About This Book
This book by Professor Allan R. Brewer-Carías, written after having read and studied both the judgments of the International Court of Justice issued in 2020 and 2023 in the case Guyana v. Venezuela, and the Memorial submitted to that Court by Guyana as plaintiff, deals with three fundamental aspects of the dispute over Guyana Esequiba:
First, on the historical rights of Venezuela over the Essequibo Territory, located west of the Essequibo River to the Orinoco River, which were consolidated since the country was constituted as an Independent State from 1810, when it formed its territory in application of the principle uti possidetis juris with which corresponded to the Captaincy General of Venezuela created in 1777. The Province of Guiana then reached the Essequibo River, since Spain in 1648 had recognized the Netherlands possession over three commercial establishments located on the Essequibo River (Kik-o-veral Island), and on the Demerara and Berbice rivers located east of said Essequibo River, and nothing more. These were the only establishments ceded by the Netherlands to the United Kingdom in 1814, a country that thereafter occupied and usurped without any title part of the Essequibo Territory.
Second, on the reasons for the nullity of the Arbitral Award issued in 1899 by an arbitral tribunal composed of five arbitrators appointed in execution of the Treaty of Washington of 1897, which had to be reached after the conflict between Venezuela and the United Kingdom worsened, even after a rupture of diplomatic relations, and through U.S. intervention under the Monroe Doctrine. This arbitral tribunal had four members who were judges of the Supreme Courts of the United States and the United Kingdom, and as the fifth arbitrator a prominent Russian professor, who in order to achieve a unanimous decision, pressured and blackmailed the other arbitrators separately, imposing an arbitrary and unmotivated decision, which took from Venezuela almost all of the disputed Territory, with the threat that if his proposal was not accepted, the country would also be deprived of the control of the mouths of the Orinoco that it had since Columbus discovered them in 1498.
And third, on the falsehoods contained in the Memorial filed in 2022 by Guyana before the International Court of Justice after it had ruled on its own jurisdiction to decide upon the validity of the Arbitral Award of 1899 and about the related issue of the border between the two countries, trying to substantiate its claim against Venezuela ignoring the history and all the facts that surrounded the formation and conformation of the territory of America by the Spanish explorers and settlers, in particular of what was called "Tierra Firme," which spanned from the Isthmus of Panama to the Amazon River, from which emanate the historical and legal titles of Venezuela's rights over the Essequibo Territory.
