BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – In a continued push for diplomatic engagement with Caribbean nations following dramatic political upheaval in her home country, Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez touched down in Barbados on Sunday. This trip marks her second visit to a member state of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) since she took office in January, after a United States incursion into Venezuela resulted in the detention of sitting President Nicolas Maduro.
Rodríguez’s first Caricom stop came in early April, when she made a brief several-hour visit to Grenada on April 9. During that trip, she held closed-door talks with Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and his full cabinet, an encounter an official Grenadian statement later characterized as having unfolded in a “cordial and constructive atmosphere.”
While official details of her current Barbados itinerary have not been made public, a senior source familiar with the visit confirmed to the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that Rodríguez is scheduled to hold one-on-one talks with Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley before she departs the island nation Monday afternoon. The source noted that the trip is part of a broader diplomatic tour of Caribbean states, saying “She seems to be making the rounds to some Caribbean countries.”
Despite the lack of pre-visit official details, Prime Minister Mottley released a public statement via her social media channels framing the meeting as a meaningful opportunity for bilateral and regional progress. “The visit will provide an opportunity for high level discussions on areas of practical cooperation and wider regional development,” Mottley wrote. She added that Barbados’s foreign policy framework has long been grounded in core principles of mutual respect, open dialogue, and results-driven engagement. “We continue to engage our partners with a clear focus on building relationships that can deliver tangible benefits for our people and the wider region,” she emphasized.
Rodríguez’s diplomatic tour of the Caribbean comes on the heels of a high-profile meeting last week between the acting president and former Trinidad and Tobago prime minister Stuart Young, who shared a photograph of their gathering in Caracas across his social media platforms. Young, who previously served as Trinidad and Tobago’s energy minister, wrote on Facebook that “It was a pleasure meeting Her Excellency, Delcy Rodríguez, Presidenta Encargada, of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela earlier this week.”
The meeting underscores the shifting diplomatic dynamics around Venezuela within the Caribbean, particularly for Trinidad and Tobago, where current Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar – who was declared “persona non grata” by Venezuela’s National Assembly – has a long history of open criticism toward both Rodríguez and the Maduro administration. Even so, Persad-Bissessar recently announced that Port of Spain plans to dispatch an official diplomatic mission to Caracas to advance negotiations over cross-border energy reserves, with the goal of securing what the government calls Trinidad and Tobago’s “just share” of the resources.
At the center of these energy negotiations are two key offshore gas fields. The Dragon gas field, which sits within formally recognized Venezuelan territorial waters but lies in close proximity to Trinidad and Tobago’s existing energy infrastructure, has long been identified as a critical potential supply source for the country’s growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Development of the field has been stalled for years, however, due to persistent geopolitical tensions and sweeping international sanctions imposed on Venezuela’s energy sector. A second field, Loran Manatee, spans the two countries’ overlapping maritime boundaries, and while Trinidad and Tobago has already moved forward with development on its portion of the reserve, negotiations over Venezuela’s share remain ongoing.