Trinidad: Relatives of young Venezuelan woman suspect boat was hijacked

Kelly Zambrano

(Trinidad Guardian) Rel­a­tives of a young woman who was among 22 pas­sen­gers on board the Ana Maria, the ves­sel that has not been seen since it sailed from Güiria in Venezuela bound for T&T, say she had been promised a job at a re­sort ho­tel where the in­come of up to US$1,000 a week was guar­an­teed.

Kel­ly Zam­bra­no, 19, a psy­chol­o­gy stu­dent from Táchi­ra, a state in west­ern Venezuela, was last heard from at around 4.30 pm last Thurs­day when she phoned rel­a­tives and told them: “I’m al­ready on the boat. Com­mu­ni­cate with my friend and tell her that we are leav­ing and that we will ar­rive at the time (8 pm) that she es­ti­mat­ed.”

The friend Zam­bra­no re­ferred to in that con­ver­sa­tion was a young woman who was sup­posed to be wait­ing for her in Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports in Venezue­lan me­dia, Zam­bra­no had orig­i­nal­ly arranged to trav­el to this coun­try on April 27 but the jour­ney was post­poned fol­low­ing re­ports that a ves­sel had cap­sized and sank in the Gulf of Paria, near the Drag­on’s Mouth.

A rel­a­tive, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told the news web­site tal­cualdig­i­tal.com that the fam­i­ly has been get­ting con­flict­ing re­ports about the fate of the Ana Maria, in­clud­ing that it had turned back af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems and that it had been hi­jacked.

Ex­press­ing doubt and con­fu­sion about the sit­u­a­tion, the rel­a­tive said they have since found out that the ves­sel had been rent­ed by a group of peo­ple “who would take care of the pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing the cap­tain.”

He said there have been cas­es re­cent­ly where boats have been re­port­ed miss­ing “then the cap­tain ap­pears, then days lat­er more of the crew. On­ly men re­turn, women do not. We as­sume that it is a mat­ter of traf­fick­ing, or some­thing il­le­gal. There is no oth­er rea­son.”

Zam­bra­no, who had dropped out of uni­ver­si­ty be­cause it was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for her to pay tu­ition fees and oth­er ex­pens­es, want­ed to work abroad to help sup­port her fam­i­ly.

She arranged to trav­el from San Cristóbal, the cap­i­tal of Táchi­ra to Puer­to La Cruz, then Cumaná and fi­nal­ly Güiria to board the pirogue. She left her home on May 12 and kept in touch with rel­a­tives as she made her way across Venezuela, call­ing them when she ar­rived in Puer­to La Cruz and then Cumana where she stayed in a ho­tel overnight be­fore con­tin­u­ing on to Güiria.

Ear­ly on Tues­day, Zam­bra­no left for Güiria but when she ar­rived there she found out that the ves­sel would not be leav­ing on Wednes­day as orig­i­nal­ly planned.

“Fi­nal­ly on Thurs­day, they em­barked,” the rel­a­tive said.

The Zam­bra­no fam­i­ly has ex­pressed doubt about the per­son who was sup­posed to be wait­ing for Zam­bra­no in T&T. They said she was the young woman who con­vinced Zam­bra­no she could help her get her a good job in T&T.

The rel­a­tive said: “She told her that she would work at a re­sort, that she could take up to three work­ing days . . . and thus earn about $1,000 a week. That’s why Kel­ly ac­cept­ed, al­though from the bot­tom of my heart I did not want her to leave.”

At around 11.30 pm on the night that Zam­bra­no left Güiria, her fam­i­ly tried un­suc­cess­ful­ly to con­tact the per­son who was sup­posed to be wait­ing for her in Trinidad.

When they fi­nal­ly made con­tact with the woman the next day, she told them: “I’m wait­ing at the dock and they have not ar­rived. I called the man on the boat and he told me they went back be­cause there was a prob­lem.”

The fam­i­ly is now des­per­ate­ly seek­ing an­swers about Zam­bra­no’s where­abouts.