President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela is an exuberant dictator, a lover of military salutes who is being investigated for crimes against humanity, but he’s not reckless enough to invade neighboring Guyana, is he? Would the leader of a country in an ever-deepening economic crisis risk starting Latin America’s first interstate war this century? Well, maybe.
For a century and a half, Guyana and Venezuela have quarreled over Essequibo, a stretch of the Amazon that both countries claim. Guyana has long governed the territory, but Venezuela also claims sovereignty over it, citing maps drawn in colonial times. Last year, Maduro expressed a sudden enthusiasm for seizing Essequibo that took many Venezuelans by surprise. International conglomerates had discovered lots of oil there, but that was in 2015, and in any case, Venezuela, too, has plenty of oil.
Whatever the reason, the slogan “Essequibo is ours” began appearing all over Venezuela—on posters and bumper stickers, as well as on promotional materials for a state-sponsored music festival in Caracas called Essequibo Fest. The ministry of ecosocialism produced a song with the slogan as its title. Then, in December, Venezuelans were called to vote in a referendum. Did they agree to establish a Venezuelan state in Essequibo and extend Venezuelan citizenship to the territory’s residents? Yes, 90 percent of Venezuelans answered, according to state media. Yes, we do.
The referendum sparked international outrage, and Maduro seemed to back off his plans for conquering Essequibo. But not completely: In late December, he sent thousands of troops to the border for military exercises, and in February, satellite imagery showed that Venezuela had begun construction to improve the roads that would be needed for an invasion. Now Parliament has approved the “Essequibo defense” law, asserting Venezuela’s right to appoint a governor of the territory and forbidding the circulation of maps that fail to include Essequibo as part of Venezuela.
Guyana has called this legislation an “egregious violation of the most fundamental principles of international law.” Latin American presidents issued concerned statements; international organizations echoed them. Now, in what policy makers have dubbed “the most peaceful region in the world,” the Organization of American States fears for “regional peace.” If the border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana is a sleepy volcano, inactive for decades, these may be the first timid signs that it could erupt.
Many a territorial dispute can be traced to the hubris of politicians and their competing dreams of expansion. The story of Essequibo begins with a mediator’s simple vanity.
In Paris, in 1899, in the baroque halls of a foreign ministry where the borders of remote places have often been drawn and negotiated, Fyodor Martens, a Russian diplomat, served as arbiter to settle the borders between Venezuela and Guyana. He led a committee of two Americans, representing Venezuela, and two Englishmen, representing Britain, which was then Guyana’s colonial master.
Both parties had a case. Venezuela had, in its 1777 foundational document, a paper entitling Spain, and hence itself, to Essequibo; but the English had bought Guyana from the Dutch, and even if the borders were poorly defined, England had long controlled the area. Judging by his diary, Martens found the gig tedious and hated the night trains to Paris. He was preoccupied by another project of his, the Brussels Declaration, a convention to codify rules of war. Martens had championed this agreement for decades and even contributed an important clause to it. Hence, he was outraged that the counts of bashi-bazouks, in their “absolutely unlimited” ignorance, had omitted to honor him now that great powers had finally ratified the treaty.
One aspect of the Venezuela-Guyana arbitration did motivate Martens. Usually in a border dispute, one party votes in favor of a proposed solution, the other party votes against, and the mediator breaks the tie. But what if Martens could be the first arbiter to get all the parties to vote in favor? This was his opportunity to achieve unseen levels of international cooperation. He didn’t care who got the better deal but realized the British were implacable. Hence, he told the Americans that he was planning to side with the British, so even if they voted against the borders he was drawing, they would lose 3 to 2. If, however, the Americans voted in favor of his proposed arrangement, Martens would suggest a map that gave a little bit more land to Venezuela.
“Thanks God, the Anglo-American arbitration tribunal is finally over,” Martens wrote when the borders were set to the benefit of the British—who, he lamented, negotiated like “zhids,” an anti-Semitic slur, and got “the lion’s share and are still dissatisfied.” He also was tired of the Americans, who refused to thank him and walked out upset. But Martens got the unanimity he wanted and went on to have the kind of career that would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. “Hooray!” he wrote in his diary. “This is a great triumph!”
For decades, that was the end of the border issue, and politicians in Caracas forgot all about the fight. People in Essequibo, who already thought themselves more Guyanese than Venezuelan, continued speaking English and playing cricket.
Then, in 1962, Venezuela complained to the United Nations about the unfairness of the arbitrage. Martens, the Venezuelans argued on the basis of a contemporaneous American account, had colluded with the British. The timing of this complaint puzzled observers. “Venezuela’s proclivity for silence,” one scholar noted a few years later, created “a credibility gap on the real reasons for such lengthy spasms of muteness.” Why now?
