The Imperial Marines Against Tuna Fishing

Corporal Jason Lee Dunham of the US Army, when he died, it is said, heroically in Iraq in 2004, never imagined that his name would be placed on the DDG-109, known as the USS Jason Dunham, manufactured by the military-industrial complex at Bath Works in Maine and launched on August 1, 2009.

Much less could Corporal Dunham have imagined that the aforementioned destroyer would be dedicated to obstructing the fishing of marine species like tuna by a small Venezuelan vessel, with a perhaps less "heroic" but much more beautiful name, Carmen Rosa.

Beyond the irony that may lie in these initial comments, the truth is that a heavily armed destroyer measuring 160 meters in length, 20 meters in width, and a displacement of 9,200 tons carried out a hostile operation against a small fishing boat, which measures just 21 meters in length and 5.8 meters in width, and of course, had no weapons.

This ship, the USS Jason Dunham, is equipped with advanced combat technology, including the Aegis system and the AN/SPY-1D multifunction radar. Its arsenal includes cannons of various types and powers, 96-cell missile launchers, Tomahawk, Standard, and other rockets; as well as torpedoes and two helicopters.

The USS Jason Dunham is part of the Empire's deployment in the Caribbean, on a war footing, with the aim of intimidating the Venezuelan revolution and, if circumstances permit, finally proceeding, as Mr. Rubio would say, with the long-sought "regime change," the reward of which is to seize control of Venezuela's oil and other vast resources.

The action denounced by Venezuela, which once again borders on the kind of ridiculousness from which it is almost impossible to return, consisted of the assault on Carmen Rosa by 18 battle-hardened US Marines, as is always remembered, useless, who boarded the fishing boat and kidnapped the nine fishermen on board; eight hours later, they released them, convinced they had nothing to do with drug trafficking.

Several considerations could be drawn from this operation. The most obvious, perhaps superficial, is that the intelligence system carried by the USS Jason Dunham is insufficient to accurately assess the dangers contained in a simple fishing boat. Their Aegis radars and sensors mistook a school of bonito for bales of cocaine.

Another line of reasoning leads one to believe that, after the sinking of the drug boat—which never existed or was never sunk, regardless of the content of the lie—it's now necessary to justify the multimillion-dollar expenses of the anti-drug operation with the occasional skirmish, until politicians, say Mr. Rubio, manage to convince the Pentagon military that some type of military action against Venezuela is necessary.

And the Pentagon military, who have obediently filled the country with ships, planes, super fighters, helicopters, yellow submarines, nuclear-powered ones, etc., do their calculations and understand that the Venezuelan "enemy" has already mobilized four million enraged militiamen. And it's clear that such resistance would lead to a colossal reduction in the number of personnel of the aforementioned US Marines. And those at the Pentagon know this well, through Vietnam.

And along these lines, what better than fabricating an incident, a provocation, doesn't have to be so sophisticated, because, after all, the interest in truthfulness is clearly not part of the imperial government's agenda. The order is to escalate tensions, as some foreign press with hegemonic aims call it, to what is a vulgar unilateral and unjustified US aggression against a people of Our America.

History seems to be repeating itself; against the Cuban Revolution, against Cuban fishing boats, similar events are piling up, costing lives, which were also used to provoke the Cuban people and justify their stubborn aggressive policy.

In this context, it is appropriate to recall the hijacking of the fishing vessel Jurelero 8 in 1963, the Alecrin in 1967, and the Celia Key in 1970 in the 1970s. The sinking of the fishing vessel Jesús María in 1973, which was fishing north of Camagüey province, was boarded and subsequently sunk by a United States Coast Guard vessel, the USCGC Vigilant (WMEC-617). In the other cases mentioned, which are not the only ones, it is always a super destroyer against a humble fishing boat, as is the case now, like the Carmen Rosa.

In other words, there’s nothing new about this absurd operation, nor is there anything new about the fact that the US, its naval units for war, are undoubtedly the greatest danger to navigation in the warm waters of the Caribbean they want to set ablaze.

Furthermore, the US is the main, or rather, probably the only, danger. which violates with absolute impunity the main international norms that govern maritime order in this region of the world, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which recognizes the existence of the so-called Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) bordering Venezuela, and where the crew of the Carmen Rosa were fishing carelessly.

And as could not be missing from this circus, one of the usual criminals who represents South Florida in Congress, the Díaz Balart who is left from a family of bandits wearing a tie, has already ruled that the Venezuelan president had three options left, all tailored to his wishes. He failed to mention the only viable one: that the USS Jason Dunham return without fanfare to its base in Mayport, located in Florida, near Jacksonville, accompanied, of course, by the rest of the potential invaders.

On occasions like these, we must insist on solidarity with the people and the Bolivarian Revolution, which is to say the same thing. As Cuba immediately did, and other countries rejected the latest operation against tuna fishing.

Just as it’s repeated everywhere and quite rightly, we must not stop talking about Gaza, so today we cannot stop talking about Venezuela! The life of the America of the Andes, the one south of the Rio Grande, the same as the Amazon, the glaciers near the South Pole, and the Central American volcanoes depend on it.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff