Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that Christmas will begin at the start of October in the country, which he also did last year, as he faces intensified U.S. pressure.
“Once again this year, Christmas starts on October 1 with joy, commerce, activity, culture, carols,” and more, Maduro said during his weekly TV program Con Maduro+.
Maduro first pulled the early Christmas stunt in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, he made the early Christmas declaration during a dispute over the election, in which he claimed victory while his opponent and the U.S. government said he lost.
This year’s announcement comes amid an intense standoff with the United States.
Last month, the Department of Justice and the State Department announced that they would double the Biden administration’s previous $25 million offer to $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest. Maduro is accused of violating narcotics laws by aiding drug cartels and street gangs.
The Treasury Department declared multiple Central and South American gangs as foreign terrorist organizations in February, which gave the administration more flexibility in how it combats their operations.
The military has also deployed thousands of troops to the Caribbean Sea to deter and disrupt cartel operations.
That change was followed up last week with an unprecedented military strike against a boat traveling to the U.S. that the administration said was being operated by Tren de Aragua. Eleven people were killed while War Secretary Pete Hegseth, formerly the defense secretary, warned that more strikes could follow.
The U.S. Coast Guard is traditionally the military service branch that conducts operations of this nature. They most frequently interdict ships, arrest those on board if illegal substances are found, and then afford them due process.
“This is a deadly serious mission for us, and it won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth said on Fox & Friends last week. “Anyone else trafficking in the waters who we know is a terrorist will face the same fate, and it is important to protect our homeland and hemisphere.”
Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Staff, visited U.S. troops in Puerto Rico on Monday. Hegseth told sailors and Marines aboard the USS Iwo Jima that they are not “training” and their mission “is the real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interest of the United States of America to end the positioning of the American people.”
However, the strike has raised concerns among some on Capitol Hill that it amounted to an extrajudicial killing.
Days after the strike, the newly christened Department of War, formerly the Defense Department, announced that two Venezuelan aircraft “flew near a U.S. Navy vessel in international waters.”
“This highly provocative move was designed to interfere with our counter-narco-terror operations. The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter, or interfere with counter-narcotics and counter-terror operations carried out by the U.S. military,” the statement continued.
The White House said on Friday that the military is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico.
Since then, Maduro ordered the deployment of 25,000 troops to the country’s long Caribbean coastline and Colombian border. The order more than doubled the Venezuelan military’s presence in the area.
The announcement from the Maduro government’s press office said the deployment “is taking place in a context of constant threats from the United States government, which has deployed nuclear ships and submarines in the Caribbean Sea.”