Guayana Esequiba (Spanish pronunciation: [ɡwaˈʝana eseˈkiβa]) is a territory administered by Guyana but claimed by Venezuela. It includes the territory between the Cuyuni River to the west and the Essequibo River to the east. Guyana divides the area in six administrative regions (Barima-Waini, Cuyuni-Mazaruni, Pomeroon-Supenaam, Potaro-Siparuni, Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo and Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) while Venezuela treats it as a single entity (Guayana Esequiba or "Zona en Reclamación"). The area of the territory is 159,500 km². The territory is the subject of a long-running boundary dispute inherited from the colonial powers and complicated by the independence of Guyana in 1966. The status of the territory is today subject to the Treaty of Geneva (17 February 1966), which stipulates that both sides will agree to find a practical, peaceful and satisfactory solution to the dispute.
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Spanish authorities in a report dated 10 July 1788 put forward the first claim:
It has been stated that the south coast of the Orinoco from the point of Barima, 20 leagues more or less inland, up to the creek of Curucima, is low lying and swampy land and, consequently, reckoning all this tract as useless, very few patches of fertile land being found therein, and hardly any savannahs and pastures, it is disregarded; so taking as chief base the said creek of Curucima, or the point of the chain and ridge in the great arm of the Imataka, an imaginary line will be drawn running to the south-south-east following the slopes of the ridge of the same name which is crossed by the Rivers Aguire, Arature and Amacuro, and others, in the distance of 20 leagues, direct to the Cuyuni; from there it will run on to the Masaruni and Essequibo, parallel to the sources of the Berbis and Surinama; this is the directing line of the course which the new Settlements and foundations proposed must follow.
When Spain created the Captaincy General of Venezuela, the Essequibo river was claimed as the natural border between Spanish territory and the Dutch colonies of Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo. Under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 those colonies were transferred to Great Britain. In 1831, Britain merged Berbice, Demerara, and Essequibo into British Guiana, with the Essequibo River as its west border, although many British settlers lived west of the Essequibo.
In 1819, José Rafael Revenga, at the direction of Simón Bolívar, complained to the British government about the presence of British settlers in territory claimed by Venezuela: "The colonists of Demerara and Berbice have usurped a large portion of land, which according to recent treaties between Spain and Holland, belongs to our country at the west of Essequibo River. It is absolutely essential that these settlers be put under the jurisdiction and obedience to our laws, or be withdrawn to their former possessions." However, the British government continued to promote colonization of territory west of the Essequibo River.
In 1835, under the aegis of the Royal Geographical Society, the German-born, explorer and naturalist Robert Hermann Schomburgk conducted botanical and geographical exploration of British Guiana. This resulted in a sketch of the territory with a line marking what he believed to be the western boundary claimed by the Dutch. As a result of this, he was commissioned in 1840 by the British government to survey Guiana's boundaries. This survey resulted in what came to be known as the "Schomburgk Line".[1][2] Schomburgk's initial sketch, which had been published in 1840, was the only version of the "Schomburgk Line" published until 1886, which led to later accusations by US President Grover Cleveland that the line had been extended "in some mysterious way".[1]
The Line went well beyond the area of British occupation, and gave British Guiana control of the mouth of the Orinoco River.[3] Venezuela disputed Schomburgk's survey, claiming that the Britain had illegally acquired an extra 30,000 square miles (80,000 km2) of territory. In 1840 Venezuela claimed all of Guyana west of the Essequibo River — 62% of Guyana's territory. Britain and Venezuela argued over the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela for much of the 19th century.
On 21 February 1881, Venezuela proposed a frontier line starting from a point one mile to the north of the Moruka River, drawn from there westward to the 60th meridian and running south along that meridian. This would have granted the Barima District to Venezuela.
In October 1886 Britain declared the Schomburgk Line to be the provisional frontier of British Guiana, and in February 1887 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations.[1] Venezuela appealed to the United States to intervene, citing the Monroe Doctrine as justification. The United States expressed concern but did little in the way of resolving the situation, until the Venezuela Crisis of 1895.
