Venezuela Land Grab

 

Something rather bizarre happened recently. The Maduro administration in Venezuela took it upon themselves to host a referendum to decide the fate of the Essequibo region, which was approved by 95% of voters. While democratic processes are all good and well, the problem here however is that Essequibo is not part of Venezuela but part of Guyana and has been that way for nearly two centuries. The root of this dispute can be traced back to colonial competition between Britain and Spain. According to the Venezuelans, after declaring their independence from Spain in 1819, the Essequibo region that was (in their view) originally Spanish automatically became theirs under the successor state principle of international law. The problem is that this is a false justification because Spain never held undisputed sovereignty over the region but instead was faced with constant competition with its rivals namely Britain, France and the Netherlands. Sometime in the course of the dispute, the other contenders withdrew to the eastern part of the Guianas region leading to the formation of Suriname (former Dutch Guiana) and French Guiana, leaving only the Brits who maintained effective control of the region later combining the colonies of Essequibo, Berbice and Demarara in 1831 to form British Guiana (which became Guyana in 1966).  Venezuela also became its own country for the first time in 1831, having previously been a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia (itself formed from the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Granada) for just over 12 years following a separation from Spain. The point of this background is to show that at no time was the Essequibo region ever under the effective control of either New Granada or Gran Colombia, as  two polities never held real control of the region.

Enter Venezuela, the new country formed from the split of the first Bolivarian republic. Like Spain and Gran Colombia before it, they also claimed that Essequibo was rightfully theirs. They even went as far as attempting to evoke the Munroe Doctrine. By all rights, a policy that was unilaterally crafted by the US government has no standing among the law of nations and cannot be used as justification to claim anything. Nevertheless, the US doing what it does best, decided to insert itself and insisted that the only way to settle this “peacefully” was by arbitration of a neutral court, they said this thinking to  catch the UK in a trap. This move backfired spectacularly on both Venezuela and their American allies (this was before the Hugo Chavez era) when in 1899 the court ruled in no uncertain terms that territory was part of British Guiana.

While initially accepting the ruling, Venezuela changed its mind in the 1960s to challenge the veracity of the court’s judgement, but truthfully it is this referendum held by Maduro that has no validity. Venezuela can wail all it likes about the court ruling in favour of a colonial power back then, the truth is that the current dispute is not with colonial Britain but with the modern independent state of Guyana. Like Venezuela, Guyana also uses the principle of the successor state to justify its sovereign right over the region. Unlike Venezuela, Guyana has exercised jurisdiction over the Essequibo region since it gained independence and as such legally speaking, the region is rightfully theirs by virtue of the 1899 ruling and 1966 Guyana Independence Act. And speaking of 1966, Venezuela actually tried to stall the Guyanese independence effort with the Geneva Agreement which insists on having the issue revisited by a UN Commission before Guyana could be granted full independence. Although both British and Guyanese leaders signed the agreement for further discussion to take place, it did not forestall Guyanese independence as Venezuela had hoped, which means that when Guyana raised its own flag for the first time, Essequibo was part of its territory.

What all of this means is that Venezuela for the longest while has accepted de facto Guyanese jurisdiction over the region, so the question now is what changed? One might expect the answer to be very complicated but the truth is that it is very simple: oil. Recently, thanks to the efforts of oil giant Exxon Mobil, oil reserves was discovered off the coast of Guyana. According to estimates, these reserves would put Guyana closer to Kuwait, outstripping Venezuela by far as biggest oil producer in the region, it was this and only this that caused Caracas to all of a sudden pick up where it left off in the 19^th century.  Let us be clear, for all the talk of a “need for justice” or the fabrications of any imagined wrongs done to Venezuela in the past, these are little more than smokescreens to mask the true intentions of the Bolivarian Republic, their real agenda has always been about gaining more territory to take advantage of Guyana’s oil discovery. This should be worrying for two reasons, 1. Venezuela has oil reserves of its own already and it has not done very well in managing them to the benefits of its people and 2. Given their obvious lack of frugality in handling their own oil reserves, why should they be given more oil resources to mismanage?

There are not much shades of grey here, it is cut and dry, a larger nation is being quite open its desire to annex two-thirds of a country that it is less than half of its size, in other words this is a land grab. This so-called vote is illegal in every sense of the word as the right of conquest was outlawed by the UN Charter of 1945. I find it ironic that Venezuela attempts to use democracy as justification for this while ignoring the fact that a vote cannot be valid if the persons doing the voting are not the persons who are to affected by the vote, in other words it is not the place of the Venezuelan people to decide what should happen to two-thirds of Guyana’s land, something that the International Court of Justice was adamantly clear on. Quite frankly, the actions of the Bolivarian regime are grossly hypocritical for two reasons 1. They claim that Guyana’s claim is not legitimate because it was inherited from colonial Britain, but Venezuela itself used colonial Spain to justify their own claim and 2. Maduro himself has struggled with the idea of an external power challenging his legitimacy as the US has repeated tried to install the puppet Juan Guaido in his place. How then can he not see the irony of his own government acting as an external power imposing itself on a smaller nation, when that is exactly the kind of struggle they are having with the US only in reverse?

In the end, there are no “both sides” argument here as there are in some international disputes. The international community (especially CARICOM and the Commonwealth) should stand by Guyana and let Venezuela know that Guyana’s territorial integrity must be respected. The fate of Essequibo is non-negotiable and any attempt to alter it should be met with swift and decisive action proportional to the extent that Caracas is prepared to go to pursue this false claim. The world is in enough chaos as it is, the last thing we need is another unnecessary war especially not against one of our sister states in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Therefore, every effort must be made for cooler heads to prevail, this dispute (which should not even be a dispute to begin with) has gone far enough and it is high time for the government in Venezuela to focus on cleaning up its own messy situation, dial down on the inflammatory rhetoric and leave Guyana alone.