Guyana-Brazil relations
Editorial
Stabroek News
December 24, 2002
Foreign Affairs Minister Rudolph Insanally’s October visit to Brasilia seemed to be a low-level response to the high-powered appearance of Itamaraty’s Secretary General, Osmar Vladimir Chohfi, who led a fifteen-member delegation to Georgetown in April and concluded a raft of bilateral agreements.
Evidence of Brazilian co-operation is visible in the recent training of GDF soldiers in the disposal of explosive ordnance devices, the medical treatment offered to an injured GDF soldier, and various other technical, commercial and cultural initiatives. But, the Foreign Minister’s agenda, published in the recent issue of Takuba News, seemed rather perfunctory, little of substance appearing to have been achieved on the Guyana side.
Travelling alone, a mere three days before the Brazilian presidential elections, the Foreign Minister may have gone at the wrong time and could do little more than dot the i’s and cross the t’s on earlier agreements.
That is a pity. Relations with Brazil have always been a most important geostrategic, albeit problematic, side of Guyana’s foreign policy. For much of the second half of the last century, Brazil’s formidable military establishment, advised by its geopolitical thinkers and Superior War College had been concerned about Guyana’s domestic stability, fearing that the country would be susceptible to external communist influences which could threaten the security of the vast but fragile Amazon.
In the early 1960s, Brazil saw itself as the long, strong arm of US hegemony in South America and was suspicious of Cheddi Jagan’s 1957-64 pro-Cuba Administration. Brazil therefore welcomed the PNC-UF coalition which entered office in 1964 as there was an apparent convergence between both countries’ pro-USA and anti-Cuba foreign policy postures.
Brazil, too, concerned about the security of the northern tier of South America and the sanctity of its numerous borders with the states of the continent, was suspicious of Venezuela’s aggressive policies against Guyana, aimed at overturning a border which had been settled by international arbitration.
After a flurry of high-level contacts and visits, Brazil established diplomatic relations with Guyana, opening its embassy in Georgetown in November 1968 and appointing a Brigadier General as its first ambassador. The next year, the first Guyanese military officers traveled to Manaus to join a jungle warfare course. Since then, Brazil’s military schools trained more Guyanese officers and soldiers than any other country.
The Venezuelan-supported Rupununi rebellion, occurring on the edge of Brazil’s vulnerable Amazon region, aroused Brazil’s worst fears about the security and stability of the region. Brazil embarked on a wide range of defence and development initiatives - removal of the Amazonas Military Command headquartes from Belem to Manaus; creation of an overarching Superintendency for the Development of the Amazon (SUDAM); building networks of highways, airports and settlements; and, eventually, launching the Calha Norte project and the SIVAM surveillance and SIPAM environmental protection systems - all aimed at consolidating its sovereignty over the Amazon especially where it bordered Guyana and Venezuela.
Brazil also altered its automatic pro-USA policy after the oil shocks of the mid-1970s. In its quest for energy security and new commodity markets, it re-fashioned its relations with neighbouring continental states. The launching of the Treaty of Amazonian Co-operation in 1978, to which Guyana and Venezuela are signatories, was a direct result of this new policy.
The accession of Herrera Campins to the Presidency of Venezuela in 1979 took place at a time of heightened concern for regional stability. Faced with the threat of offensive action and Venezuela’s refusal to renew the Protocol of Port of Spain which had frozen the territorial claims, President Forbes Burnham visited Brazil in October 1982, entering a wide range of agreements including one which was to see the construction of a highway through the Essequibo. Since this is part of the territory claimed by Venezuela, the strategic significance of the Guyana-Brazil highway is clear.
At the heart of the triangular Guyana-Brazil-Venezuela relationship, therefore, the geopolitical interests of the neighbouring states were always evident. The important but delicate balance needs to be constantly calibrated by active and purposeful diplomacy if Guyana’s vital strategic interests are to be safeguarded.
