What Caracas has in mind

May 11, 2026 Editorial

(Kaieteur News) – The Venezuelan Government has made its position very clear. A ruling of the ICJ that favors Guyana will not be accepted by Caracas. The only conclusion left is that the only ruling that will satisfy the Venezuelan power clique is one that hands Guyana’s neighbor 70% of this country’s lands and all that is locked in them.

Meanwhile, Guyana’s soldiers were fired upon three times in the last few days. Twice within 30 minutes on Arrival Day, May 5th, and once before that resulted in one solider being injured and requiring hospitalisation.

Information reaching this paper has indicated that Guyanese soldiers coming under fire on their side of the Cuyuni River is almost a daily event. Two questions are relevant at this time. What is Venezuela up to? What does it have in mind?

Venezuela’s position on any unfavorable ruling by the ICJ is not new. What former president Nicolas Maduro made loud and clear; his successor President Delcy Rodriguez has adopted as her own tough posture. Also, bullets flying from the Venezuelan side of the sensitive Cuyuni River are not a new development, and that pressure seems to be building up with monotonous regularity.

Even close friends of Venezuela would find it incredible should there be any wild and baseless claim that Guyana is the aggressor in these now steady flareups. Guyana’s position has always been clear and just as unchanging.

Not one inch of its land will be relinquished without resistance, and it is committed to being a peaceful and trusted neighbor. So, what is Venezuela up to? What does it hope to get from its forces (official or unofficial) constantly firing across the Guyana-Venezuela border at Guyana’s soldiers?

To begin, the obvious should be recognised. Venezuela’s strategy is to engage in a war of nerves, and intensify its psychological games, which forms part of the arsenal it lets loose on Guyana. The objective of the decision makers in Caracas is that wilting occurs in Georgetown under the consistent ratcheting up of tensions.

Keep banging on the drum (firing the guns) and force Guyana to the table of bilateral discussions. This is a known Venezuelan position. The questions that we at this paper include: to discuss what land for peace? Bargaining with a more powerful, but nakedly covetous, neighbor under the barrel of a gun?

The world can see, by now, that the new gang in Caracas is a chip off the old, is openly setting itself up for a land grab, amid a treasure hunt. The groundwork was laid and firmed up by former President Maduro, with his redrawn map, his constitutional revisions, and a huge section of Guyana named as a province of Venezuela. He was even provocative enough to name a non-resident governor over Guyana’s land. We think that the forces in control in the post-Maduro era are aware that Venezuela’s claim on Guyana’s territory does not have a leg to stand on, either in the courts, or in the court of international opinion.

We believe that its declaration of non-acceptance of any unfavorable ICJ ruling in tandem with frequent incidents of gunfire is designed to eke some sort of victory for itself from the jaws of defeat. It may not qualify as a total desperation strategy, but it is of a leadership that is probing for any advantage that it can squeeze out of a weak situation.

Venezuela does not hold a winning hand at the ICJ, and it knows that. So, its leaders seek comfort in antics (unfavorable ruling unacceptable) along with a continued push to make Guyana blink from what is building and building at the Cuyuni border.

One of the bigger byproducts of a cheap Guyana oil contract that enriches ExxonMobil is the hand of the US being for Guyana, at least for the time being. That has its pluses, as long as those are tangible, and operate as a sufficiently strong deterrent to Venezuelan ambitions and its growing aggression.

The biggest strength for Guyana, in what is an existential threat, resides in its people being unified, and standing shoulder to shoulder in the face of Venezuelan covetousness and its encroachments. Venezuela wants Guyana’s lands by any means. That should be costly.

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Caracas, Cuyuni River, Guyana, ICJ, Nicolás Maduro, President Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuelan Government

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