Dear Editor,
The aggressive posture by the Nicolas Maduro administration in Venezuela against its neighbour, Guyana, is ironically fulfilling an imperialist scheme with origins way back in 1962. The word, ‘ironically’, is used here because President Maduro has dressed himself up in the garbs of an anti-imperialist and a politician on the Left. But unfortunately, due to many factors, including domestic and international pressures, his regime’s politics, while sounding Left in rhetoric, is, in practice, facilitating and strengthening the forces of imperialism in and against the Latin American and Caribbean region, even inviting a military pressure the region can do without.
Political scientists and historians would recall that this issue was raised at a time when British Guiana was on the verge of becoming an Independent state. The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) had a very strong position on the meaning of independence. The party leaders of that era were not prepared to have just formal independence or a neo-colonial status. Instead, they insisted on the substance of independence – and that brought them into direct disagreement with the United States. In order to delay Independence to the then colony, Venezuela — then a pro-US puppet state — was used to raise an issue that had been settled more than six decades before: the delineation of Guiana’s borders. Clearly it was a put-up job because the grounds on which it was raised was known to Venezuela and the world since the 1940s, but was dismissed as a nonissue.
At the time it was raised, Dr. Jagan who was British Guiana’s Premier, and British officials agreed for the Venezuelans and British experts to examine all the records in the British and Venezuelan archives, to see if any evidence existed to support the new claim. But none was ever found and the PPP and the British, at that point, regarded the issue as being closed. However, after the overthrow of the PPP government in 1964, the British, in 1965, accepted the leadership of the US and no-doubt on US insistence, signed the Geneva Accord. The original intent was to have that as a tool to ensure imperial control of future Guyanese governments in the post-independence period. The Right wing political parties in Venezuela began using the claim to Guyana’s Essequibo as an instrument for mobilization during elections campaigns.
The two main parties (COPEI and Accion Democratica) began to compete with each other in their irrational claim on the Essequibo. That constant banging made it engrained in the psyche of many among the Venezuelan people. This Venezuelan claim was also used as a warning to the Burnham Government in 1966, when Venezuela seized Guyana’s half of the Ankoko island in the Cuyuni river. This was both to threaten Guyana and at the same time to pollute the minds of ordinary Venezuelans even more. It is also quite possible that the Rupununi Uprising in Guyana, which began on January 2, 1969, could have been an expression of the US’ disapproval of the PNC’s ditching of the United Force (UF) at the December 1968 General Elections and was meant as a threat to the then People’s National Congress (PNC) regime.
Chavez Era
The situation changed greatly, however, when Hugo Chavez took office in 1998. Chavez was a genuine patriot, revolutionary and regionalist. He educated himself on the Guyana-Venezuela issue and dismissed it early as an invention of the United States for imperialistic purposes. That explained his friendliness to then ex-President Mrs. Janet Jagan who attended his inauguration. Chavez also built a very good and friendly relationship with Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo and he also visited Guyana, where and when he again publicly dismissed the border issue as a US creation.
Chavez had a vision of a Latin America and Caribbean region that’s integrated and prosperous. He felt that the people of the Latin America and the Caribbean should determine the socio-economic direction of the region. He sought to keep any uninvited outsider from interfering in the affairs of the region. All his actions were in the direction of building friendship among the peoples of the various countries. Maduro inherited some of Chavez’s popularity. How-ever, unlike Chavez, he was not as skillful in dealing with the pressures of the United States. Sanctions and other pressures created a difficult environment in Venezuela. But Maduro, instead of educating the masses as to the real problem, began adopting heavy-handed and dictatorial methods in dealing with the political opposition, leading to his flagging popularity.
Maduro fires wild allegation at and about Guyana and its President, but he’s now jailing opposition leaders and candidates. Repression has become his main tool in dealing with his political and economic opponents. He has created a very toxic atmosphere in his country which makes it difficult to have free and fair elections. Sadly, the contentious border issue concocted originally by the US has now become a useful weapon in Maduro’s hands to whip-up extreme nationalism in Venezuela, in the hope of maintaining some mass support ahead of presidential elections in July. In the process, however, he has forced the Guyana Govern-ment to seek support from the international community, including from the United States. This became possible since the US announced that they regard the 1899 Arbitral Award as the final settlement of the issue.
Therefore, what Chavez tried to avoid, Maduro is inviting by adopting the position of Venezuela’s then President Romulo Betancourt (1959 to 1964) who had collaborated with the West to remove a progressive government in then British Guiana Unfortunately, for Maduro, that position is now no more. The “leftist” Maduro has degenerated into a dictator at home, unable to win any argument by a rational debate, and an aggressor to neighbour Guyana, which, from a military point of view, is no match or threat for Venezuela’s military. The Left wing forces in our region should understand that Venezuela’s stance is objectively very ‘anti-left’ and ‘anti-regional’. They must therefore guard against making Left wing politics to appear to be disreputable. Unfortunately for Venezuela, Guyana, Latin America and the Caribbean, Maduro’s actions are objectively pro-imperialist and that cannot be doubted.
Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
