Guyana’s Essequibo Region is safe…for now

14 Sunday Jan 2024

Posted by in Guyana

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An update of events following my blog article, “Guyana-Venezuela Border Dispute: Mounting Tensions December 2023,” published on December 10, 2023

Guyanese President Irfaan Ali & Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro – St. Vincent & the Grenadines – December 14, 2023
Photo Credit: Miraflores Palace/Reuters

What a relief! Venezuela did not invade Guyana’s Essequibo Region. After meeting with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali on December 14, 2023, in Argyle, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro agreed not to threaten or use force against Guyana. In the Joint Declaration of Argyle for Dialogue and Peace, the two leaders “committed to the pursuance of good neighborliness, peaceful coexistence, and the unity of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

To clarify a sticking point for the two parties, the Declaration also noted:

“Noted Guyana’s assertion that it is committed to the process and procedures of the International Court of Justice for the resolution of the border controversy. Noted Venezuela’s assertion of its lack of consent and lack of recognition of the International Court of Justice and its jurisdiction in the border controversy.”

Guyana received lots of support from member nations of the Caribbean Community and Latin America. In addition to the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the main Interlocutors at the meeting included the Personal Envoy of Brazil’s President Inácio Lula da Silva, Prime Minister of Dominica and Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), President of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Also present were CARICOM Prime Ministers of The Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad & Tobago. Other Latin American participants represented Colombia and Honduras. Two representatives from the United Nations attended as Observers.

Pleased with the results of the meeting, President Maduro shared a copy of the Argyle Declaration on X, formerly Twitter, and added:

“Excellent day of dialogue! We did it!”

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The Writer’s Life: Year 2023 in Review

07 Sunday Jan 2024

Posted by in The Writer's Life

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GLAWS 2012 Potluck Christmas Party
President Tony Todaro on the left. Hospitality Team Member Rosaliene in pink scarf.

I hate to admit it: I’m still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020-2021. My writer’s life was disrupted and has never got back on track. I miss the monthly lunch meetings with our writers’ critique group. Long past resuscitation. What’s more, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (GLAWS), of which I was once an active member, continues to meet on the detestable Zoom. To make matters worse, the society’s co-founder and president, Tony Todaro, passed away in December 2023. It’s difficult to imagine GLAWS without him at its helm.

In July 2023, I lost another friend, Cyril Bryan, who also played an important role in my writer’s journey to publication. As the publisher of the Guyanese Online website/blog, Cyril promoted my blog articles, short stories, and novels, bringing my work to the attention of the Guyanese Diaspora worldwide. His invaluable contribution in connecting us and promoting Guyanese cultural events will be missed.

My personal loss is nothing compared to what families are facing in GAZA, Ukraine, Sudan, and other war-torn regions of our world. The plight of Palestinian women and mothers in GAZA was, and remains, my deepest sorrow in 2023. Their collective grief pierces the fabric of our interconnected consciousness. Such is the value of our lives to those who wield power in our world.

While the threat of a nuclear World War III lurks in the shadows, a planetary climate crisis and ecocide intensify with humanity’s inability to change course. The fossil fuel companies continue to use their political clout to forestall global efforts to reduce carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and reach Net Zero by 2050. No doubt, they’ve got their escape survival plans ready for execution, when needed. The rest of us will be on our own.

Seven years are just around the corner. Already, 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. It turns out that our planet is heating up at a faster pace than predicted by our climate change models. Last summer, staying cool demanded daily vigilance. This aging body of mine no longer copes with excessive heat like it used to.

Change is a constant in our lives. As occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, some changes are very disruptive. In 2022, after reading Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos Edited by Jem Bendell & Rupert Read (UK/USA, 2021), I knew with terrifying clarity that a catastrophic change was already in motion. Dealing with such change would, indeed, demand a “deep adaptation,” unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. A shift in being.

Beginning in September 2022 and for ten months in 2023, as shared on my blog, I focused on the ideology that has led humanity on the path of environmental degradation and the remedy proposed by Jem Bendell. This shift in my way of being—still a work in progress—has amplified the way I see my interconnection with others and Mother Earth. My interactions with my blogger friends on WordPress are no longer the same. The stories I share are no longer the same.

I thank each one of you for the special gift you brought, and continue to bring, to my day. Without you, 2023 would’ve been filled only with isolation and grief. We may not agree on everything or share the same beliefs. Who does? There’s so much beauty in diversity. You give me hope that, together with those within our communities, we will overcome whatever comes.   

Thought for Today: An Unlikely President Trump

17 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by in Human Behavior

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Front Cover: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House (2023)

To understand why Donald Trump became the forty-fifth president of the United States, we should also pay less attention to his personal qualities and maneuvers and more to the deep social forces that propelled him to the top. Trump was like a small boat caught on the crest of a mighty tidal wave. The two most important social forces that gave us the Trump presidency—and pushed America to the brink of state breakdown—are elite overproduction and popular immiseration….

