“This Is the Caribbean — Peace and Love”: Trinidadians React to US Boat Strikes

Trinidad and Tobago has been gripped by shock and grief following reports that two local men were killed in a United States military strike on a suspected drug-smuggling vessel. The attack, part of Washington’s growing pressure campaign against Venezuela, has sparked anger and disbelief across the Caribbean nation.

“Are we in Israel or in Afghanistan? This is the Caribbean — here is peace and love,” said a fisherman from Las Cuevas, a quiet coastal village on Trinidad’s northern shore, speaking to AFP after Tuesday’s strike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela.

Local police are investigating reports that two Trinidadian citizens were among six “narcoterrorists” killed in the US operation, which was announced by President Donald Trump earlier this week.

Among the dead is believed to be 26-year-old fisherman Chad Joseph, whose mother Lenore Burnley told AFP that family contacts in Venezuela confirmed his presence on the ill-fated boat.

Another man, Rishi Samaroo, has also been named in local media as a possible victim of the strike — the latest in a series of US anti-narcotics operations that have reportedly killed at least 27 people since last month.

“People we know in Venezuela told us Chad was on that boat,” Burnley said tearfully. “He was on his way home after three months there. They didn’t have to kill him.”

President Trump has deployed seven warships to the southern Caribbean and one to the Gulf of Mexico, intensifying pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who Washington accuses of rigging the 2024 election and running a state-backed drug cartel — charges Maduro vehemently denies.

Tensions escalated further on Wednesday, when Trump announced he was considering airstrikes on land targets in Venezuela and had authorised covert CIA operations against the country.

In Las Cuevas, frustration runs deep. Locals, who depend heavily on the sea for survival, denounced what they see as reckless foreign aggression.

“Even if they are transporting drugs, go and arrest them,” said one fisherman, who declined to give his name. “You don’t just blow up a boat full of people.”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has urged the United Nations to launch a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions, alleging that Colombian nationals were also killed in similar strikes.

At its narrowest point, Trinidad and Tobago lies just 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) from Venezuela’s coast — a proximity that has made the twin-island nation an increasingly strategic node in the international narcotics trade.

Nestled along a winding coastal road originally built by US forces during World War II, Las Cuevas looks, at first glance, like a Caribbean postcard: clear blue waters, green cliffs, and fishermen playing cards under the shade of palm trees.

But beneath this tranquil surface lies a harsher truth.

Three men were seen working on a speedboat fitted with three Yamaha engines, an image that betrays the region’s deeper entanglement in illicit maritime activity.

“Fishing doesn’t provide enough of an income,” admitted one resident.

Local security consultant Garvin Heerah described Trinidad and Tobago as a key trans-shipment hub in the global drug trade.

“The country is more than a mere stopover,” he explained. “It operates as a hub where bulk shipments are received, stored, repackaged, and prepared for onward movement.”

From Trinidad, narcotics are trafficked northward to the United States, eastward to Europe and West Africa, and to other Caribbean destinations, often in ‘go-fast’ speedboats — the same kind of vessels seen being blown up in videos shared by Trump on social media.

For Chad Joseph’s family, the incident has left a painful void.

His aunt, Lynette Burnley, described him as a “really loving and generous person” who had been fishing since childhood. She said Joseph and his girlfriend had moved to Venezuela, where he had worked in farming, before “getting into problems with boats.”

His mother Lenore condemned what she called a violation of maritime law: “According to maritime law, if you see a boat, you are supposed to stop it and intercept it — not just blow it up,” she said. “That’s our Trinidadian maritime law, and I think every fisherman and every human knows that.”

In Las Cuevas, where turquoise waters meet scarred hearts, residents say the tragedy has shattered their sense of safety. The Caribbean, they insist, has always been a region of “peace and love” — not one where foreign missiles dictate justice on open seas.