Caribbean & Central America - October 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The second half of September saw the revival of historic tensions between the governments of Guyana and Venezuela over a disputed territory; however, the prompt intervention of Trinidad and Tobago, whose government called on both sides to hold talks in Port of Spain, eased tensions as quickly as they had risen with the foreign ministers of the two countries, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana, pledging to “negotiate the delimitation of maritime boundaries between the two States”.

The row began on 7 September when the government of Venezuela received formal notification from the UN’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) that Guyana had submitted a formal application for the extension of its maritime shelf from 200 nautical miles (nmi) to 350nmi the previous day. Venezuela, which has a longstanding claim to Essequibo, an area of 167,839km² encompassing two-thirds of Guyanese territory, claimed that: 1) Guyana had failed to inform it of its intention of submitting the application; and 2) that Guyana wrongly claimed in the document that there were no disputes over the area in which the extension would take place.

Guyana denied both claims, saying it had informed the Venezuelan embassy in Georgetown about the studies that ultimately resulted in the CLCS application on 13 May 2009. The second criticism seems unfounded as the official document submitted to the CLCS, in the section regarding “absence of disputes”, clearly states: “The continental margin of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana is a maritime region over which there are overlapping claims made by other States. There are no disputes in the region relevant to the Submission of data and information relating to the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles” (emphasis is our own). In other words, Guyana recognizes the existence of a land dispute but denies the existence of disagreement over the extension of the continental shelf. The reasoning is logical: if the continental shelf were to be extended to 350nmi, regardless of whether the disputed territory eventually became Venezuelan or remained Guyanese, the shelf (of whatever size) would remain attached to said territory.

The emergency bilateral meeting on 30 September served to highlight what the government of Venezuela and local commentators had been noting all along: “the historic level they [the two governments] have reached in bilateral relations, characterized by respect, fraternity and solidarity.” For the government of President Hugo Chávez, who did not seek to fuel nationalist sentiments over the Guyanese application despite opposition calls to do so and accusations that he was disregarding threats to Venezuelan national sovereignty –an ironic claim at best- the administration of President Bharrat Jagdeo was being unfair since bilateral relations have never been as good as under his administration.

Looking ahead

The CLCS will not consider Guyana’s application until its 29^th session, scheduled to take place in New York during March/April 2012. Furthermore, as Rodrigues-Birkett told the local media, given the workload of the CLCS, it will be some years before Guyana’s submission is ruled upon by that body and for the CLCS to make recommendations on the outer limit of Guyana’s extended continental shelf. In the meantime, the foreign ministers will hold talks on the issue. In Port of Spain they stated their agreement “that Venezuela and Guyana develop cooperation projects in diverse areas, and strengthen their integration into [sic] mechanisms such as the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), Petrocaribe, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Clacs), with the conviction that the ties that unite them overcome their legacy of divide inherited from colonialism”. The storm has passed it seems, at least for now.

• War-mongering

Venezuela’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), the ultra Chavista Roy Chaderton, said the Venezuelan opposition was trying to inflame nationalist sentiments to declare war on Guyana so that it “serves as an excuse for third parties to intervene in our country and they solve their [the opposition’s] electoral problem by non-electoral means…they dream of a little war…all of a sudden we have Nato [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] taking off from Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire and Puerto Rico”.