[First, by 2016] a large proportion of Americans who felt left behind voted for an unlikely candidate—a billionaire. For many of them, this was not so much an endorsement of Trump as an expression of their discontent, shading into rage, against the ruling class.

Second, by 2016, the elite overproduction game had reached a bifurcation point where the rules of conduct in political campaigns had been tossed to the wind.

Excerpt from End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin, Penguin Random House, New York, USA, 2023 (pp. 13-14).

Footnotes

Elite Overproduction occurs when the number of elites among the top One Percent far exceeds the number of available power positions.

Popular Immiseration occurs when workers face years of wage stagnation and decline while the rich get richer. In the USA, “deaths of despair” from suicide, alcoholism, and drug overdose spiked among the noncollege-educated during the period 2000 to 2016.

Peter Turchin is a project leader at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, a research associate at the University of Oxford, and an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut. Trained as a theoretical biologist, he is now working in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call cliodynamics. Currently, his main research effort is directed at coordinating CrisisDB, a massive historical database of societies sliding into crisis—and then emerging from it. His books include Ultrasociety (2016) and Ages of Discord (2016).

Guyana-Venezuela Border Dispute: Mounting Tensions December 2023

10 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by in Guyana

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Map of Guyana highlighting “Disputed Territory” (in salmon-pink) claimed by Venezuela
Source: Caracas Chronicles

Autocratic leaders can sometimes act in reckless ways to hold on to power. This appears to be the case with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro who is up for re-election in 2024. To rally supporters for his party, weakened by U.S. economic sanctions, he has reignited claims over the disputed Guayana Esequiba territory, an issue known to unite Venezuelans across political divides.

Last Sunday, December 3, 2023, President Maduro held a national consultative Referendum to determine the people’s position on Venezuela’s longstanding claim over Guyana’s Essequibo Region (see captioned Map of Guyana with highlighted disputed territory). In so doing, Maduro’s regime ignored the objections of Guyana’s leadership and the order issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 1, 2023, to “refrain from taking any action which would modify the situation that currently prevails in the territory in dispute, whereby the Co-operative Republic of Guyana administers and exercises control over that area.”

The day after the Referendum, the president of the National Electoral Council announced overwhelming support for annexing Guayana Esequiba. The following results represent the percent of YES votes of the alleged 10.5 million participants (approximately 50 percent of the electorate) to five questions raised for their consideration:

  1. Do you reject the Paris Arbitral Award of 1899? – 97.99%
  2. Do you support the 1966 Geneva Agreement as the only valid legal instrument for resolving the controversy? – 98.26%
  3. Do you agree with Venezuela’s position of not recognizing the International Court of Territorial Justice as arbitrator? – 96.31%
  4. Do you oppose Guyana’s attempt to assert control over the [Atlantic] Ocean pending delimitation? – 96.34%
  5. Do you agree with the creation of the State of Guayana Esequiba and incorporating said state into the map of Venezuela’s territory? – 96.33%
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The Writer’s Life: Looking at oneself through the hourglass

03 Sunday Dec 2023

Posted by in Religion & Spirituality, The Writer's Life, Women Issues

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Closest resemblance to my handsome seminarian

In the last three chapters, I’ve shared the stories of three women who played important roles in shaping the person I would become: Mother, Auntie Katie, and Auntie Baby. In Chapter Six of my work in progress, I tell the story about the handsome, young seminarian who entered my life and changed its course: Michael (fictitious name), my first love. At thirteen years old when we first met, I had already developed a close relationship with Jesus, but it was Michael who set me on the path to the religious life.

My deepening relationship with Jesus was a well-guarded secret. To speak of my love for Jesus was out of the question. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier chapter, we were not a family of huggers and kissers. What’s more, those three little words “I love you” were not uttered among us.

For right or wrong, good or evil, truth or deception, I was shaped by the society that sustained me. During those early days of youthful innocence, our country was undergoing political, economic, and social upheavals that would later remold my self-identity.

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“The Orbis Spike, 1610” – Poem by Trinidadian Poet Jennifer Rahim

19 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by in Poetry

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Trinidadian Poet Jennifer Rahim (1963-2023)
Photo Credit: Peepal Tree Press Ltd.

My Poetry Corner November 2023 features the poem “The Orbis Spike, 1610” by Jennifer Rahim from her poetry collection Sanctuaries of Invention (UK, 2021). Born in the Caribbean Island of Trinidad in 1963, Jennifer Rahim was an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and literary critic. She held a BA (1987) and PhD (1993) in English Literature, and an MA in Theology (2016). After joining the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in 1997 as a lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts, she went on to teach a range of courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including creative writing, literary criticism, and feminist theory. She died unexpectedly in March 2023, leaving behind a substantial body of published work.

