US Announces Military Exercise in Guyana and Venezuela Responds

  • The US embassy in Guyana announced on May 9 that military exercises would be held in the South American country and that US military planes would fly over Georgetown and the region on Thursday. According to the text, the embassy’s objective is to maintain its commitment to the “US-Guiana bilateral defence and security partnership.”
  • The note also states that the United States is working on “deterring aggression, defeating threats, responding rapidly to crises, and working with allies and partner nations to strengthen the region’s capacity to ensure a safe, free, and prosperous Western Hemisphere.”
  • A US military officer also visited Guyana recently and on May 9th, the embassy said that US Southern Command’s Director of Strategy, Policy and Plans, Julie Nethercot, was in Guyana from May 6 to 8 to oversee “strategic planning, policy development and coordination of security cooperation for Latin America and the Caribbean.”
  • The Venezuelan government responded in social media posts, in which ministers called the measure a “threat to regional peace”. Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Yván Gil, responded to the statement with a social media post saying the measure is “further proof of the provocations” that the Southern Command is waging against the Venezuelan government from a “war machine” against the country and linked the exercises to ExxonMobil’s activities in Guyana.
  • In March, ExxonMobil discovered the Bluefin oil well, located in the Stabroek block, exactly off the coast of Essequibo.
  • Minister Gil also asserted that ExxonMobil has taken over Guyana and now intends to destabilise the region by threatening the Peace Zone agreed between Guyana and Venezuela. For him, the Guyanese government is violating the so-called “Argyle Accords”, which provided for the non-use of force and the continuation of dialogue to resolve the Essequibo dispute.
  • Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López also commented that the measure “threatens regional peace” and that he rejects “forcefully” the “provocations of the Southern Command” and said that Guyana has assumed the role of a “new US colony”. “Our Aerospace Defense system remains activated against any attempt to violate Venezuelan geographic space, including the territory of Essequibo. Alert!” concluded the minister.
  • Diplomatic tension between Guyana and Venezuela remains high over the disputed territory of Essequibo. In March 2024, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro passed a law declaring the border region of Essequibo, which belongs to Guyana, a Venezuelan federal state.

(Source: Peoples Dispatch)