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 explanation. Homes belonging to the families of the disappeared were searched. People were questioned about their relatives’ activities. Many now avoid speaking openly, even among neighbors.

“People are afraid when they see officials,” says a community leader in Güiria. “They know what happens to those who are detained.” Fear of imprisonment, disappearance, or torture hangs over conversations. Social media posts have dried up. Silence has become a survival strategy.

Venezuela’s Caribbean coastline stretches roughly 2,800 kilometers, skirting a porous border with Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine producer. For decades, its isolated coves and under-patrolled waters have made it an ideal transit route for drugs bound for the United States and Europe. According to US authorities and international watchdogs, corruption within Venezuela’s military and political elite has allowed the trade to flourish.

Yet for the fishing towns themselves, the story is one of abandonment. Güiria, known for its colonial architecture and lively carnival traditions, once relied on shrimp trawling and commercial fishing. That changed in 2009, when trawling was banned for environmental reasons. What remained of the fishing sector was later crippled by Venezuela’s economic collapse: fuel shortages, soaring prices, and chronic shortages of basic goods.

Today, the state strictly rations subsidized gasoline, leaving fishermen with too little fuel to travel far enough to make a living. Boats sit idle, hulls cracked and engines rusting. “There used to be ten fishermen on this street,” one resident recalls. “Now there are five, and we’re all old. There are no new fishermen.”

Young people have little incentive to enter a trade that no longer pays. Many leave. Others stay and scrape by. In this vacuum, criminal groups have found fertile ground.

In coastal villages across Sucre and Falcón, residents say it is an open secret that outsiders use the shoreline for illicit activities. At night, locals report seeing speedboats with multiple engines cutting through the darkness-vessels unlike anything used for traditional fishing. These boats, capable of traveling at 20 to 50 knots, are commonly associated with drug trafficking. Small but powerful, they can carry hundreds of kilos of cocaine and enough fuel to reach destinations like the Dominican Republic, a major transit hub.

Engines and spare parts are easy to come by. If a boat is lost, another quickly replaces it. According to regional security experts, this logistical ease makes maritime trafficking resilient to disruption.

Over time, as the state retreated from remote regions, criminal syndicates filled the gap. In some communities, residents say these groups effectively replaced the police. Disputes were settled not in courts but by gang leaders. Punishments were meted out privately and brutally. “They were the authority,” says one fisherman from Sucre. “They investigated, took people away, and decided what to do with them.”

This reality complicates the narrative promoted by both Washington and Caracas. The US portrays the coast as a battlefield against narco-terrorism. Maduro’s government, meanwhile, has often minimized the scale of trafficking and insists it is firmly in control.

Maduro has long rejected allegations that his government is entangled in the drug trade, dismissing claims about the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” as foreign propaganda. Yet in 2020, US prosecutors indicted him and several senior officials on charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy. While Maduro denies the accusations, two high-ranking Venezuelan generals have pleaded guilty in US courts.

Transparency International and other organizations argue that Venezuela’s anti-drug efforts lack credibility. Official seizure figures have remained oddly consistent-around 35 metric tons per year-for nearly two decades, even as cocaine production and seizures have surged elsewhere in the region. The lack of reliable public data, combined with censorship and pressure on independent media, makes it difficult to assess what is really happening.

Critics say the government’s recent show of calm following the US strikes rings hollow. Nearly three months passed before authorities announced any investigation. When they did speak, senior officials downplayed fear among fishermen, insisting they continued to work freely in Venezuelan waters.

Locals tell a different story. They describe anxiety, disrupted livelihoods, and a pervasive sense of vulnerability. US missiles may strike at sea, but it is Venezuelan security forces who knock on doors at night.

Some experts question whether the US military campaign will have any meaningful impact on drug trafficking. Michael Vigil, a former senior US Drug Enforcement Administration official, has described the strikes as “political theater.” In his view, the people on the boats are expendable laborers at the bottom of the supply chain-men driven by poverty and lack of options.

“It’s not going to stop the trade,” Vigil argues. “It’s not going to touch the people who really profit.”

Indeed, history suggests that disrupting individual shipments rarely dismantles trafficking networks. Routes shift. Boats are replaced. For coastal communities, however, the consequences are immediate and deadly.

Residents now face a cruel paradox. Economic desperation pushes some toward illicit work, while militarization makes the sea more dangerous for everyone. Fishermen fear venturing too far, worried they could be mistaken for traffickers. Families fear that association-real or imagined-could bring state scrutiny or worse.

The broader geopolitical context only deepens the sense of powerlessness. The US military buildup in the Caribbean has fueled speculation that Washington seeks not just to combat drugs but to pressure or destabilize Maduro’s government. Caracas, in turn, frames US actions as imperial aggression while tightening its own control at home.

Caught between these agendas are communities that have little influence over either side. They are not consulted when policies are made. They do not benefit when force is applied. Yet they absorb the fallout.

For Nadia and others like her, the conflict is not abstract. It is measured in empty beds, unanswered questions, and a constant fear of speaking out. Whether her husband was a fisherman, a smuggler, or something in between, she says, the outcome is the same: he is gone, and no one will tell her why.

As night falls over Güiria, the sea that once promised sustenance now inspires dread. Speedboats still pass in the darkness. Patrols still move through town. Somewhere beyond the horizon, foreign warships watch and wait.

The debate over drugs, sovereignty, and international law will continue in capitals far away. But along Venezuela’s forgotten coast, the crisis is already here. It is etched into the lives of families who feel abandoned by their own government and targeted by another.

Until poverty, corruption, and impunity are addressed at their roots, residents say, no amount of missiles or patrols will bring security. For now, Venezuela’s fishing towns remain suspended between two forces they cannot escape-at the mercy of decisions made in Washington and Caracas, and left to navigate the consequences alone.

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Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings