On the Essequibo referendum

Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL)

Image: A 1890 Venezuelan map, including the Essequibo region and a huge claim to territory which currently is a part of Colombia

The government of Nicolás Maduro has launched an aggressive and expensive campaign on the dispute with Guyana over the Essequibo, calling for a vote in the referendum set for the coming December 3. It tries to portray itself as anti-imperialist, rejecting the Guyanese government’s handing over of oil resources to US companies. But it omits saying that its Russian and Chinese allies also have economic and commercial interests in Guyana, especially in relation to oil exploitation. And that the Venezuelan government itself handed over the oil to North American, European, Chinese and Russian companies, through joint venture contracts, as it has also done with the mineral wealth existing in the so-called Orinoco Mining Arc.

The goal of this campaign, which has as its slogan “The Essequibo is ours”, is to use the conflict to hide the dreadful social crisis experienced by the Venezuelan workers and people. To sweep under the carpet the starvation wages and pensions, the freezing of the collective bargaining agreements, both in the public and private sectors, the disappearance of 36 billion dollars from PDVSA’s funds and 400 billion bolivars, which were the employer’s contributions to the workers’ pension funds of the public sector. The destruction of public services, expressed in the fact that 75% of the hospitals do not have drinking water, barely keeping afloat without medicines and supplies, imposes on the workers and the popular sectors the cost of each surgical intervention, as they have to buy everything required to receive medical attention. In addition to continuous power cuts throughout the country, while for the benefit of the government and private businessmen, the rates for sanitation, electricity and telecommunications are abusively increased.

Meanwhile, the government continues to apply its capitalist austerity, restricting democratic rights and keeping workers behind bars for demanding their rights or denouncing corruption in state enterprises. All this in the context of a generalized popular repudiation towards a government that is regarded as responsible for the social and economic tragedy in which we are submerged.

The referendum is a resource by which the government pretends to gather support for the 2024 elections, exacerbating nationalist sentiments and extreme chauvinism. At the same time, to stigmatize and criminalize anyone who opposes the referendum. In the past, AD and Copei resorted to the same nationalist appeals. They raised smokescreens to hide the problems of the country, using the dispute over the Gulf of Venezuela with Colombia.

The government has no shame in spending resources in a multimillionaire propaganda campaign, instead of allocating those resources to increase salaries and honor the teachers’, health workers’ or oil workers’ contracts, which have already expired. Or to invest in schools, hospitals and public services.

We are called to vote in a referendum on the Essequibo, but we were never consulted to approve the Onapre instructive that cut our salaries or about Memorandum 2792, with which salaries were buried while collective contracts and the right to strike were liquidated. In order to apply these onerous measures that accompany the austerity program that the government has been implementing since 2018, there was no referendum nor was anyone consulted.

The government is playing with fire, exacerbating nationalist sentiment. This policy is a double-edged sword that can lead to a dangerous escalation of confrontation with the Guyanese government, which could eventually lead to some military skirmish on the border. We have already seen how the president of the bourgeois government of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, was photographed at the border in uniform accompanied by the military, and more recently with the hoisting of the Guyanese flag in the Pacaraima mountain range, in open acts of provocation, as a response to the bravado coming from Venezuela.

From the Socialism and Freedom Party we categorically say that we reject any militaristic adventure that leads to a confrontation between the peoples of Guyana and Venezuela, who would only be cannon fodder in a conflict that in the end would only benefit the bourgeoisies and governments of both countries, and the interests of U.S. imperialism and its oil companies.

This is a conflict of interests of the bourgeoisies and governments of both countries, far removed from the needs of the peoples and the working classes of Venezuela and Guyana. Both the Guyanese working people and the working people of our country must continue to struggle against the capitalist policies of their respective governments.

Without any doubt, British imperialism took over a territory that belonged to the Captaincy General of Venezuela as it became independent. Already since colonial times, the British had been progressively occupying territory not controlled by the Spanish crown. And then they took advantage of the disaster in which the country was plunged after the bloody war of independence. However, although in its origin this claim had legitimacy because it confronted British imperialism, when Guyana became independent it was lost to the extent that it became an instrument of aggression against a brotherly Caribbean people, which could lose 74% of its territory.

All the propaganda developed by the government and even the bosses’ opposition parties grouped in the Unitary Platform, pretends to make us believe that the territory of Guayana Essequiba is a “national interest”, common to the bourgeoisie, the Venezuelan government and the millions of workers who today are suffering the most serious social tragedy of our history, with starvation wages and destroyed public services. There are no common interests between the government, the PSUV, the capitalists the bosses’ parties, on the one hand, and on the other, the Venezuelan working people who are enduring the crisis and the austerity applied by the government in collusion with capitalists, transnationals and the union bureaucracy.

In the interest of the peoples of Venezuela and Guyana, the path forward should be bilateral negotiations and to initiate a process of dialogue between the two governments, aimed at achieving economic, commercial and cultural cooperation between the two peoples.

We state that this referendum is very far from the interests and needs of the Venezuelan working people, it’s only a propaganda mechanism of the government to hide the consequences of the austerity and to present itself as a defender of the interests of the country, facing the 2024 presidential elections. In this sense, we call to abstain from voting, as a clear repudiation of the government’s attempt to manipulate the hunger, misery and social crisis suffered by the working class and popular sectors.

Originally published in spanish by Laclase.info

November 26, 2023