In a distant corner in South America, war brews between Guyana and Venezuela

WASHINGTON: The United States is throwing its weight behind Guyana — a country with a large Indian-origin population which the CIA tried to subvert in the 1960s — in its ongoing spat with neighboring Venezuela that threatens spill into another conflict.
Amid raging wars in Ukraine and Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Guyana's President Irfaan Ali "about our support for Guyana's sovereignty and our robust security and economic cooperation," the US State Department said on Thursday.
Separately, the US Embassy in Guyana announced that the US Southern Command will conduct flight operations within Guyana on December 7 "to build upon routine engagement and operations to enhance security partnership between the United States and Guyana, and to strengthen regional cooperation."
US officials did not directly invoke Venezuela in the flurry of announcements, but the Latin American country has been at odds with the Anglospheric Guyana, once part of the British Commonwealth over energy resources in a region called Essequibo, which Guyana regards as its domain.
Over 40 per cent of Guyanese population is of Indian ethnicity, originating from emigration of indentured labor from UP and Bihar in pre-independence days. Son of an emigrating couple, Cheddi Jagan, became the first person of Indian descent to be a head of government outside of the Indian subcontinent. He later returned to power to serve as President of Guyana from 1992 up until his death in 1997. Jagan's parents were kurmis who emigrated as indentured labourers from Basti district in Awadh region of UP.
The US had a tortured history with Guyana mainly on account of Jagan's leftist/ communist/ marxist orientation, and his friendship with Fidel Castro. In 1962, President Kennedy approved a covert CIA political campaign to rig national elections to keep Jagan out of power, telling Britain that the notion of an independent state led by Jagan “disturbs us seriously,” and asserting, “We must be entirely frank in saying that we simply cannot afford to see another Castro-type regime established in this Hemisphere."
The US and Jagan eventually reconciled before he died in 1997 after heart surgery at the Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington DC, a city where he had studied in the 1930s (at Howard University, later to be Kamala Harris' alma mater.) He was later succeeded as President of Guyana by his wife Janet Jagan, a white student nurse he married while earning a degree in dental science in Chicago.
US interference largely resulted in a schism between Indo-Guyanese, who constitute about 40 per cent of the country's population, and African/multi-racial/and indigenous Guyanese, who make up the rest. Washington also backed Venezuela in its dust-ups with Guyana. The tables have now turned, and Venezuela and its leader Nicolas Maduro are in US' bad books.
India also has close ties with Guyana mainly on account of the diasporic connection, and also cricket. Over the years, several Indo-Guyanese, notably Rohan Kanhai, Alvin Kallicharan, Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, and Devendra Bishoo, have played for the West Indies.