This week Venezuela will hold a referendum on annexing Guyana’s Essequibo region, claiming that it wants to rescue those Guyanese in Essequibo “mired in misery, in abandonment.” While Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro speaks to a real concern impacting the Guyanese people – the external capture of governance in the country by ExxonMobil and US Southern Command (Westervelt 2023) – Maduro’s statement shows a real disregard for Guyana and Guyanese people while amplifying a rightist tendency in Venezuelan politics that historically aimed to cement Venezuelan nationalism under the guise of anti-communist security objectives. Maduro is not standing with Guyanese workers or Amerindian peoples in Essequibo. In fact, Venezuela has not consulted these communities in its annexation push at all (Clash! Collective 2023). No amount of “left” proselytizing by Venezuela changes this fact.

Given the reliance of Guyana, and the Caribbean region more generally, on the West for both security objectives, goals, and funding – it should not come as a shock that Venezuela’s referendum alongside these broadcasts by Maduro have been interpreted by Guyana as aggressive – heightening security tensions between both countries. Venezuela’s actions, Guyanese Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo notes, makes his incumbent PPP/C party more welcoming towards the establishment of foreign military bases in Guyana to “protect Guyana’s national interest” (France 24, 2023).

Whereas many Western headlines attribute Venezuela’s annexation claims on Guyana to Maduro’s failings as leader, and headlines in Guyana attribute Venezuela’s annexation claims today on the oil find by Exxon – I reject all claims that solely attribute Maduro’s stance towards Guyana on the internal domestic political calculations that he is making in Venezuela. Venezuela’s domestic situation was already negatively impacted prior to Maduro gaining power, given Western sanctions and attempts to undergird the Venezuelan economy. Headlines in Guyana are more accurate noting the change in Maduro’s position post oil. However these headlines tend to downplay the role of ExxonMobil in Guyana’s offshore oil discovery and the subsequent security calculations that Venezuela has had to make from 2013 to the present since that discovery. ExxonMobil is not a neutral actor in the region; it belongs to a state that has tried to institute regime change in Venezuela for decades. It is this latter point, I contend, that is pushing Venezuela’s annexation pronouncements.

I outline these security dynamics in a twitter thread here, but essentially, the changed relationship between Venezuela and Guyana, given Exxon’s oil find, is influencing both the foreign policy of Venezuela and Guyana. Any analysis of the crisis situation unfolding must take into account how states become integrated into preferred regimes of Western security, extractivism, and financial governance. It is not the case that Venezuela’s internal dynamics are purely influencing its current decision to annex the Essequibo; it is security concerns regarding what Venezuela sees as a captured Guyanese government (Westervelt 2023) that has amassed a huge amount of Western interest both during the exploration phase in 2013, and especially after, the oil find in 2015. It must be noted that Guyanese people have challenged their own government over the relationship with Exxon: first with the no-confidence votes of 2018 (John 2020), then the ongoing protests in Guyana against Exxon since first production began in 2019 (GSA 2022; Henry 2022; Bagot 2023), and, finally, the numerous court cases levied against the government of Guyana and Exxon by Guyanese citizens (Janki 2023). None of these grievances by Guyanese, however, have called for annexation by Venezuela.

In fact, Venezuela’s annexation push has instead seen Guyanese people rally behind what they have been protesting against – what The Intercept has called a “captured government.”