MEXICO CITY — Is armed conflict on the horizon in the northern hinterlands of South America?
The prospect of a military confrontation has emerged in recent weeks as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has threatened to annex a chunk of resource-rich land in neighboring Guyana. The vast territory has been a source of a contention for more than a century.
Maduro’s claims on the region — which Venezuelans call Guayana Esequiba and Guyanese call Essequibo — come as he faces unpopularity at home and growing international pressure to hold clean elections next year.
This month, Maduro put the territorial demands on Guyana to a vote in a domestic referendum — a bid to harness nationalist sentiment in a nation where generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the contested terrain is an essential part of Venezuela.
The conflict has alarmed the United Nations, the United States, Brazil and other nations. And now Maduro and Guyana’s president, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, are scheduled to meet Thursday in the Caribbean island-nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. All sides profess to favor a peaceful resolution.
Here are the details:
What’s the backdrop behind the dispute?
Venezuela is home to some of the world’s largest oil reserves. But its once-robust economy cratered and millions of impoverished Venezuelans have emigrated, especially since the 2017 mass protests against the rule of the socialist Maduro, a protege of ex-President Hugo Chávez and a fervent adversary of the United States.
Maduro blames his country’s woes on U.S. sanctions that have helped cripple Venezuela’s petroleum sector. Washington calls Maduro an authoritarian dictator whose mismanagement has wrecked Venezuela’s economy and battered the country’s oil-and-gas extraction infrastructure — and caused misery for many of the country’s 30.5 million residents.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
Guyana, a staunch U.S. ally, is a former Dutch and British colony that is home to a small but extremely diverse population of 800,000 — including descendants of African slaves and indentured workers from the Asian subcontinent, Indigenous peoples and settlers from Europe and elsewhere. It is the sole nation on the continent where English is the official language.
Guyana is perhaps best-known in the United States as the site of the 1978 murder-suicide of more than 900 people linked to the California-based Peoples Temple cult and its wayward leader, Jim Jones.
Guyana’s economy long featured relatively small-scale farming, fishing, timber-harvesting and mining. But the once-quiescent economy has been super-charged since discoveries in 2015 of huge offshore oil deposits.
What is Essequibo?
The sprawling swath of jungle, savanna and coast known as Essequibo — for the Essequibo River that forms its eastern boundary — accounts for two-thirds of Guyana’s land. At 61,000 square miles, it’s an area slightly smaller than Florida.
The border dispute with Venezuela dates to the early 1800s and British Guiana, as pre-independence Guyana was known. An 1899 international arbitration decision affirmed that Essequibo was part of British Guiana, but Venezuela has long said the process was rigged and that its dominion over Essequibo stretches back centuries to Spanish colonial days. Guyana gained independence in 1966.
The Essequibo area, rich in timber and minerals, is now helping to transform Guyana through the recent oil boom.
In 2018, with an offshore drilling frenzy well underway, Guyana moved to secure an international imprimatur for control of Essequibo, taking its case to the International Court of Justice (sometimes called the World Court), the United Nations’ highest judicial panel. Last April, the court rejected procedural objections from Caracas, paving the way for the justices to hear arguments from both sides.
What steps has Venezuela taken?
The World Court ruling stung Venezuelan officials, who feared the panel would ultimately declare Essequibo part of Guyana — even though a final decision is probably years off.
Maduro was left with “a ball of fire in his hands,” said Jesús Seguías, an independent political analyst in Caracas.
Appearing on the verge of losing Essequibo would be a humiliation for a president already on shaky electoral ground, said Seguías.
But Maduro, a survivor of the Trump administration “maximum pressure” campaign to drive him from office, struck back. He called a nationwide referendum on a plan to incorporate Essequibo into Venezuela and deny World Court jurisdiction.
The International Court of Justice on Dec. 1 ordered Venezuela not to do anything to alter the status quo on Guyana’s control over Essequibo. But it denied Guyana’s bid to ban the referendum.
Many analysts saw Maduro’s moves as a ploy ahead of next year’s elections.
“This is really about Venezuelan domestic politics,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior analyst with the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. “Maduro is trying to make up for falling popularity by stoking nationalism.”
The Venezuelan government said more than 95% of voters approved the referendum. But images of sparsely attended polling stations led many to question the official account that 10 million people cast ballots.
Among those voting was Carlos Herrera, 60, a Caracas plumber who agreed that Essequibo belonged to Venezuela — but said the matter should be resolved peacefully. “Maduro will do whatever he can to avoid confronting the country’s real problems,” Herrera said. “Poverty is our main problem. One doesn’t win wars with hunger.”
Following the vote, Maduro unveiled an expansive blueprint for a new Venezuelan state of Essequibo, ordered Venezuela’s state energy and mineral concerns to begin preparations to work there, and launched the process to grant Venezuelan citizenship to the region’s 125,000, mostly English-speaking residents. He presented a multicolored map incorporating the disputed territory inside Venezuela’s boundaries.
Venezuela dispatched a military contingent to the Atlantic coast, close to the disputed area, and named a major-general as provisional authority in the area.
Although Maduro gave companies working in Essequibo three months to leave, Exxon Mobil declared Tuesday on its Guyana Facebook page: “We are not going anywhere.”
How has Guyana responded?
Guyana’s leadership has denounced what it calls an illegal land grab threatening regional stability. President Ali labeled Venezuela an “outlaw nation” and stressed that his country would seek outside aid to thwart any more provocations from Caracas.
“Should Venezuela proceed to act in this reckless and adventurous manner, the region will have to respond,” Ali told the Associated Press.
How have other countries reacted?
U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken reaffirmed Washington’s position that Guyana has full sovereignty over Essequibo. The U.S. military’s Southern Command said it would conduct flight operations in collaboration with Guyana’s military — a move denounced as a “provocation” by Caracas.
Brazil, which shares northern borders with Venezuela and Guyana, said it was bolstering its military presence along its northern frontiers.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has tried to broker a solution, declared: “What we don’t want here in South America is war.”
Some observers suspect Maduro could be seeking a pretext to declare a national emergency and call off next year’s election.
Is military action by Venezuela a realistic possibility?
Most observers say Venezuela is unlikely to launch a military strike. Even though its 100,000-plus troops far outnumber Guyana’s meager defense array, the logistical hurdles are considerable: A full-scale ground invasion is not practical, experts say, since much of the Essequibo frontier with Venezuela is near-impenetrable rain forest and swamps. That leaves the faint possibility of an air or marine assault.
A Venezuelan attack could trigger an armed response from allies of Guyana. It would also probably further isolate Venezuela when Caracas is agreeing to electoral reforms and cooperating with Washington on immigration strategy in a near-desperate effort to convince the White House to relax sanctions. The oil boom next door in Guyana has dramatized how much Venezuela needs outside expertise and investment to revitalize its own oil industry.
“Neither Venezuela or Guyana want to see this expand into a full-blown conflict,” Ramsey said. “This is much more about saber-rattling than a real threat.”
What’s next?
There is little expectation that Thursday’s meeting between Maduro and Ali will yield anything close to a resolution amid so much bad blood and tortured history.
Even after the bilateral session was announced, Ali stated again that his country’s land boundaries were not up for discussion. And Caracas reiterated its “unquestionable rights of sovereignty” over Essequibo.
“It’s very unlikely that we see either Venezuela or Guyana reach a substantial agreement,” Ramsey said. “But what we are likely to see is a de-escalation in rhetoric.”
McDonnell reported from Mexico City and special correspondent Mogollón from Caracas.
(Los Angeles Times)
