Coil: Whose history is this Venezuela border janjhat?

7 am or so on a hot Saturday morning. Sound of helicopters or so whirring overhead. Are the Venezuelans flying over Georgetown and taking advantage of President Granger not being in the country?

I check Facebook and find that it is not the Venezuelan army, but the Guyanese army marching on the East Coast and East Bank Demerara.

People are expressing pride in their soldiers. I hear some of the marches and so passing me. I feel a bit guilty about not being up and about early enough on Saturday morning to go defending my country and so on. Heck, I can’t even defend my yard space against the encroaching neighbours who bruk down the fence and who plan to block up the drains, much less Essequibo against the might of Venezuelan army.

I remember the late Mr Randolph Kirton coming to St Margaret’s Primary School – 1980, 1981 or so – around the time that Not a Blade of Grass was playing on the radio and flour was not banned as yet. Mr Kirton explained the Guyana/Venezuela border janjhat to us primary school children. I cannot remember the details though.

There are words other than janjhat which mean different things in international law. In the Episode of Off de Fence: The Guyana/Venezuela Controversy, there is an interesting explanation from Mr Aubrey Norton of why it is a “controversy” and not a “border dispute.”

The host of the Off de Fence,  Francis Bailey wondered why more young people in Guyana were not up to date on the Guyana side of the issue. He had interviewed one of the members of ‘Mi Mapa de Venezuela incluye nuestro Esequibo” after seeing some of the intense online activity. There are lessons for our online revolutionaries and patriots –  this group actually staged a “un ejercicio cívico de soberanía” in October 2013!

It is complex – this ‘know our history’ thing. A soldier  travelling on the Suriname ferry way back in 2003 had philosophised with me about how we had to fight for borders which our ancestors had no hand in drawing up and designed by powers which no longer fought over borders.

Whose history is this Venezuela border janjhat?  What is this history?

There is a nice brief chronicle here with some events up to this year drawn up by El Universal. Dr Odeen Ishmael, former Ambassador to Venezuela and PPP man who asked PPP to concede defeat in May 2015 elections has published freely “A documentary History of the Guyana-Venezuela Border Issue”  on his website. He has also made a set of background documents available.
There is a book  Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Reopening of the Guyana-Venezuela Boundary Controversy by Cedric L Joseph .

Here is my history leading up to being annoyed rather than proud at the sound of helicopters and aeroplanes on an early September morning.
1492 – Columbus comes to the Americas. The land of the inhabitants was marked off.
1648 – Dutch and Spanish sign the Treaty of Munster or something like that. The Dutch brought the first slaves to Guyana. Amerindians were enslaved.
1763 – Berbice Slave Rebellion.
1812 – British were at war with the Americans. Slavery was legal in Guyana
1814 –  Anglo-Dutch Treaty which gives British control of the territories. Amerindians and the slaves had no say in this.
1816 – Simon Bolivar outlaws slavery in Venezuela.
1823 – Monroe Doctrine first talked about. Slavery still legal in USA and Great Britain. Beginning of US intervention in the Americas?
1831 – British Guiana formed. Jamaica Baptist Rebellion catalyses the call for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies
1833 – Slavery Abolished in most British colonies
1838 – First coolie people come to Guyana from India.
1841 – Schomburgk Line is drawn showing the borders with Venezuela. Schomburg also draws the border with Suriname.
1860 – Severo Mallet-Prevost is born in the USA.
1865 – Slavery is abolished in the USA.
1895 – Venezuela hires an American lobbyist. The Monroe Doctrine is used and the USA  starts protesting with the British about the territorial claims.
1899 – Severo Mallet-Prevost joins the law firm which is to be named in 1925 to Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle.

Bechu, a coolie man who is a frequent letter writer to the newspapers in British Guiana has two libel
cases against him.

Severo Mallet-Prevost is part of the (American) team representing Venezuela representing the arbitration which met in Paris and finalises the Border on 3 October, 1899.
There are no records of how Amerindian people or black people or coolie people were involved in this process.

1905 – The border is finalised.

