Part 1
By Dr Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith
Northern South America is heating up, and not just because of the massive oil fields that have been discovered offshore Guyana since May 2015.
Provocative moves
On January 7, 2021, the day after the insurrectionist rumblings in Washington DC, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro launched a sabre-rattling measure when he issued Decree No. 4.415 claiming sovereignty and exclusive sovereign rights in the waters and seabed adjacent to Guyana’s coast west of the Essequibo River. The decree created a strategic zone called “Territory for the Development of the Atlantic Façade” that includes the Atlantic façade of the Orinoco Delta up to 200 nautical miles.
