Despite their proximity to Venezuela, inhabitants of the Guyanese border town of Mabaruma have little to do with their Spanish-speaking neighbors, says Brentnol Ashley, governor for the Barima-Waini region.
Like other communities dotted across the dense jungles of the Essequibo region, Mabaruma is a patchwork of Indigenous peoples bound together by the English language and Guyana’s national culture.
“We are a diverse nation, but at the end of the day we are all one people: the Guyanese,” said Ashley.
The only Spanish speakers in the riverside settlement are Venezuelans who have sought refuge there in recent years after fleeing their home country’s economic collapse, Ashley said.
So when the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, announced this week that he would issue his country’s ID cards to the local population, and step up efforts to convert Essequibo into a Venezuelan state, local people showed little interest in taking up the offer.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Like other communities dotted across the dense jungles of the Essequibo region, Mabaruma is a patchwork of Indigenous peoples bound together by the English language and Guyana’s national culture.
At the center of the dispute is an incendiary vote held in Venezuela on Sunday in which Caracas alleges the public overwhelmingly backed the country’s claims to the 160,000-sq-kilometre swathe of resource-rich rainforest.
Maduro hailed the plebiscite a “total success”, claiming that 95% of Venezuelans supported the plans to annex the region and disregard the international court of justice, which is currently mediating the century-old territorial dispute.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has cast himself as a mediator in the dispute, but he also sent troops to his country’s northern border, and it appears the leftist leader is running out of patience with Maduro’s saber-rattling.
Maduro’s belligerent campaign is widely seen as a way to drum up support and test his capacity to drive turnout before presidential elections in 2024, when he is expected to face a serious challenge by the opposition leader María Corina Machado.
“He could also just use the alleged looming threat from Guyana and the US to say there are no conditions for an election to be held and cancel it entirely,” said Ryan Berg, an analyst and the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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