Most of the poems in Rahim’s collection were written during the Covid-19 lockdown and a state of emergency in Trinidad. Her poems address the nature of time, place, and mass death. In “Gone Viral,” she notes in the opening lines (p. 18):

Some words return to haunt us at the root.
The world reels from an underrated flu – gone viral,
as when a presidential gaffe becomes a kind of math.
Exponential: Many people will die who have never died before.

She recalls, too, in the opening verse of “Survival” (p. 19):

Any number of days is one too many
when home is no safe haven against the death
that roams neighborhood streets,
coughs on a public bus,
reaches for toothpaste on a grocery shelf,
jogs by in less friendly parks. . .
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Thought for Today: A Great Nation

12 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by in Philosophy

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Photo Credit: Pexels, ArtHouse Studio

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.

Excerpt from Chapter 61 of Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu, as translated by Stephen Mitchell, HarperPerennial, New York, USA, 1988.

Lao-tzu, a legendary ancient Chinese philosopher, is believed to have lived during the sixth century BCE. He is considered to be the founder of Taoism.

The Violence of Men October 2023

05 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by in Human Behavior, Save Our Children

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Israel-Hamas-Gaza War Ignited October 7, 2023

PASSIA Map of The Gaza Strip 2007
Source Credit: PalestinePortal.Org

Two peoples
Israelis & Palestinians
Jews & Arabs
Oppressor & Oppressed
Trapped in an unending cycle of armed struggle
Seventy-five years of violent co-existence
over a piece of Earth
they both call Home.

An eye for an eye
The violence of men unleashed on
the largest open-air prison in the world
Thousands of women and children
slaughtered
Entire generations of families
buried beneath the rubble
No peace for either side
until the other is exterminated.

“Ceasefire Now!”
“Not in Our Name!”
demand members of the Jewish Voice for Peace
during sit-in protest
at New York City’s Grand Central Station
“Never again for anyone!” one sign read.

“No genocide in our name!”
“Ceasefire Now!”
demand members of the IfNotNow Movement
American Jews for equality & justice
A thriving future for all Palestinians & Israelis.

In Gaza, buried deep beneath the rubble, a baby cries.

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The Writer’s Life: A Story of Dogged Persistence

28 Saturday Oct 2023

Posted by in The Writer's Life, Women Issues

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The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders March Past at Parade Ground in Georgetown – British Guiana – 1954

Chapter Five of my work in progress presents the third portrait of a woman in my life. Auntie Baby, Mother’s baby sister, played an important role during my formative years. Nine years younger than Mother, she was just four years old when her parents and nine older siblings left British Guiana in 1946 for the United States. With the end of World War II in September 1945, my maternal grandparents must’ve seen better prospects for their future under America’s President Harry Truman. For reasons unknown to me, they failed to fulfill their promise to return for the three girls left behind.

Auntie Baby lived with us on and off from the late-1950s to mid-1960s. She brought lots of fun into our lives as kids. I must’ve been around eight to nine years old when I became aware of her dream to marry a white man and move to the Mother Country. Perhaps, the arrival of British soldiers in the colony incited her imagination.

On October 8, 1953, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers were the first battalion to arrive in the colony to suppress an alleged communist takeover. Two weeks later, they handed over to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Auntie Baby was twelve-going-on-thirteen years old when they left in October 1954, taking twenty-five Guianese-born wives with them back home to Scotland. When she began dating at eighteen years old, the Worcestershire Regiment was on their one-year tour of duty. Her time had finally come to catch her dream husband. She soon learned how elusive dreams can be. Yet, she persisted.

Auntie Baby was the inspiration for the minor character, Joanna de Freitas, niece of protagonist Richard Cheong’s mother-in-law, in my debut novel Under the Tamarind Tree. Joanna first appears in Chapter Seven (p. 32) when she arrives with her Scottish soldier boyfriend at a family Christmas party (December 1953).

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“Treasure” – Poem by American Poet Marilyn Kallet

22 Sunday Oct 2023

Posted by in Poetry

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American Poet Marilyn Kallet
Photo Credit: Poet’s Official Website

My Poetry Corner October 2023 features the poem “Treasure” from the poetry collection Even When We Sleep (USA, 2022) by Marilyn Kallet, a poet, writer, and educator. She served two terms as Knoxville Poet Laureate from June 2018 to July 2020. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Marilyn grew up in New York as a child. She attended Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she earned a B.A. in English and French in 1968. She also attended Sorbonne Université in Paris, France, where she received a degree in Cours de Civilisation (1967). Later, she received her M.A. (1976) and her Ph.D. (1978) in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

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