Stable in power, but with popularity ratings at their lowest levels in a decade, Nicolas Maduro is carrying out, with some success, a vigorous campaign to position the cause of the recovery of Guayana Esequiba, a historic territorial claim that Venezuela has. with the neighboring Cooperative Republic of Guyana since the days when this nation was a British colony. Maduro’s interest is for political reasons, but not only: since 2015, Guyana has discovered important oil reserves in areas that Venezuela claims, and has offered Exxon Mobil all the advantages to exploit it.
Since then, the Guyanese have moved away from the umbrella of PetroCaribe, an initiative of Hugo Chávez that offered small nations in the subregion Venezuelan oil on offer and with comfortable payment conditions. And in the midst of the economic expansion that Guyana is experiencing, he went to the International Court of Justice in order to definitively settle the issue of the ownership of Essequibo. The Court has admitted the case and the Guyanese arguments.
While the Maduro Government continues to defend its name in a trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, and finishes digesting the impact of the unexpected success of the opposition’s primary elections, it is rehearsing this new flight forward. He has ordered to deploy all the tentacles of the revolutionary State to promote a consultative referendum to the population on Venezuelan sovereignty in the disputed territory. The event will take place this December 3rd.
For the deployment of this campaign, the powers of Chavismo have worked in a synchronized manner. Suddenly, the until recently forgotten cause of Essequibo became a priority north and the echoes have even awakened sensitivities and interest in sectors of the opposition.
The president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, has made public the questions that will be submitted to the population, and has met with the Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino, in order to plan the logistical aspects of the consultation. Padrino has published several videos on social networks inviting the population to get involved in the issue and participate.
Now, every day labels are promoted on the networks claiming Venezuelan sovereignty in Essequibo. Trying to motivate its militancy again, the ruling party has called several “national unity” demonstrations, also trying to involve artists and members of the entertainment world. The most notorious of them took place at the Teresa Carreño Theater, where all the state governors were present, including the four who are from the opposition. “We are called to defend a territory that was given to us thanks to the struggle of our liberators,” Maduro said that night. Jorge Rodríguez, president of Parliament, the political operator par excellence of Miraflores, has stated that “it is time to put aside all partialities, political, religious or personal.”
“Venezuela is paying for the diplomatic error of the times of Hugo Chávez, which meant having neglected the pending controversies with Guyana in the period 2004-2014, a time in which Maduro was its foreign minister,” says Kenneth Ramírez, international lawyer and president of the Council. Venezuelan of International Relations. “What Guyana has done is take advantage of that neglect. Chávez reduced the volume of that claim and proposed oil cooperation with Guyana to leverage continental leadership, through PetroCaribe. In addition to getting votes in the OAS to protect themselves in case of questions.
The claim about Chávez’s neglect of the Essequibo dispute was repeatedly denounced by the Venezuelan opposition in the last decade, especially by María Corina Machado, Leopoldo López and Andres Velasquez.
Guyana Essequiba is an extensive jungle territory of 150,000 square kilometers, which includes more than two-thirds of the current Guyanese territory, a country that has it under its jurisdiction. Although it was not a territory exploited or populated by Spain, it belonged to Venezuela until well into the 19th century.
By taking control of the colony from the Dutch and decreeing the birth of British Guyana in 1831, the English stimulated the repopulation of the areas with native Guyanese at a time when Venezuela could not address the problem due to the ruin in which the country remained after the war of independence.
After successive negotiations without agreements, Venezuela and Great Britain turned to international justice, and in the Paris arbitration award of 1899, a court – for many, in a rigged manner – handed down a ruling in favor of the English. Since then, the maps of Venezuela label the territory of Essequibo in the so-called “claim zone.” “With the referendum, Maduro seeks to conceal the errors committed in the past and avoid the costs of an adverse ruling against Venezuela, which would be tremendously irresponsible,” says Ramírez.
Eglee González Lobato, political scientist and lawyer at the Central University of Venezuela, points out that “the issue of Essequibo is not new, it has been present in all the draft agreements of the Chavismo-opposition conversations in recent years.” “It is very difficult not to give an electoral interpretation to this process. It is brought forward as soon as the opposition’s primary consultation ends, which must have set off the alert in the PSUV. Essequibo allows the Government to examine the state of its ranks and gauge the mobilization capacity of its governors. “It is an escape tool very similar to the 2017 Constituent Assembly,” says Lobato.
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