Dear Editor,
I read in Stabroek News that Venezuela intends to share out their national identification cards to Essequibians. I am wondering what the motive is behind this move. The past and present governments of Venezuela never recognized Essequibians as their own. In 1985, I migrated to Venezuela in search of a better life; things were bad and jobs were hard to get in Guyana at the time. Certain basic food items were short. Most of the banned foods were coming from Suriname through Crabwood Creek and Venezuela through the North West District.
I was involved in the contraband trade from both borders, to make a living and take care of my family. My two sons were aged 4 and 7, and after a while the government clamped down on the trade. I decided to board a contraband boat from the Pomeroon River. My first stop was at the Moruka police station where we had to check in, and at night we slept at the Baramina guesthouse. At dayclean we travelled to Mabaruma, where we waited for nightfall then travelled to the Guyana-Venezuela border.
Six of us were on this trip ‒ two females and four males. We waited at a camp until midnight, then set sail to the Amakura river mouth. We slept at the edge of the river in small wooden cabins. The rooms were open, but the windows were covered by a mesh to keep the mosquitoes and sand flies out, and the roof was covered with palm leaves. All the contraband boats moored there until 3am then they travelled together in case of danger across the bar or the Orinoco River. We landed at Tucupita in the night, and on entering Venezuela waters we had to hide from the police and soldiers. If they caught us they would beat us and throw us in jail; only the captain and his mate could speak Spanish and were holders of Venezuelan ID cards. Life wasn’t easy in Venezuela, and I had heard before it was no bed of roses. I had to hide and work on the farms, picking coffee and cocoa. Later I found a job in an ice factory which was built to supply ice for the fishermen who would go out in the sea and fish for weeks.
I was living in Delta Tucupita illegally for a year, and then I was fortunate to get a 5-year visa on my passport as a foreigner. No one in the Venezuelan government had recognized Essequibians to give them ID cards or to make citizens, although I was carrying a birth certificate to prove that I was an Essequibian. For you to get a Venezuelan ID card, you had to give a bribe of $30,000 bolivars to the immigration boss. If the soldiers or police caught you at a road block and you could not speak their language, they would take your ID card away and lock you up.
Venezuela has a great expanse of land mass lying idle and covered with forest of one kind or another. Why would they covet Essequibo by issuing 200,000 Venezuelan ID cards? No true patriot, and lover of nation, people and country would give away they birthright to a foreign country. I hope that Essequibians would not fall for this trap.
Today Venezuela purporting to annex Essequibo is not surprising; when I first set foot on Venezuelan soil, I saw on their television that they had already included Essequibo on their maps and were teaching the young Venezuelan generation that Essequibo belongs to them. We must never forget when Venezuelan soldiers seized our half of the island of Ankoko at the confluence of the rivers Cuyuni and Wenamu and established a military base with an airstrip.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
