage, the Trump administration does not provide evidence about the vessel’s affiliation, its merchandise and its crew.
A few hours earlier, the American president had published a message on the Truth Social network in which he called Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, an “illegal drug leader” and suggested that the US could attack drug producers on Colombian soil.
“President Gustavo Petro of Colombia is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging massive drug production, in fields large and small, throughout Colombia. It has become Colombia’s biggest business by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large-scale payments and subsidies from the US that are nothing more than a long-term theft against America,” Trump wrote.
“The purpose of this drug production is to sell massive quantities in the USA, causing death, destruction and chaos. It is better that Petro, an unqualified and very unpopular leader, disrespectful towards America, closes these death camps immediately, or the USA will close them for him, and it will not be nice”, he stated.
Petro then responded in a publication on X saying that Trump is mistaken. “The main enemy that drug trafficking had in Colombia was in the 21st century, the one that discovered its relations with political power in Colombia: it was me,” wrote Petro.
Trump’s statement puts even more tension in South America. Since returning to the White House, the American president has declared Latin American cartels terrorists and has put pressure on governments in the region to curb drug trafficking.
Furthermore, Trump’s rhetoric has mixed the ideas of the war on drugs and the war on terror, which have guided American military foreign policy in recent decades, to justify attacks on vessels in the Caribbean Sea that supposedly belong to drug traffickers – the actions are criticized by governments in the region, opponents and legal experts, who do not see the legality of the offensive.
The practical result, so far, of American troops and warships positioned in the Caribbean is to exert pressure against the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who is also classified by the American president as a drug trafficking leader.
Trump authorized the CIA, the American intelligence agency, to carry out operations on Venezuelan soil, including on land, with the aim of overthrowing Maduro. The authorization further raised tensions as it was the clearest indication that the US could eventually invade Venezuela.
