Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP) opposes US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s visit to Guyana at this time because we believe that the primary purpose of his visit is to persuade the PPP regime to allow Guyana to be used as a base to attack our western neighbour, Venezuela. Already the US has enlisted the help of Brazil and Colombia, two members of the rogue Lima Group, to encircle Venezuela. Guyana, which unfortunately joined the infamous Lima Group under the APNU+AFC government, is now being asked to assist in completing the encirclement. The Lima Group was established by the US with the help of Canada. Its sole purpose is to enlist the support of Caribbean, Central and South American countries for the US Empire’s regime change agenda in Venezuela.
CARICOM and a number of progressive Central and South American governments rejected this call outright, stating that they would play no role in the illegal destabilization of a neighbouring sovereign nation-state. APNU+AFC made a big mistake when they broke ranks with CARICOM, and along with only two other Caribbean nations, Haiti and St. Lucia, shamelessly supported and encouraged the US Empire’s nefarious plans for Venezuela. The US agenda can only bring chaos, disaster and immense suffering to the people of Venezuela and the entire region, just as US wars to effect regime change in other parts of the world have done.
The lack of principle and vulgar opportunism of the APNU+AFC regime in this instance is an embarrassment to our country. Their excuse for joining the Lima Group was that in return for joining this imperial crusade against Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution, they would get US support on the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy. It is particularly tragic that the leading partner in APNU, the PNCR, would join such an overtly racist formation as the Lima Group, given that the PNCR enjoys the support of African-Guyanese because it claims to represent the interests of Africans and promises to oppose systemic racism and African marginalization. Fellow members of the Lima Group, the governments of both Brazil and Colombia, are currently involved in what is being termed a “Soft Genocide”, employing para-military death squads to murder prominent African rights activists. Extra-judicial killings of Africans in both countries have reached alarming rates. According to African Globe and African Rights activists in Brazil, an African-Brazilian is killed every 23 minutes. In contrast, and despite the imperialist orchestrated destabilization campaign they are facing, the Bolivarian revolution continues its dramatic movement of Indigenous and African Venezuelans from the margins to the centre, from a life of brutal poverty and despair, to one of opportunity and hope. African-Venezuelans insist that they are fighting a war against White-Castilian supremacy.
In light of his government’s crass compromise of Guyana’s sovereignty and betrayal of CARICOM, former Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman’s warning to the PPP Government that, “we must be careful that in the height of the pomp, no pun intended, and ceremony, we do not lose our dignity and self-respect and trade our sovereignty, statehood and hallowed stance of the right to self-determination and non-interference, in the affairs of other states by agreeing to some unhelpful and unholy agenda that is meant to boost electoral prospects elsewhere” is both dishonest and opportunistic. The hypocrisy is dumbfounding.
We demand that the PPP Government reject any proposal from Mike Pompeo which would trample on Guyana and Venezuela’s sovereignty and God-given right to self-determination. We must not be drawn any further into the Empire’s dirty game or what radical theologian, Rosemary Radford-Ruether identified as White Supremacy’s three Ds – deceit, destruction and domination.
Gerald A. Perreira
Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)