The Cold War may have had something to do with it. As Guyana neared the year of its independence from Britain, a communist party seemed poised to take power, and the United States feared another Cuba. In a memo to President John F. Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk listed the options to prevent this. One of them: “Encourage Venezuela and possibly Brazil to pursue their territorial claims.”
And so in 1966, a few months before Guyana gained independence, its borders became once again subject to dispute. Diplomats representing both parties met again, this time in Switzerland. The resulting Geneva Agreement stipulated that Venezuela and Guyana had to negotiate borders by 1970, which they didn’t do. The countries can’t even agree on the origin of the word Essequibo: Guyanans think it’s Indigenous, and Venezuelans say it derives from the name of a Spanish explorer.
The disagreements have remained unresolved, but in most minds, Essequibo is and has long been Guyana’s. Most maps, even the CIA’s, say it is. Venezuela’s government has no presence there. Whenever the dispute resurfaced over the following decades, the international media would almost invariably note that Essequibo accounts for two-thirds of the territory of Guyana, suggesting that, yes, it is part of Guyana.
In the Venezuela where I grew up, however, the maps looked different. Since the 1970s, textbooks have emphasized that Essequibo, however remote and foreign it may seem, is the property of Venezuela, that indeed the Venezuelan sun is born in Essequibo, our easternmost region, and that the British cheated us out of it through Martens. On our maps, Essequibo is often colored in a distinct pattern of red and white diagonal stripes and labeled zona en reclamación, a phrase that conveys that the process is ongoing. When I first learned about all of this in school in the 2000s, I remember that my teacher at one point clarified that “people do live there,” and I felt dumb because I’d never thought of the zona en reclamación as a place where people could live. Those red and white diagonal stripes looked so hostile.
The idea of empire, in Venezuela, exerts a mighty power over the national psyche. Simón Bolívar is the most revered and recognizable of all statesmen because he liberated us from the Spanish empire. (He also tried to unify a handful of former colonies under his rule, which was very Napoleonic of him.) Part of the reason that Essequibo matters so much to Venezuelans is that we’ve been told it was robbed from us by the British empire. (Never mind that any claim Venezuela had to the land was inherited from Spain, another empire.)
Hugo Chávez, the rambunctious left-wing authoritarian who ruled Venezuela from 1998 until his death in 2013, is perhaps the politician who most exploited the concept of empire, comparing himself to Bolívar often and explicitly, using his sword as a prop during speeches. Chávez promised to free nations from the influence of the U.S. empire. In the 2000s, he appeared to realize the contradiction between professing anti-imperialism and fighting over land with a smaller, weaker neighbor. Cuba’s Fidel Castro, his mentor, had always sided with Guyana in the dispute. In a press conference in Georgetown, Guyana, Chávez said that Venezuela would not be an obstacle to any projects its neighbor wanted to authorize in Essequibo—not quite the same thing as formally giving up the territorial claim, but his words still undermined Venezuela’s legal position. His opponents, and many of his supporters, never forgave him.
Nicolás Maduro, Chavéz’s handpicked successor, is less bothered by any possible contradiction between anti-imperialist rhetoric and expansionist ambitions. In 2015, ExxonMobil discovered that Essequibo sits on enough oil to change Guyana’s destiny—and since then, Maduro has made his territorial views clear. The threatening tone he has taken has made international firms uneasy and slowed down the oil boom.
In 2018, Guyana, backed by ExxonMobil, asked the International Court of Justice to settle the dispute with Venezuela. Guyanese President Irfaan Ali has behaved like a model international citizen, talking a lot about peaceful resolution. Now, over Maduro’s objections, Guyana v. Venezuela is on the docket.
International pundits have interpreted Maduro’s recent antics—the December referendum, the troops by the border—as a ploy to appropriate Guyana’s newfound riches amid Venezuela’s own economic crisis. (Per the headline of a Wall Street Journal column: “Venezuela Covets Guyana’s Oil Fields.”) But Venezuela’s claim to Essequibo, which the legal process in The Hague threatens to end for good, is as much about national pride as about resources. Venezuela’s once-extravagant oil industry seems to have vanished, and Guyana—the world’s fastest-growing economy—looks poised to become the prosperous nation that Venezuela has lost its chance to be. Bad enough for Guyana to exercise control over the area as it long has been doing; far worse to make this control official.
“I don’t know that Maduro cares about Essequibo,” Victor Amaya, a journalist based in Caracas, told me. “But he definitely doesn’t want to be the president that loses Essequibo.”
