In a message posted on social media, the president described such actions as unacceptable and remembered that the gunboat policy and the Monroe Doctrine belong to a neocolonial era that has already been overcome.

“Latin America and the Caribbean is a Zone of Peace,” Diaz-Canel emphasized, alluding to the proclamation adopted by the countries of the region at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in 2014.

Since September 2, the United States government has carried out a series of attacks on small vessels in international waters in areas of the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, which it blames on Venezuela.

In response to US accusations, Venezuelan authorities have put forward a unified message rejecting the framework of bilateral confrontation and denouncing it as a multilateral campaign of aggression.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro described Washington’s actions as a smear campaign against his administration to “justify anything” against the Bolivarian nation.

Maduro asserted that the United States’ true objective is “regime change” in order to seize Venezuela’s immense oil and gas wealth.

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