The determination of leaders in the Caribbean to maintain the region’s status as a zone of peace must be commended.
Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s claim to two-thirds of Guyana’s territory, which also happens to be an extremely oil and mineral-rich portion of the country, has thrown the region into the global spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
It is another border dispute that dates back hundreds of years and has the fingerprints of former European colonial masters all over it, as is the case now with the war in the Gaza Strip.
According to published reports, the dispute between the two countries started in 1841 with Venezuela protesting what it described as the British encroachment on Venezuelan territory when Britain acquired British Guiana through a treaty with the Netherlands, which also controlled Dutch Guiana (now Suriname).
Venezuela claims its territory extends as far as the Essequibo River. Why has this land become such a hotbed so suddenly? The answer can be found in the explosion of oil and gas finds in Guyana and its territorial waters.
Despite the world’s rush to reduce its carbon footprint and pull back from its heavy dependence on fossil fuels, it is noteworthy that natural gas, crude oil and all its derivatives remain exceedingly important to industrialisation and economic activity around the world.
Guyana, regarded as the ‘breadbasket’ of the Caribbean because of its heavy investment in food crop production, has now become the industrial centre of the region because of its abundant reserves of oil and gas.
The CARICOM member nation’s economy is now the fastest-growing in the world in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In September, the IMF explained that following record real GDP growth last year of 62.3 per cent, the highest in the world, Guyana’s real GDP was expected to continue on that same trajectory ending this year at a mind-blowing 38 per cent.
We accept that Guyana is coming from a much lower level of development and economic activity than many other economies but the oil-led growth is still phenomenal.
The country has now become the darling of the region and everyone wants to be its friend and ally.
While Guyana’s star is on the rise, the opposite has been occurring with its neighbour on the border. Venezuela, under the leadership of Maduro, has become a pariah in the Western world as a result of suspicious election results and the Spanish-speaking oil giant’s shift away from the United States during the presidency of late socialist Hugo Chavez.
It must be noted that Venezuela remains one of the biggest sources of oil for the US.
From 2016, there have been food riots, mass migration out of the country, natural disasters, political instability, mass protests and economic collapse.
An attempted “land grab” by Venezuela, as Guyana’s President Dr Irfaan Ali, has described it, was therefore not unexpected.
The efforts of CARICOM to preempt any hostilities have borne fruit following successful, day-long mediation talks led by Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves at Argyle International Airport in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
With the establishment of the Declaration Of Dialogue And Peace Of Argyle, Caribbean people can rest comfortably, for the time being, knowing that bullets are not going to be flying across the Essequibo River.
Both sides have committed not to threaten or use force against each other under any circumstances.
Brokering this agreement was a strategic move for the region and we praise the work of Dr Gonsalves, the pro tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) bringing the parties together at the negotiating table and not on the battlefields.
Too many countries in the Caribbean are tourism-dependent and any declaration of war or hostilities between Guyana and Venezuela, despite being situated in South America, would have immediate detrimental consequences for the economic and social stability of the rest of the region.
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