By DÁNICA COTO
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday as the U.S. steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean.
Their arrival in the U.S. territory comes more than a week after ships carrying hundreds of U.S. marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise, a move that some on the island have criticized.
Puerto Rico’s Gov. Jenniffer González said Hegseth and Caine visited on behalf of President Donald Trump’s administration to support those participating in the training.
“We thank President Trump and his administration for recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro,” González said.
Hegseth and Caine met with officials at the 156th Wing Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Carolina, a city just east of the capital of San Juan.
González said Hegseth spoke to nearly 300 soldiers at the base and thanked those he described as “American warriors” for their work.
The visit comes as the U.S. prepares to deploy 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels, a person familiar with the planning said Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because information about the deployments has not been made public.
Tensions escalating
On Sept. 2, Trump announced that the U.S. carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean against a vessel that had left Venezuela and was suspected of carrying drugs. Eleven people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Caribbean, with the president saying the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
While the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago praised the strike and said the U.S. should kill all drug traffickers “violently,” reaction from other Caribbean leaders has been more subdued.
Barbadian Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds recently told The Associated Press that members of Caricom, a regional trade bloc, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking for an open line of communication on developments. He said they want to avoid being surprised by any U.S. moves against Venezuela.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government on Monday insisted that the U.S. is falsely accusing it of playing a crucial role in the global drug trade. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez told reporters the U.S. government should redirect its recently deployed maritime force to the Pacific, where fast boats and container ships have long carried Colombian cocaine.
“Those ships that are trying to intimidate Venezuela today should be there in the Pacific if they truly wanted to fight and prevent cocaine from reaching the United States of America,” she said. “They have a GPS location problem. They’re where they shouldn’t be. They need to calibrate their GPS.”
Rodríguez, citing reports from the United Nations and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, added that Venezuela “has absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of (U.S.) citizens from drug overdoses” as the country “is not relevant” in global drug production.
She suggested the U.S. should focus on fighting consumption within its borders.
“There’s a lot of hypocrisy, a lot of double standards, a lot of political manipulation of this issue to attack, to intervene, to aim for regime change in countries that aren’t sympathetic,” she said, referring to drug trafficking.
‘No to War’
The ongoing training of the Marines in Puerto Rico and the upcoming deployment of fighter jets have rankled some in the U.S. territory, where the memories of the U.S. Navy using nearby islands as training ranges in the 1940s remains fresh, with the cleanup still ongoing.
The April 1999 death of civilian security guard David Sanes Rodríguez sparked large protests at the time, eventually leading to the U.S. military leaving the island. Rodríguez was killed after two 500-pound bombs were dropped near him as part of a training mission in Vieques.
On Sunday, dozens of people gathered at the National Guard base in Carolina to decry the heightened U.S. military presence on the island.
They held signs that said, “No to War” and “No to military bases in P.R.”
Organizers also warned against the use of Puerto Rico as a staging ground for potential U.S. military actions in the region.
“We denounce the existence of military bases in Puerto Rico,” said Sonia Santiago Hernández, founder of Mothers Against War.
González has dismissed those concerns, saying that Puerto Rico is playing an important role in Trump’s ongoing fight against drug trafficking since it represents a U.S. border in the Caribbean.
Marines in Puerto Rico
Siul López, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s National Guard, told The AP that a group of Marines currently training on the island are not tied to the U.S. maritime force recently deployed to Caribbean waters.
“One thing has nothing to do with another,” he said, adding that the training in Puerto Rico was pre-planned.
López said he did not know when exactly the training exercise in Puerto Rico was first planned but noted that such exercises are usually planned about a year in advance.
He said the training began on Aug. 31 but that he does not know when it will end, nor how many Marines are involved.
He said they are practicing amphibious maneuvers with a variety of vehicles.
Meanwhile, González said last week that she estimates more than 1,000 Marines were on the island.
The U.S. Marine Corps issued a statement on Aug. 31 noting that marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit would be conducting amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.
“The challenging terrain and tropical climate of Puerto Rico provides an ideal environment for the 22nd MEU to conduct realistic amphibious training and hone specialized skills such as patrolling, reconnaissance and survival techniques, ensuring a high level of readiness while forward deployed,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.
It wasn’t immediately clear how long Hegseth and Caine planned to stay in Puerto Rico, or if they planned to visit other sites while on the island.
López, the National Guard’s spokesman, declined to comment on specifics of the visit.
Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington D.C., Regina García Cano in Caracas and AP videographer Alejandro Granadillo in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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