Maduro spurs nationalism in his Esequibo claim

The Chavista-Bolivarian tyranny will prevent, by all criminal, administrative or even more forceful means, the alternation of power in the next presidential elections scheduled for 2024. Nicolás Maduro's main adversary is María Corina Machado, whose overwhelming victory in the last primaries is not only not recognised by the regime, but it continues to seek any legal loophole to prevent her from even being able to go to the polls and, if almost all the polls are confirmed, to inflict a brutal defeat on Hugo Chávez's successor. 

At this point in the history of the regime, whose great revolutionary achievements can be summed up in the forced emigration of eight million Venezuelans, 90% of the resident population living below the poverty line and a repression in which disappearances and extrajudicial executions have become commonplace, the Chavista leaders have found the one issue on which Chavistas and opponents have no disagreement: the claim to the territory of the Essequibo. This region currently occupies two thirds of neighbouring Guyana, where six of the country's ten administrative regions are located, and where 300,000 of the country's 800,000 inhabitants live. 

One has to go back, as almost always, to both Spain's historical heritage and Britain's innate penchant for plunder to understand the problem. When Venezuela gained independence from Spain in 1811, the territory also inherited the Essequibo, an area of 160,000 square kilometres, most of it covered by impenetrable jungle and interconnected by a network of immense waterways. Barely three years later, the UK concluded a treaty with the Netherlands, claiming what was to become British Guiana, but without defining its western border. 

In 1840, London dispatched explorer Robert Schomburq to draw the demarcation line, which it supported with a military incursion that Venezuela denounced as an invasion of its territory. More than half a century later, in 1899, British diplomacy obtained an arbitration award in Paris, which, to the astonishment of specialists in international law, proved the United Kingdom to be completely right and awarded the entire territory of the Essequibo. Another fifty years would pass before, in 1949, the American lawyer Severo Mallet-Prevost, who had been part of the defence of Venezuelan interests, denounced the fact that the award was a political sham, and that the judge appointed to make the award had been conveniently "greased". Such revelations, supported by the documents Mallet-Prevost had kept, made it easier for Caracas to refuse to recognise the award and declare it "null and void". 

Just months before granting independence to its British Guiana in 1966, the UK would persuade Venezuela to sign the Geneva Agreement, whereby London recognised the justness of Venezuela's claim, while urging that "satisfactory solutions to the dispute" be sought.   

In the three-quarters of a century since then, Venezuela has persisted in pressing its claim, but to no avail. However, Caracas has raised the tone of the dispute since 2015, when major new oil and gas deposits began to be discovered, the exploitation of which has exponentially boosted Guyana's income and GDP. 

Nicolás Maduro, with an undeniable nationalist bias, decided to raise the temperature of the dispute a few degrees by calling a nationwide referendum, with five questions, ranging from approving the creation of the state of Guayana Esequibo within Venezuela, to the plan to grant Venezuelan citizenship to the current 300,000 Guyanese living in the disputed territory. All questions received an overwhelming 'yes' vote, which President Maduro interprets as legitimising him to 'act on an internal matter' and, consequently, to disregard the International Court of Justice's forthcoming ruling. 

Maduro is already acting swiftly, both with the approval of the decree creating the new state of Guayana Esequiba and the creation of a military division to deal with the needs of the disputed territory, headed by General Alexis Rodríguez Cabello.

No one in the Venezuelan opposition has opposed or expressed disagreement with these actions. On the other hand, those who have expressed their disagreement are the International Court of Justice itself, which has demanded that Caracas "not complete actions that alter the current situation" in the area administered by Guyana, and the Guyanese president, Irfaan Ali, who this week travelled to the area to reaffirm his sovereignty. In a strongly worded statement, he said that "we will not give up an inch of our territory".  The Georgetown leader described President Maduro's actions as "an existential threat to the territorial integrity of Guyana". 

We shall see how the clash of interests is resolved, but Maduro has managed to galvanise Venezuelans by calling the issue "an internal affair" of Venezuela in which the ICJ has no say. Proclamation followed by the inevitable patriotic appeal: "Venezuela has stood up. The next thing will be to achieve what the liberators left us, Essequiba Guyana".