Andrew Sage (4:34)
So the previous Prime Minister was Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley. He was Prime Minister for like 10 years. He became Prime Minister after she lost her last stint as prime minister because she's kind of a mess in a couple different ways. I mean both parties are pretty corrupt, but they're corrupt and incompetent in some very critical ways. Corrupt and racist and a couple other issues. That trend continues with her new candidacy. You know, she is not only failing the country in some crucial ways. You know, she canceled our Independence Day celebrations. She fired like thousands of workers from local agency that's responsible for landscaping around the country, basically, you know, cutting grass and clearing drains, that sort of thing. Fired like thousands of them. Right. So now the entire country is overgrown and all those people have like right before their Children have to go to school. You know, they had no income to support them. So there's like a lot of cruelty, a lot of corruption, a lot of incompetence and, yeah, in this particular case, diplomatic carelessness, recklessness. Because she goes and she says this despite the fact that not only did the US violate a law, international law, but also we are small. You may not be able to see Trinidad in a lot of maps because we are small. You know, we may be one of the more populated Caribbean countries, but we are still small. Venezuela is our closest neighbor. And she has been exceedingly irresponsible in the ways that she's approached Venezuela, because the previous administration actually had an agreement with Venezuela regarding the extraction of their fossil fuels in the waters that are between Trinidad and Venezuela. We had to get permission from the United States to get into that agreement with Venezuela because Venezuela is currently under sanction. And for the longest time, Trinidad has had to walk this sort of tightrope of playing nice with both the US and Venezuela. She's basically coming, guns blazing, to make statements that appear to be openly aggressive towards Venezuela, towards Venezuelan sovereignty and so on. Now, her reasoning is that Trinidad has been ravaged by a lot of violence and addiction that have been caused by these drug cartels coming from South America, including Venezuela. This is a very real issue. The illegal gun and drug and human trafficking that takes place between South America and Trinidad. We are transshipment point for that sort of activity, and that kind of thing brings violence. The issue is that while she may be able to say things like, may God bless and protect the members of the U.S. military, the U.S. and the U.S. military are in part responsible for the violence that has ravaged Latin America. But is also not even particularly interested, regardless of what their words may say, they're not particularly interested in dealing with the drug issue. At the end of the day, it really comes down to regime change and a desire to control Venezuela's resources. But let me take it back for a moment and provide a longer history of what's going on. Right. United States became independent in 1776. You know, Trinidad became a colony of the UK in 1797, not long after that. Because prior to being under the uk, Trinidad was under the Spanish. And while being under the Spanish was settled by French settlers. So it was like Spanish laws, French settlers, and then later on, UK governance. And so the War of 1812, which is, you know, the war took place between the US and the uk, led to some African Americans siding with the UK in exchange for emancipation and in exchange for their services in that war. That group of people which became known as Americans were resettled in South Trinidad. And I'm actually descended from some of them, allegedly. So there is this history of exchange taking place between us and Trinidad. You know, During World War II, America had military bases established in Trinidad. We had Waller Field, which was commissioned in 1941, and the Chagramas Naval Base, which was fully operational in 1943. And that provided strategic naval and air facilities in the Caribbean, thanks to the Destroyers for Bases agreement with the British. The British got destroyers and the US got bases in the British colonies. Now, thankfully, the base was scaled back and eventually decommissioned and returned to Trinidad and Tobago's control by 1963. But that took a lot of protest and marching to accomplish. It was the whole thing of trying to get Yankee out of Trinidad. Yankee did provide some benefits to Trinidad in terms of establishing infrastructure for highways and that sort of thing. But there was also a not so positive social impact of the American presence. You know, one Calypsonian known as the Mighty Sparrow sang in a song called Jean and Dinah, that's basically the American presence funded a lot of households due to prostitution.