The longstanding dispute became a diplomatic crisis in 1895. Venezuela hired William Lindsay Scruggs as its lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Scruggs took up Venezula's argument that British action violated the Monroe Doctrine. Scruggs used his influence to get the US government to accept this claim and get involved. President Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.[4] British prime minister Lord Salisbury and British ambassador to the US Lord Pauncefote both misjudged the importance the American government placed on the dispute.[5][6] The key issue in the crisis became Britain's refusal to include the territory east of the Schomburgk Line in the proposed international arbitration. Ultimately Britain backed down and and tacitly accepted the US right to intervene under the Monroe Doctrine. This US intervention forced Britain to accept arbitration of the entire disputed territory.
The rival claims were presented to a tribunal of six arbitrators: two from Britain, two from the US (representing Venezuela's interest) and two from Russia, who were presumed neutral. Venezuela reiterated its claim to the district immediately west of the Essequibo, and claimed that the boundary should run from the mouth of the Moruka River southwards to the Cuyuni River, near its junction with the Mazaruni River, and then along the east bank of the Essequibo to the Brazilian frontier. In 1899 the Tribunal ruled largely in favour of Britain. The Schomburgk Line was, with two deviations, established as the border between British Guiana and Venezuela.[1] One deviation was that Venezuela received Barima Point at the mouth of the Orinoco, giving it undisputed control of the river, and thus the ability to levy duties on Venezuelan commerce. The second placed the border at the Wenamu River rather than the Cuyuni River, giving Venezuela substantial territory east of the line. However, Britain received most of the disputed territory, and all of the gold mines.[7]
In 1949, the US jurist Otto Schoenrich gave the Venezuelan government a memorandum written Severo Mallet-Prevost, the Official Secretary of the U.S./Venezuela delegation in the Tribunal of Arbitration. This document was written in 1944 to be published only after Mallet-Prevost's death. Mallet-Prevost surmised from the private behavior of the judges that there had a political deal between Russia and Britain.[8] Mallet-Prevost said that the Russian chair of the panel, Friedrich Martens, had visited Britain with the two British arbitrators in the summer of 1899, and subsequently had offered the two American judges a choice between accepting a unanimous award along the lines ultimately agreed, or a 3:2 majority opinion even more favourable to the British. The alternative would have followed the Schomburgk Line entirely, and given the mouth of the Orinoco to the British. Mallet-Prevost said that the American judges and Venezuelan counsel were disgusted at the situation and considered the 3:2 option with a strongly worded minority opinion, but ultimately went along with Martens to avoid depriving Venezuela of even more territory.[8] As a result of Mallet-Prevost's claims, Venezuela revived its claim to the disputed territory.[9][10]
Venezuela formally raised the issue again in 1962, four years before Guyana won independence from Britain. Venezuela alleged several improprieties and vices in the ruling, such as Ultra Petita (the referees decreed freedom of navigation in the Amacuro and Barima rivers, and drew the border between British Guiana and Brazil, issues that they never were asked to settle), and the alleged Russia-UK deal noted above. At a meeting in Geneva in 1966, Britain and Venezuela agreed to receive recommendations from a representative of the UN Secretary General on ways to settle the dispute peacefully, by means of the Geneva Treaty (1966).[11] Diplomatic contacts between the two countries and the Secretary General's representative continue. The Venezuelan claim of the nullity of the 1899 ruling has been acknowledged by several foreign scholars and jurists, such as J. Gillis Wetter of Sweden, in his work The International Arbitral Process (1979), and also Héctor Gross Espiell of Uruguay, and Eduardo Jiménez de Aréchaga.
In its note of recognition of the independence of Guyana on 26 May 1966, Venezuela stated:
Venezuela recognises as territory of the new State the one which is located on the east of the right bank of the Essequibo River, and reiterates before the new State, and before the international community, that it expressly reserves its rights of territorial sovereignty over all the zone located on the west bank of the above-mentioned river. Therefore, the Guyana-Essequibo territory over which Venezuela expressly reserves its sovereign rights, limits on the east by the new State of Guyana, through the middle line of the Essequibo River, beginning from its source and on to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean.
After Rupununi Uprising, the Presidents Rafael Caldera and Forbes Burnham signed the Port of Spain Protocol, concerned with the moratory of reclamation of Guayana Esequiba. Venezuelan maps produced since 1970 show the entire area from the eastern bank of the Essequibo, including the islands in the river, as Venezuelan territory. On some maps, the western Essequibo region is called the "Zone in Reclamation".[12]
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