Dear Editor,
The court case regarding Essequibo is before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The lawyers for Guyana have argued and presented concrete documentary evidence to the ICJ that Venezuela had accepted as final the 1899 arbitral tribunal award of the land boundary. Venezuela never registered any objections until 1962, 60 years after the award was finalised. The question that nobody is asking is what prompted Venezuela to resurrect this issue in 1962? The reason sheds light on our current situation.
President Romulo Betancourt served two terms as president of Venezuela, from 1945 to 1948, and again from 1959 to 1964. During Betancourt’s second term, there was a communist insurgency against his government. In 1982, at a conference in Caracas, I personally met Pedro Duno and Domingo Rangel, two academics who were part of that insurrection against Betancourt.
At the same time as Betancourt was struggling to suppress this communist-led insurrection, here in Guyana, Cheddi Jagan was serving as Premier of British Guiana (1961 to 1964). Cheddi Jagan was the first self-proclaimed Marxist to be elected in this region. We have to remember also that 1959 was the year of the Cuban revolution. President Betancourt was accusing Cuba of backing the guerrillas in Venezuela. Betancourt was afraid that Cheddi Jagan would allow Guyana to be used by the guerrillas as a base to operate from. Betancourt called the then US President, John F. Kennedy.
Presidents Kennedy and Betancourt hatched a plan to resuscitate and use the territorial issue against Guyana. That is why the issue was raised in 1962, after being dormant for 60 years. President Kennedy visited Caracas in December 1961, a few months after Cheddi Jagan was elected, and President Betancourt visited the US in 1963. Both leaders were hostile to the rising communist influence in the region.
It seems to me that everyone is missing the elephant in the room: that this territorial dispute is resurrected by Washington when there is a government in either Guyana or Venezuela that Washington is opposed to. A government in either country that refuses to toe Washington’s line.
For years, the US backed Venezuela on the territorial issue. When Burnham was carrying an anti-imperialist line and allowed the Cubans to refuel their planes on their way to fight the Apartheid regime in Angola, the US pushed Venezuela on the territorial issue, even selling Venezuela F-16 fighters to bomb Guyana. That’s when Burnham launched the People’s Militia.
Like I said, it is the US that has used the territorial issue against whichever government they are opposed to, and they are doing it again. They manufactured and encouraged the present confrontation. You do not have to be a geo-political analyst to know that Venezuela would never invade Guyana despite its rhetoric, since it would be suicidal for Venezuela to do so. It would be an invitation for the US to invade the country, something the US has been longing to do ever since Hugo Chavez initiated the Bolivarian Revolution in 1998.
Both Venezuela and Guyana spew hostile rhetoric – both governments do so because in both countries there is nothing that ignites more nationalistic fervour and support amongst the populace than this issue. Both populations have been raised on the “not a blade of grass” mantra. Both countries are victims of an unjust colonial history of conquest, genocide and plunder. President Maduro’s rhetoric was hostile, but it was Guyana that placed the two arch enemies of the Bolivarian Revolution, US intelligence operatives and ExxonMobil, on Venezuela’s border.
Once the problem was Jagan in 1962 and Burnham in 1976, now Venezuela and the Chavistas are the problem. The US is opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution and is now siding with Guyana. Back to Kissinger’s infamous statement “the US has no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests”.
Again, one does not have to be a geo-political analyst to observe that the US is an extremely unreliable ally. The Arab Gulf States have invested 2.6 trillion dollars in the US economy this year alone, and over the past years they have spent trillions of dollars with US Arms manufacturers. In fact, it is Gulf State money that quite literally props up the US economy. And yet, with all this, when the time came, the US was unable and unwilling to defend the Gulf States despite their promise to do so.
The US completely reneged on their decades old deal which involved Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States trading their oil only in US dollars, thereby creating what is known as the petro-dollar which ensures that the US currency remains the global reserve currency in return for the US pledge of protection against any aggressor. When the time came, much to the surprise of the Arab vassal States, the US was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran in the middle of negotiations in Oman, without even consulting their Gulf State allies, although they were well aware that such an attack would have dire consequences for these states.
The Government of Guyana needs to heed these historical and present-day truths and be warned. Instead of focusing on Delcy Rodriguez’s brooch, President Ali and his Administration should pay attention to the rapprochement between Washington and Caracas. As we witness the emergence of a multi-polar world, the steady decline of the US Empire, Iran’s victory, and so many countries in the Global South rejecting the neo-colonial arrangement that has made Guyana’s sovereignty and independence a farce, the solution is clear. It is time for us to scrap the US playbook. We need to stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated by “divide and ruin” tactics. Venezuela is our neighbour and we must resolve this issue between us without interference from the US.
The days of accepting historical and geographical fatalism, that we are in the “US backyard” and have no alternative but to remain under their thumb are over. As we prepare to celebrate 60 years of Independence that does not exist, we must decide, are we to remain a vassal state of the US Empire, or will we have the courage to chart our own course as Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan did, and join the growing number of countries worldwide that are rejecting neo-colonialism and demanding their right to self-determination and true independence.
Yours truly,
Gerald A. Perreira
Organisation for the Victory of the People (OVP)
