CARACAS (Dispatches) - 
Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez says the United States’ military buildup in the Caribbean is a “revival of old colonial methods.”
“The current deployment of U.S. warships in the Caribbean Sea is nothing more than a blatant example of the reedition of the old colonizing approach,” Padrino Lopez said in a statement commemorating Venezuela’s Indigenous Resistance Day on Sunday, which honors the struggle of indigenous peoples against colonization.
He accused Washington of seeking to “intimidate by force,” adding that Venezuela’s people and armed forces were “fully prepared and united” to defend national sovereignty.
“The battle we are fighting today is the same as 500 years ago: the defense of self-determination and the right to define our own destiny,” he said.
The minister also criticized U.S. attempts to subdue sovereign nations through “economic blockades, unilateral coercive sanctions, hybrid warfare and constant threats of military intervention.”
Padrino Lopez said the Indigenous Resistance Day reaffirms Venezuela’s “irrevocable anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist vocation.”
The Venezuelan government has repeatedly denounced the recent U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean as a threat to its sovereignty.  
The U.S. has ramped up its military presence in the Caribbean in recent weeks amid what the Trump administration is calling “an armed conflict” with drug cartels and growing escalations with Venezuela’s military.
U.S. warships and aircraft have been sent to international waters near Venezuela as part of the deployment, the most significant in the region in recent history. There has been a series of deadly strikes on vessels off the coast of Venezuela, which, according to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were trafficking drugs to the U.S.
The administration has not provided evidence to lawmakers that the boats were carrying drugs, and lawmakers and Venezuelan officials have questioned the attacks’ legal justification.