Venezuelan fishing towns caught between US strikes and Maduro’s grip |
Along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, where turquoise waters lap against crumbling piers and brightly painted boats bob in the shallows, life has long been hard. In towns like Güiria, once sustained by fishing and maritime trade, poverty and neglect have hollowed out communities. Now, residents say they are trapped between two powerful forces beyond their control: an aggressive US military campaign at sea and a tightening grip by Nicolás Maduro’s embattled government on land.
For Nadia, a resident of Güiria, that squeeze has become deeply personal. Her husband disappeared in early September, around the same time the United States launched a wave of military strikes targeting alleged drug trafficking vessels off Venezuela’s coast. Since then, more than 20 strikes have been reported across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The US government has framed the campaign as a lawful confrontation with “narco-terrorists.” Critics, however, argue that it amounts to extrajudicial killing carried out far from any declared battlefield.
Nadia does not know whether her husband was among the dead. His name has not appeared on any official list. No authority has contacted her. She has not been able to hold a mass or even say a prayer with certainty. “No one gives me an answer,” she says quietly. Her husband, she insists, told her he was a fisherman. Whether that was the truth no longer matters to her grief. The sea swallowed him all the same.
According to multiple reports, more than 90 people have died in the US strikes so far. One incident on September 2 drew particular outrage after allegations emerged that a second missile was fired at a vessel to kill survivors clinging to the wreckage. Legal experts have said such an act would violate international humanitarian law. Washington has rejected the criticism, maintaining that the targets were designated drug traffickers posing a threat to US security.
While politicians and analysts debate legality and strategy in Washington, families along Venezuela’s coast are left with unanswered questions. Bodies have not been recovered. Names have not been confirmed. For relatives like Nadia, loss exists in a limbo between hope and despair.
At the same time, residents say the Venezuelan state has responded not with transparency or protection, but with intimidation. In the weeks following the strikes, security forces flooded coastal areas in the states of Sucre and Falcón. Locals describe patrols, raids, and arrests carried out with little........