We do need a major programme backed by all groups to counter Venezuela’s pernicious propaganda

Dear Editor,

Venezuela’s latest aggressions need to be fully understood by us Guyanese for what they really are. Venezuela has always harboured hegemonic designs on much of the Caribbean. This attitude has fueled its avarice for generations ever since.

Around 1945, when the collapse of the British empire was anticipated, calls were made within Venezuela’s ruling class for the colony of Trinidad and Tobago to be taken from Britain and awarded to Venezuela. The procurement of Bird Island is an ominous example of our neighbour’s greedy intentions. The drive to acquire Essequibo’s land and territorial sea is another, and the most egregious, episode in their lust for adjacent territory.

Mr. Maduro’s latest decree cannot be divorced from his country’s longstanding ambitions. His measures must be evaluated within this context because they are part and parcel of a relentless strategy, one that has superseded even the overthrow of Venezuela’s ruling classes from time to time.

Venezuelans are educated from infancy to believe that Essequibo is populated by Spanish-speaking descendants of their ancestors. Over there, it’s the law that all maps must depict Essequibo as being part of

Venezuela’s “Area Under Reclaim”; and that map is ubiquitous -emblazoned, for example, onto the licence plate of every motor vehicle in the country.

Venezuela has cadres of paid military officers, foreign affairs officials, congressmen, politicians, historians, lawyers, cartographers, academicians and intelligence agents, among others, all dedicated to remedying their ‘Guayana problem’. For the most part, these actors view our small nation as a wily, Anancy-like, foe, which has succeeded in despoiling them of their birthright for the time being, even as we are being made a pawn of by the United States in its imperial design to harvest “their” oil. This is what Venezuelans have conditioned themselves to believe.

In more recent times, contingents of Venezuelan bloggers have pushed their claim in the cybersphere. There they have helped their country to make notable advances on the propaganda front. This includes their success in getting Google Maps to treat the Essequibo as an area subject to a genuine territorial dispute.

Recent events have upped the ante against our neighbour. The discovery of oil in 2015 provoked two edicts from the decree-prone Maduro. The ICJ’s interim decision and the visit of a US naval vessel have now prompted him to release another decree. On both occasions the decrees were issued when the sitting Guyanese leader had only just taken the helm as President of the country.

As such, Maduro’s latest decree is not only to create a distraction from his internal difficulties. Sure, the territorial controversy is a much needed lightning rod for him to distract and galvanize his countrymen. But there is still this larger, underlying ambition that he is also pursuing. Venezuela is now more desperate, and more radical, than in 1969, when they fomented a near secession in the Rupununi, even though the international situation is now quite different.

Guyana must never discount the probability, therefore, that the added purpose behind Maduro’s latest decree is to support Venezuela’s looming attempts to justify the use of force, particularly in our Atlantic façade, whenever it becomes opportune to do so.

This raises the question as to what can Guyana do in order to counter these machinations.

There should be few concerns about our ably-led proceedings at the ICJ. The diplomatic initiatives announced by Foreign Minister

Hugh Todd are already bearing fruit with a number of strong statements being made by our traditional allies. From the security point of view, we have evidently manoeuvred appropriately by strengthening our alliance with the United States. However, it is in the public domain that we have been losing ground; whereas the entire situation is going to get worse before it can get better.

This letter is therefore to support the call in your Editorial of 10th January for a major programme backed by all political parties and groups in this country to counter “the pernicious and ignorant propaganda that has been promoted by Caracas for decades”. It is to support the need you have identified for a multi-level response directed toward the mainstream media, social media and the scholastic realm. Your recommendation to create a framework for educating the population could not have been more timely. Guyanese ought to acknowledge that we have not countered Venezuela effectively enough in the public sphere and that, compared to them, our efforts have been episodic and haphazard. There is need for a dedicated national enterprise, incorporating the diaspora, to address this situation. It is required because our population is insufficiently educated, inadequately motivated and ill-prepared for what is yet to come.

Above all, given the existential threat to the nation, the appropriate degree of national unity is remiss. What would it take for all of our political parties to issue a joint statement on this issue; or must our political leaders simply continue issuing separate statements all saying the same thing? Just asking.

In the final analysis, Editor, if Maduro is behaving as though we are unable to stand up to Venezuela, it has got to be that we’re just not doing enough to dissuade him from that idea.

Yours faithfully,

Bayney Karran