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 19th 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.
