While Carnival Is Our Therapy,
We Wining, We Jamming.
Come Ash Wednesday 2026, the Sobering Truth.

Trinidad Left Out. Energy Maps Redrawn. Washington and Caracas Reroute Venezuelan Oil.

“De place could bun down, we jammin still.”

That line has always carried more than music. It’s a philosophy. Fire in the background, rhythm in the foreground, and a quiet understanding that we survive by moving — even when the ground beneath us feels uncertain.

This Carnival season, I’m watching from a distance. Born of Trinidad and Tobago. In my blood forever. Missing the pulse, the crowd sway, the steelpan that rearranges your heartbeat. So in the middle of soca and bacchanal, when posts start flying across my screen about oil routes, power shifts, and Trinidad being “left out,” I pause.

Maybe I’m being maccoshus(sp)— minding people business from afar. Maccoing from afar. But here’s how it looks from a bird’s-eye view.

With Maduro removed, it seemed — at least on the surface — that favor might naturally flow toward those who aligned closely with Washington. I watched that belief settle around Machado, the presumed chosen: reverence, positioning, expectation — polished, predictable, a little too sure of itself. From the outside, it carried the quiet confidence that alignment would be enough.

And from afar, Trinidad and Tobago’s leadership appeared to be moving in that same direction — public camaraderie, visible cooperation, the sense of standing in good stead.

Then — bram, jus so.

The routing decisions landed. And suddenly the realization settled in: Trinidad was not “betrayed.” It was made unnecessary in this phase. Not because of spite. Not because of failure. But because once control over oil movement, licensing, buyers, insurance, and payments is centralized elsewhere, geography stops being destiny — especially for a country already contending with declining gas output, constrained LNG volumes, and petrochemical plants operating below capacity or idled altogether.