1944 – Venezuela gives the Order of the Liberator to Severo Mallet-Prevost. He reportedly entrusts his junior colleague Otto Schoenrich with a memorandum not to be published until after his death.
1948 – Severo Mallet-Prevost dies and in 1949, Otto Schoenrich publishes the memorandum which says  Russia and Great Britain had a deal. Historians have asked what deal as no evidence has been found of any deal. ( I saw one comment that well, Queen Victoria was related to the Russian Tsar so who knows.. )
1962 – Venezuela declares the 1899 tribunal null and void . The Venezuelans, British and Americans are to resolve the issue.
1966 – Guyana becomes independent. Amerindian people, black people and coolie people and all Guyanese now have to deal with the janjhat of the Borders.
1970 – Port of Spain Treaty signed – no body will claim anything for 12 years. Guyanese seem to be migrating to Venezuela.
1981 – There are concerns that the US is not standing with Guyana on the border issue. The young people who in 2015 have to decide how they will deal with this history , are being conceived or birthed.
2002 – There is a coup attempt against President Chavez . I am stuck in the Caracas Airport for two days while in transit and there is a uncertainty about Chavez.
2004 – President Chavez visits Guyana
2007 – “Curtis Mallet” decides to represent Venezuela in its case against Exxon-Mobil and ConocoPhilips – more than 100 years after Severo Mallet-Prevost joined the firm and more than 50 years after he dictated the Memorandum which has me writing this article
2013 – President Maduro visits Guyana.
2015 – President Granger takes office in Guyana and the same time Exxon Mobil says that there is a lot of oil. It is not clear who is to blame for this announcement which apparently sets off President Maduro’s activation of the oil claim.
On 22 September – Guyana notes that Venezuela is building up troops at its border with Guyana.
On 29 September at the UN, President Maduro said that ‘there was a problem with drug trafficking’ and that he hoped that things will be back to normal with Colombia and Guyana. During this week, there were no reports of drug busts in the Guyana media.

Did the Venezuelan military presence on the borders with Colombia and Venezuela cut up some runnings or has the DEA been working hard or has the nation been so preoccupied with not a blade a grass that some drugs managed to slip through?

Rahul Bhattacharya in The Sly Company of People who Care writes about Gomattie selling in the Venezuelan market with the sounds of  Teri Yaad Ah Rahi Hai . A pandit friend told me that he read at a few yajna, including at mandirs in San Felix and Puerto Ordaz. It seems , that since Venezuelan soldiers commandeered  Ankoko, Guyanese have been migrating to Venezuela , heck even  selling pholourie and roti and curry – well more than say Venezuelans coming to Guyana.

There are reports in the US media about our border towns surviving on smuggled fuel from Venezuela. It is not clear whether the army presence stopped the trade in fuel across the border this September.

American interests
The Americans have been involved since the beginning and it is fascinating to watch the sides. The Americans, not only American Governments, but also different political activists.
Those who are interested might want to map the alliances and so throughout time. The most fascinating claims have been made about President Granger and Guyana.   One American man wrote that President Granger  “…is a direct military product, if not asset, of the US and its allies…” while a woman described President David Granger as a “conservative military officer.. a close US ally” . ‘

While I had been celebrating the non-suit wearing of President Granger as a kind of 70s left wing socialist kind of of thing – it turns out that a couple of the left wing socialists who are not on President Granger’s side and who  might have had dodgy connections with the US all wore suits with ties to the UN General Assembly. President Granger is the only one not in a suit and tie – but the left wing in the US has claimed him an ally closer to say Donald Trump than Jeremy Corbyn in the UK who is still trying to hold out on not having to wear a suit with a tie.  It is easier to navigate this suit and tie business than say wonder how the American interests will influence how loudly we will have to sing Not a Blade of Grass. (Should we have a Spanish version? )A minibus man did say the song has to change from ‘not a blade of grass’ to ‘not a pint of oil’.

Exxon-Mobil is under pressure – they knew about climate change even as they were funding people who denied it; they have 236MUSD fines to pay for water pollution and other fines.

It is a relief that we are not going to war with Venezuela over Exxon-Mobil. The new US Ambassador seemed to talk about gay rights and cheaper sources of renewable energy, while President Granger asked for support against threats to Guyana’s territorial integrity.  Nothing about wars – there is something about transnational crime which is what it seems President Maduro was preventing.

Around the same time that Venezuela withdrew some of its troops this week, there was announcement that Pizza Hut was coming back to Guyana. There might be debate about whether Exxon-Mobil or Pizza Hut are better US interests to have in Guyana but Venezuela does not seem to have a problem with Pizza Hut so there are not likely to be any drug trafficking problems at the border.

It is good to know that the Ambassadors would be exchanged and that Guyana will be pursuing a legal settlement to the Venezuelan contention that the 1899 thing is null and void. Now that Amerindians, black people, coolie people and others are involved, could we insist that there are additional articles that none of the esteemed jurists should write memorandums to be published after they die?

It was nice to see the handshake organised by the UN Secretary General. The two Presidents did not look like they were pulling their hands away.  Hopefully In Guyana,  there will be  some other handshakes that when photographed, they will help to be in the national interests.

(All images used here have been taken from various sources on the Internet. All sources are acknowledged)