Maduro also cares about staying in power. This year’s election, not Guyana’s oil, is likely his motivation for the recent “Essequibo is ours” campaign. He announced the referendum around the time of the opposition primary, which got an impressive turnout. The referendum not only provided a good distraction but also had strategic value. As an article in Caracas Chronicles argued, the ruling party wanted to assess how many voters it could mobilize. (The answer was “not a lot”; the AP noted that polling sites were desolate despite the millions of votes reported in state media.)
The referendum also serves as a hedge. One of the questions smartly asked if voters rejected the ICJ’s authority (they do), so whatever the court decides, Maduro can tell his voters it doesn’t matter. The ICJ is imperialistic anyway. So is Guyana, and ExxonMobil. (“Venezuela’s truth will prevail before imperial spoils” is the new party line. “We will take back Essequibo.”) And if, as the July election approaches, Maduro fears a dismal outcome, he can always cancel the vote and declare a state of emergency due to a standoff with Guyana.
Should the international community be worried? Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine reminded the world that every so often, the unimaginable does happen. That’s what an interstate war in South America is: unimaginable. The region’s nations are anomalously peaceful despite their domestic troubles and strong militaries.
In the first days of the Ukraine war, Maduro was one of a few leaders in the Western Hemisphere who sided with Vladimir Putin. Russia and Venezuela share a lively trade of warplanes and weapons, and Maduro is apparently planning a visit to the Kremlin. And yet, many Guyanese and Venezuelan academics I interviewed feel fairly confident that war won’t break out. Ivelaw Griffith, a Guyanese expert on national security in the Caribbean region, told me that Maduro wouldn’t risk it. Other than Russia, Venezuela has no friends. (China has investments in both countries and encouraged the two nations to work it out.) Guyana, by contrast, has the full support of the United States, and the United Kingdom even sent a warship in December. The best roads to Guyana pass through Brazil, and President Lula da Silva has warned Venezuela to keep out. “When Brazil made clear whose side it was on, Maduro did seem to tone it down,” Alí Daniels, a Venezuelan lawyer who directs a human-rights group, told me.
Andrei Serbin Pont, the Venezuelan head of CRIES, a Latin American and Caribbean think tank, told me that he fears his colleagues are underestimating the risk of war. Serbin Pont lives in Argentina, where the memory of the Falklands War lingers, and he sees many parallels. “Authoritarian regime, internal crisis, sovereignty claim,” he told me; “a military keen to divert attention from the internal crisis by creating an external enemy.” If Maduro senses that his electoral prospects look dire, in other words, he might go ahead and order an invasion, just as Argentina’s General Jorge Videla did. And Brazil’s control of the roads might not even be that big of an obstacle, as Venezuela could invade by sea.
Maduro can gain a lot from creating the impression that the Venezuelan army is getting ready to go to war, whether or not it really is. Henry Ziemer, an analyst at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, D.C, told me he thinks that this might be what’s going on. The uncertainty Venezuela has created has succeeded in paralyzing many aspects of Guyana’s oil industry, and Maduro might hope to get territorial concessions or money in return for staying still. Ziemer suggested that the best analogy might be neither Ukraine-Russia nor the Falklands but something more like the Cuban missile crisis: The Venezuelans could be trying to make their threats as credible as possible without actually proceeding. Hopefully, no rogue soldier will get carried away.
In Essequibo, life has gone on pretty much as before. I asked Euliene Watson, who is in her 50s and lives in an Amerindian reserve in Essequibo, what she thought about the drama between the two countries, and she replied that she doesn’t think about it all. Fitzgerald Yaw, a development-economics professor at the University of Guyana, in Georgetown, told me that only international investors and government officials worry about Venezuela’s territorial claims. The Guyanese have just learned to live with the situation.
And yet, the specter of conflict has manifested in sneaky ways in Essequibo. Many villages use generators, a reminder that the World Bank’s president once walked back from financing a giant hydroelectric project in Essequibo after receiving an ominous letter from Venezuela. In the 1970s, the American cult leader Jim Jones presided over the biggest mass suicide in world history in the jungles of Essequibo. One reason the Guyanese prime minister allowed Jones’s commune to grow so large was that he believed the presence of Americans would deter a Venezuelan military invasion.
The dispute over Essequibo has had the effect not of changing the territory but of making change there difficult. Maybe that’s why many residents I spoke with seemed to feel less angry than resigned. “They’re just there. It’s like my neighbors,” Euliene Watson said of Venezuela. “If they’re good neighbors, you’re happy. If they’re not good neighbors, there’s nothing much you can do about them. How do you live with them?”