Reshaping relations between neighbours
`No need for translator when operating from the heart’ – President Hugo Chavez
by Michelle Nurse
Guyana Chronicle
February 22, 2004
`Taking into account the history of the relations between Guyana and Venezuela, this is certainly a watershed: you have to think of what happened before my visit… and what is going to happen after.’ - Venezuelan President, Mr. Hugo Chavez
A COMMITMENT towards positively reshaping the relations between Guyana and Venezuela and by extension, deepening Guyana’s integration with South America, has emerged as the most tangible result of the state visit here by President Hugo Chavez.
It is generally felt that Guyana, which straddles the Caribbean and Latin America and is the only English-speaking country in the South America, is uniquely poised to benefit tremendously from a closer alliance with Latin America.
To this end, the proposed road linking Venezuela and Guyana, the road now being constructed to other neighbour Brazil and the ferry service between Guyana and Suriname, provide the basis for greater communication among the neighbours and a gateway for increased trade and other arrangements with the rest of the region.
“We are leaving the past definitely in the past and we will succeed in having true integration,” Chavez said Thursday. He cautioned, however, that integration “cannot be decreed”, but “it is something that you build as you go along in the process”.
Within this new framework of increased cooperation, President Bharrat Jagdeo said Guyana can work towards a free trade area with Venezuela and CARICOM, but based on reciprocity.
“We have had for some time now a Partial Scope Agreement with Venezuela, but now I think we can source more of our products out of Venezuela…” President Jagdeo said. The two countries can now accelerate action with respect to trans-boundary crimes, including drug trafficking, he added.
Said Chavez: “We have a commonality of purpose on the issue of integration. We want an integration model that favours development and not that favours disintegration. We have talked of the need of putting social issues up front,” as well as reciprocity and respect for the characteristics of the countries including size and economy, with the ultimate aim of improving the standard of living.
President Jagdeo said he has no predisposition to “sloganeering or `isms’, whether socialism or capitalism or anything else. What I look for is content, and I look for commitment. I’ve seen commitment to the people of this region from President Chavez not only because of what he said to me, but because of the practical things that he has offered…
“There is one thing that he said to me… that there are many presidents, or some presidents who are capitalist in the region, but they are all unified in one thing, and that is that in spite of what ideology Latin American leaders pursue today, we all feel that our continent, Latin American and the Caribbean, has serious problems and the current models are not solving those problems. What I’ve gleaned from that is that we can all pursue our different ideas in different countries, but Guyana or Venezuela or Argentina or Brazil… but what is important to him is that we deal with… the development of our people, tackling poverty, bringing this region together, integrating people, placing this region on the world sphere so that it could play its rightful role…We share the commitment that we need to do this for Latin America and the Caribbean…,” Jagdeo said.
Dispelling old myths
The state visit which Chavez said assumed the character of an historic occasion, marked a turning point in relations between the neighbouring states which have been embroiled in a border controversy for decades.
“Taking into account the history of the relations between Guyana and Venezuela, this is certainly a watershed: you have to think of what happened before my visit… and what is going to happen after,” President Chavez said in his five-minute opening statement at the late night press conference. The opening statement, in which he acknowledged “I usually speak a lot”, was most likely his shortest speech for the entire day.
Slated to briefly speak at the civic reception held in his honour at the Promenade Gardens, the visiting Head of State addressed the gathering for close to an hour, touching on the ideas he had to promote more concrete ties with Guyana. And running more than three hours behind schedule, Chavez took Parliamentarians, representatives of the private sector and civic organisations as well as schoolchildren through a crash course in history in revolutionary attitudes and tactics, replete with graphic details of beheadings, and the dismemberment of detractors’ limbs which were subsequently “fried in oil”. He paused briefly after about an hour into his speech at Le Meridien to offer his local interpreter a drink of water, words of encouragement and a round of applause.
Both leaders said that the issue of Venezuela’s claim on the Essequibo had not been discussed except in the context of reiterating their confidence in the Good Officer Process. However, Chavez did indicate that his country would raise no objections to developmental projects in the area. Consultations at the level of the high level bilateral commission will be undertaken in the event that “sensitive” projects are planned for the area.
Responding to questions, Chavez said the border controversy, geo-political persuasions of Latin America, South America and the Caribbean, and the “attitudes of the 60’s and 70’s” combined to produce the stilted relations between Guyana and Venezuela.
A young military officer at the time, Chavez said “the attitude at the time was to sow the seeds of distrust among the Venezuelan military men and women…They used to tell us military men that not only do we have to recover what was ours – that territory – but that we should try to avoid another Cuba. …What they meant was that Guyana could have become another Cuba…
“Those were old imperialistic strategies whose purpose was to divide us or push us towards armed conflict…”
He added that the attitude prompted talk of an invasion of Essequibo and a takeover of Georgetown.
“As a military man, I had to study the Guyana maps to see the right way …to enter Guyana… or where to jump from a plane in a parachute to invade Guyana. That was crazy, insane. But that was an imperialist principle…” he told the media, adding that Venezuela’s spending on military equipment “from the North” - some of which were obsolete - and resulted in its indebtedness and corruption.
“Today, things have changed dramatically. Today in Venezuela, we have no kind of sentiment against Guyana whatsoever. On the contrary, we have fostered closer relations with Guyana. We continue to strengthen the ties with Guyana. … I still study the Guyana maps, but not to bomb any city …or anything of the sort, but to find out what’s the right path to that road that will link the two countries or where we can encourage common cooperation programmes, Chavez said.
President Jagdeo added that at the high level bilateral commission, the two countries have already held discussions on investments, and cooperation in the areas of agriculture, education and cultural cooperation.
“We hope to extend that to health and President Chavez spoke to us about cooperation in education, and we want to expand the purview of the high level bilateral commission to also include education and any other theme that they may see fitting on which we can cooperate,” the Guyanese leader said.
Explosion of love
Chavez has also committed himself to hosting schoolchildren from Guyana in July. He said he may send a military plane or the presidential aircraft to fly the Guyanese youths into Caracas on July 25.
The “explosion of love” for the children will include lots of talks, trips to Margarita, Canaima “in the middle of the jungle” and Mount Bolivar, Venezuela’s highest mountain.
“We are going to learn a little bit of English and you are going to learn a little bit of Spanish and we will be able to communicate better,” he told the children.
The trip, he said, can sow the seeds of the kind of relationship that should exist between Guyana and Venezuela.
“There is no need for a translator when you speak from the heart,” Chavez told the media while patting his chest.
“As long as our two peoples get closer and closer and learn to love each other, it is impossible … to fathom that down the road there will be any problems that might come and hinder this process of integration and understanding. The idea is to make a lot of progress in the upcoming years so that we can overcome the barriers…,” Chavez said.