Sev­er­al years ago, a re­spect­ed Caribbean in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert told me in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion that the no­tion of “na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty” was be­com­ing an out­dat­ed con­cept.

Yet, few is­sues gen­er­ate greater un­re­served bi­par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal and wider so­cial sup­port than re­al and per­ceived threats to a coun­try’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty or a claim that its sov­er­eign­ty has been vi­o­lat­ed.

Both Guyana’s and Venezuela’s fierce in­ternecine po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ments, for ex­am­ple, de-es­ca­late and co­here around the ques­tion of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion. It has not mat­tered the po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion in pow­er in ei­ther Guyana or Venezuela.

For ex­am­ple, Guyana’s agent to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) is for­mer min­is­ter of for­eign af­fairs, Carl Greenidge, who is not as­so­ci­at­ed with the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP) and is among the more elo­quent ad­vo­cates on his coun­try’s be­half on this sub­ject. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly, nei­ther Chav­is­mo nor an­ti-Chav­is­mo is a fac­tor in Venezuela when it comes to this.

I have in­ter­act­ed with in­de­pen­dent hu­man rights de­fend­ers in Venezuela who ca­su­al­ly con­tend that “Guayana Es­e­qui­ba” be­longs to their coun­try.

As in­ter­im Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez has said, this is taught at school along­side neg­a­tive views on the process that led to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, and she is not about to “change his­to­ry” … as she un­der­stands it.

Men­tion to young and old Venezue­lans the 1899 Ar­bi­tral Award, which es­sen­tial­ly grant­ed most of the Es­se­qui­bo re­gion to what was then “British Guiana,” and they would have at least heard about it as some­thing of a long­stand­ing trav­es­ty - though the re­sult re­mained un­con­test­ed, and even ap­plaud­ed, for over 60 years.

Most Guyanese can tell you about the tens of thou­sands of fel­low cit­i­zens who live in the re­gion. They will al­so be able to re­cite at least one line from the Tradewinds’ 1980 hit “Not A Blade of Grass” – re­pur­posed now as Es­se­qui­bo slo­gan.

When Juan Guaidó was uni­lat­er­al­ly de­clared by some big and pow­er­ful coun­tries as the “le­git­i­mate” pres­i­dent of Venezuela in 2019, I fol­lowed ac­com­pa­ny­ing so­cial me­dia nar­ra­tives by his sup­port­ers for men­tion of “Guayana Es­e­qui­ba.”

I found main­ly deroga­to­ry men­tion of Guyana and its Cari­com part­ners in their sup­port of Guyana’s po­si­tion on Es­se­qui­bo. This was hard­ly Bo­li­var­i­an im­pe­ri­al­ism as enun­ci­at­ed by their sworn en­e­mies, the Chav­is­tas. Wit­ness as well the gen­er­al po­si­tion of María Co­ri­na Macha­do.

The fact is, what­ev­er the non­sen­si­cal claims to the con­trary, Cari­com mem­ber states have long, ac­tive­ly, and re­peat­ed­ly ral­lied in sup­port of Guyana on this ques­tion. Check Cari­com Sum­mit dis­cus­sions and com­mu­niques go­ing back to its for­ma­tive years in the 1970s.

I have, how­ev­er, not­ed that in com­men­taries re­gard­ing Del­cy Ro­driguez’s’ provoca­tive brooch - de­pict­ing her ren­di­tion of a map of Venezuela – peo­ple have been speak­ing about the seem­ing­ly pas­sive treat­ment of the mat­ter by Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos as in­dica­tive of a lack of sup­port for Guyana.

The di­vi­sive­ness gen­er­at­ed could well have been in­ten­tion­al. I am nev­er­the­less un­aware of any­thing by ei­ther Caribbean leader sug­gest­ing ac­tion on the de­lib­er­ate in­sult, though there should hope­ful­ly have been dis­creet com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

I think both Mia Mot­t­ley and Dick­on Mitchell should ex­plain to us how this sen­ti­ment has been con­veyed to the Venezue­lans, if at all. But fail­ure to do so can­not and should not be con­sid­ered to be luke­warm pos­tures on the sub­stan­tive Es­se­qui­bo is­sue.

With the Venezue­lans due to present their ver­sion of his­to­ry at the ICJ to­day, we are like­ly to wit­ness the in­ser­tion of sim­i­lar provo­ca­tions.

Mon­day’s oral sub­mis­sions on be­half of Guyana ap­peared to es­tab­lish a clear pro­gres­sion from rel­a­tive pas­siv­i­ty on the part of Venezuela to be­lat­ed op­po­si­tion to the ar­bi­tral award. There have been mi­nor bor­der skir­mish­es, but through the years there has been unim­ped­ed, peace­ful oc­cu­pa­tion via long­stand­ing agree­ment, pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ty, and func­tion­al gov­er­nance by one of the two par­ties - Guyana.

Some re­cent work by CI­JN Guyanese jour­nal­ist, Naz­i­ma Raghu­bir, al­so re­ports, at least anec­do­tal­ly, that the peo­ple who live and work in the re­gion are crys­tal clear about which coun­try they oc­cu­py.

Guyana al­so ar­gued on Mon­day that nei­ther Spain, as colonis­er, nor Venezuela ever ac­tu­al­ly ad­min­is­tered Es­se­qui­bo in the first place.

I am not go­ing to play “bush lawyer” and spec­u­late on the ICJ’s eval­u­a­tion of that point and oth­ers as be­ing sem­i­nal to the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case. There is cer­tain­ly much more to con­sid­er.

Venezuela, mean­while, holds that its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­ceed­ings is “with­out con­sent” and meant pure­ly to demon­strate the “truth” about its rights to “the ter­ri­to­ry of Guayana Es­e­qui­ba.”

Guyana, along with Cari­com, in­sists that not one blade of Es­se­qui­bo grass be­longs to any­one else. It’s our col­lec­tive po­si­tion that this car­ries the weight of in­ter­na­tion­al law.