Venezuela\u2019s\u00a0president ordered the creation of a new state called\u00a0\u201cGuayana Esequiba\u201d\u00a0on Tuesday, following a controversial Sunday referendum which saw Venezuelan voters approving the annexation of land from neighboring Guyana. <\/p>\n
The area in question, the densely forested and oil-rich Essequibo region, amounts to about two-thirds of Guyana\u2019s national territory.\u00a0Venezuela\u00a0has long claimed the land and dismisses an 1899 ruling by international arbitrators that set the current boundaries. <\/p>\n
Guyana has called the move a step towards annexation and an \u201cexistential threat.\u201d <\/p>\n
Talking to legislators on Tuesday, President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro showed a \u201cnew map\u201d of\u00a0Venezuela including the\u00a0disputed territory\u00a0and said all residents from the area would be granted Venezuelan nationality. He said\u00a0the map\u00a0would be\u00a0distributed throughout all schools and public buildings in the country. <\/p>\n
Maduro also signed a \u201cpresidential decree\u201d creating the \u201cHigh Commission for the Defense of Guayana Esequiba. <\/p>\n
The measures announced include the approval of oil, gas and mining exploration licences. Maduro ordered the state oil company PDVSA to create a special department, \u201cPDVSA-Esequibo,\u201d to manage the activities in the region which are to start immediately. <\/p>\n
The president also asked legislators to draw up a law banning the hiring of any companies that have\u00a0worked\u00a0<\/strong>with Guyana in areas of disputed water, and giving companies currently in the region three months to leave the area. <\/p>\n The measures also include a census among residents of that territory in order to facilitate the attribution of the Venezuelan nationality. <\/p>\n Speaking to reporters on Monday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington continues to \u201ca peaceful resolution of the border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cThe 1899 award determined the land boundary between Venezuela and Guyana should be respected unless or until the parties come to a new agreement or a competent legal body decides otherwise. So we would urge Venezuela and Guyana to continue to seek a peaceful resolution of their dispute. This is not something that will be settled by a referendum,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Sparsely-populated and with high rates of poverty, Guyana has seen rapid transformation since the 2015 discovery of oil off the coast of the Essequibo region by ExxonMobil, with over $1 billion in annual government oil revenue fueling massive infrastructure projects. The country is set to surpass the oil production of Venezuela, long dependent on its own oil reserves, and is on track to become the world\u2019s highest per capita oil producer. <\/p>\n Writing for Foreign Policy last year, ahead of the announcement of the referendum, Paul J. Angelo of the Council on Foreign Relations and Wazim Mowla, the assistant director for the Caribbean Initiative at the Atlantic Council\u2019s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, called the border dispute a \u201cpowder keg,\u201d arguing that Russian President Vladmir Putin\u2019s \u201cdefiance of international norms\u201d with the invasion of Ukraine \u201ccould give new wings to Maduro\u2019s territorial ambitions.\u201d <\/p>\n Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo echoed the comparison at a recent news conference. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if they are miscalculating based on what happened in Crimea and other places, but it would be a grave miscalculation on their part,\u201d Jagdeo said. <\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t just think that this is internal politics (in Venezuela) without taking all possible measures to protect our country, including working with others,\u201d he added, citing a visit in late November by US military officials to discuss ongoing joint training exercises. <\/p>\n Maduro stands to gain politically from Sunday\u2019s referendum amid a challenging re-election campaign. In October, the Venezuelan opposition showed rare momentum after rallying around Maria Corina Machado, a center-right former legislator who has attacked Maduro for overseeing soaring inflation and food shortages, in the country\u2019s first primary in 11 years. <\/p>\n \u201cAn authoritarian government facing a difficult political situation is always tempted to look around for a patriotic issue so it can wrap itself in the flag and rally support, and I think that\u2019s a large part of what Maduro is doing,\u201d said Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. <\/p>\n\n Venezuela\u2019s\u00a0president ordered the creation of a new state called\u00a0\u201cGuayana Esequiba\u201d\u00a0on Tuesday, following a controversial Sunday referendum which saw Venezuelan voters approving the annexation of land from neighboring Guyana. The area in question, the densely forested and oil-rich Essequibo region, amounts to about two-thirds of Guyana\u2019s national territory.\u00a0Venezuela\u00a0has long claimed the land and dismisses an 1899 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}