Freelance Contributor
While ExxonMobil’s presence in Guyana highlights the country’s oil wealth, senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Prof Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith, is boasting that Essequibo’s wealth is much greater than that and also includes gold and diamond.
He argues that it is Guyana’s vast natural wealth that has caused Venezuela to reopen the border dispute over the disputed Essequibo region.
“It is not only the size of the Essequibo that is of value. You hear in the news that it is rich in oil. Rich agricultural lands are in the Essequibo and oil and gas are on the land in Essequibo and not only offshore. In the Essequibo, there is gold, there is diamond, there are bauxite deposits. There are manganese minerals and timber of significance. You may or may not know that the Essequibo has uranium deposits found by a Canadian company which started to survey in 2007. It is also home to a significant bio-diversity,” he said.
Griffith made the comment during a webinar hosted by the Office of UWI’s Vice Chancellor in collaboration with the Faculty of Law and Faculty of Social Sciences, at UWI’s Cave Hill Campus in Barbados.
He made it clear, however, that Venezuela attempting to wrest the Essequibo territory from Guyana was a threat to the very existence of Guyana.
“Why is Venezuela’s claim an existential threat to Guyana? What is it about the claim and what is it about Guyana that makes this claim by Venezuela an existential threat? By existential, I mean a threat that undermines the very existence of a country called the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. There are clear and present dangers once annexation is part of the conversation.”
He outlined four bases on which the nationhood of any country rests—the land, people, resources and the identity.
“Essequibo is not a small piece of land. We are talking about 61,600 square miles of territory. This region constitutes 74 per cent of Guyana. Jamaica can fit into the Essequibo region 14.5 times. Barbados can fit into the Essequibo 371 times. Guess what, the Essequibo is bigger than the island of England. In the Essequibo region exists more than 100,000 Guyanese citizens. The estimate of the last census of 2012 places the population there of over 125,000.”
Speaknig to the geo-political implications if Venezuela annexes part of Guyana, he said, “Brazil has a border with every South American country except Chile and Ecuador. Some of those countries themselves are unhappy with their borders with Brazil. That Brazil-Venezuela-Guyana border itself came out of the 1899 arbitral award. The President of Brazil has made it unambiguous that Brazil is not interested in revising borders, especially under the threat of force.”
United Guyana
Meanwhile, senior lecturer in the University of Guyana’s Department of Sociology, Dr Duane Edwards, said the Guyanese population is united in their defence of the Essequibo region.
“The Guyanese people are united in the stance that not only Essequibo is ours, but that as Professor Griffith put it, Essequibo is inextricably linked to the very concept of Guyana and any annexation threatens the very existence of what we know as Guyana. Not because of the many resources that are attached to that plot of land but because of the very history of the land and the people. International laws and mores are on our side.”
He also said the Guyanese population is overwhelmingly in favour of US military presence to help ward off any military aggression from Venezuela.
“But a serious reaction to the threat was informed by two things. One is the repeated assurance of the government of Guyana that all is well and international law is on our side. That is the government strategy to manage any anxiety that could result in any displacement.
“There is also coming from the society an abiding faith in our presumed allies, especially the US and Caricom. Caricom in terms of the moral suasion. And the US in terms of the military and economic power that it can bring to bear on these issues.”
