Guyana Where and What 2023-2024 for website_compressed

Two months after the Award,
the new American President
(McKinley) summed up the
situation in his Union Message
to Congress (5.12.99) thus:
“The Award,…while not
meeting the extreme
contention of either
party,….appears to be equally
satisfactory to both parties.”
And for a while, Venezuela did
all the right things. They
participated fully in the
demarcation (1900-05) of the
boundary as awarded by the
Tribunal. They joined in marking
the trijunction border point –
between Venezuela, Brazil and
British Guiana - on the summit
of Roraima (1931). They insisted
on precise adherence to the
boundary line as awarded by
the Arbitral Tribunal in 1899
despite inconvenience (1931).
But, throughout, there were
other voices yearning to be
heard and other ambitions
reaching beyond lawful
perimeters.
The post-war years presented a
new world scene and the onset
of the ’cold war’ within them.
Together, they amplified the
voices of expansionism within
Venezuela, and, infamously,
shattered
Venezuela’s
anti-colonial inheritance.
President Betancourt even
floated the outrageous idea of a
cordon sanitaire in the
Essequibo region under
Venezuelan sovereignty. In the
UN’s Hall of self-determination
itself, Venezuela drew up
barricades to the full freedom of
British Guiana, stoking fears of
‘another Cuba’. Eventually, as a
Judge of the International Court
of Justice has recently declared,
“at the time of Guyana’s
independence in 1966, the right
to self-determination had
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