A new war is brewing in South America over an oil-rich area

Venezuelans will vote on Sunday in a referendum to decide whether the country should create its own state in the vast territory of its oil-rich neighbor Guyana – a move that has been condemned by Guyana as a move towards annexation and has raised fears of a possible military conflict between the two South American countries.

According to CNN, the area in question, the heavily forested Essequibo region, is about two-thirds the national territory of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana (the official name of the English-speaking country in northern South America) and is roughly the size of Florida. Venezuela has long claimed the land, which it says was within its borders during Spanish colonialism. It overturns an 1899 decision by international arbitrators that established the current boundaries when Guyana was still a British colony (called British Guiana). The recent discovery of vast offshore oil fields in the region has raised the stakes in the dispute.

At campaign rallies and in a stream of patriotic posts on social media, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has expressed anti-imperialist sentiments about the referendum, arguing that Venezuela’s historic rights to the region have been unfairly denied. For its part, Guyana said the threat of annexation was “existential.”

Among the questions asked of voters on Sunday: Do you agree with the creation of a new state in the Essequibo region, granting its population Venezuelan citizenship and “incorporating this state into the map of Venezuelan territory”?

However, the practical consequences of the vote, which is expected to favor the government’s position, are minimal, according to analysts, since the creation of a Venezuelan state within Essequibo is unlikely. It is unclear what steps the Venezuelan government will take to achieve a result, and any attempt to assert its claims will undoubtedly face international resistance.

However, the escalating rhetoric has led to troop deployments to the region and saber-rattling in both countries. Many residents of the region, which is predominantly indigenous, are reportedly on edge.

“The long-running border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela has reached unprecedented levels of tension between our countries,” Guyana’s Foreign Minister Robert Persaud wrote Wednesday in Americas Quarterly.

The International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, ruled on Friday that “Venezuela must refrain from taking any action that might change the situation that currently prevails in the disputed territory,” following a request by Guyana to suspend the vote, which argued that the annexation was would be illegal. But Venezuelan officials said the referendum would go ahead regardless of the court’s decision.

The International Court of Justice has been weighing the territorial dispute since 2018 and will hold a trial in the spring, after decades of failed negotiations between the two countries through the UN. Guyana argues that the court is the proper forum to resolve the dispute, while Venezuela does not accept the court’s jurisdiction over the matter.

Essequibo’s permanent boundaries date from an 1899 decree of the international tribune in Paris, which transferred most of the land between the Orinoco and Essequibo rivers to British Guiana.

Venezuela respected this decision until 1962, when the British colony moved toward independence. The 1966 agreement, signed shortly before Guyana gained independence, paved the way for cross-country negotiations on the disputed area and the possible involvement of the International Court of Justice, which moved slowly.

Guyana, a sparsely populated country of about 800,000 people with high levels of poverty, has been undergoing rapid transformation since ExxonMobil discovered oil off the coast of the Essequibo region in 2015, with the government’s annual oil revenues topping $1 billion, fueling massive infrastructure developments. projects. The country is set to surpass oil production from Venezuela, long dependent on its own oil reserves, and is on track to become the world’s largest per capita oil producer.

Venezuela says Guyana has no right to grant drilling concessions for offshore reserves and has called the neighboring country a tool of ExxonMobil. “ExxonMobil owns the government of Guyana. She owns the Guyana Congress,” Maduro told supporters last week.

Even without the creation of a state in the disputed territory, which would require further constitutional steps and the likely use of force, Maduro could reap political benefits from the referendum amid a difficult re-election campaign. In October, the Venezuelan opposition showed rare momentum after rallying around Maria Corina Machado, a former center-right lawmaker who, in the country’s first primaries in 11 years, criticized Maduro for his handling of rising inflation and food shortages.

“An authoritarian government faced with a difficult political situation is always tempted to look around for a patriotic theme to wrap itself in the flag and rally support for, and I think that’s a big part of what Maduro is doing,” comments Phil Gunson, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. .

In the run-up to the vote, both Venezuela and Guyana have raised the possibility of armed conflict in the region, with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali visiting troops in the Essequibo region last week and dramatically planting a flag on a mountain overlooking the border with Venezuela. “At the moment this is not an armed war,” replied the Venezuelan Minister of Defense. The Venezuelan military also said the country is beginning construction of an airstrip that will serve as a “logistical support point for the comprehensive development of Essequibo.”

Brazil announced Wednesday it was increasing its military presence with “defensive actions” along its northern border with Venezuela and Guyana.

Last year, in the lead-up to the referendum announcement, writing in Foreign Policy, Paul Angelo of the Council on Foreign Relations and Wasim Moula, assistant director of the Caribbean Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, called the border dispute a “powder keg.”

Guyana’s Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said of the Venezuelan neighbors’ actions at a press conference last week: “I don’t know if they are miscalculating based on what happened in Crimea and other places, but it would be a serious miscalculation on their part.” .

“We cannot simply think that this is internal politics (in Venezuela) without taking all possible measures to protect our country, including cooperation with others,” he added, citing a visit last week by US military officials to discuss ongoing joint exercises .

Ganson, of the International Crisis Group, said he believed that without the support of any of its allies, Venezuela had no intention of invading Essequibo. But with domestic pressure likely to increase on Maduro to act on the referendum result, especially ahead of presidential elections next year, Maduro may be tempted to provoke skirmishes along the border, he said.

“There is belligerence on both sides of the border, and since neither can afford to retreat, this is where you get into slightly dangerous territory of potential military clashes,” the expert said.