Roraima and British Guiana, With a Glance at Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Spanish Main

by J. W. Boddam-Whetham

We wish now to enter into a new kind of argument, either for greater clearness of our right, or to reply to some observations which have already been made on the part of the Government of Great Britain, and others that may be made in future. The explanation of our Plenipotentiary Fortique in London; the demarcations of Codazzi; the records of those eminent men, Messrs. Yones and Baralt; the diplomatic notes addressed to the British Government by our Minister of Foreign Relations in November 1876, so full of abundant reasoning on behalf of our right; the statistics of Guiana published in 1876, and the annual statistics of 1877; in all these explanations and official data, the Essequibo is presented as the absolute Eastern limit of our territory with British Guiana. We believe that that boundary, so expressed, diminishes the territorial right of the Republic, and we are going to explain ourselves. The records of Messrs. Yones and Baralt, like the observations of Codazzi, which served as a base to our Plenipotentiary Fortique, for his explanation before the British Cabinet, and the said official data, rest on two foundations to which we do not lend the merit or the force which have been attributed to them. The opinions of geographers and historians, and the demarcation of the Missions were made by the Government of Spain. However valuable may be the opinions of wise men, of historians and geographers, they have no authority whatever where national boundaries are treated of, which are but legitimate acts of the Sovereigns in use of their natural prerogatives; so that in the present question, every opinion, however authorised it may be considered, is ineffectual and unable to exist before the Royal decrees of the King of Spain, which, drawing the boundary lines in Guiana places them beyond the Essequibo up to the borders of French Guiana. No asseveration, whatever its nature may be, can oppose itself to the authority of the official documents that we have analyzed.

The demarcation of the Missions has no more strength. Guided by its intentions of occupying their dominions, and of widening the civilization and culture of the Indians, Spain continued, in the course of time, to mark out Mission districts which it subordinated to the different religious orders; but such demarcation was made within its territory and national boundaries, it was an eternal economic act, purely administrative, and had no other object but order and regularity in the service of the Missions. And it is certain that the demarcation carried out in Venezuela was ordered by the Governor of Cumaná, in agreement with the “padres” in charge of the Mission, who had to make their residence in Guiana. There is then no truth, no reason for confounding the demarcation of Missions with the national boundaries of Spain. From that confusion of boundaries, which we oppose, it would be reasonably deduced that Spain did not possess in Venezuela any other territory than that marked out by its Missions; an assertion very far from the truth, and which fails in every legal and rational foundation. Such an assertion leads us evidently to the maintenance of the theory which establishes that the material occupation of the whole of the territory of a nation is necessary in order to found exclusive domination over it, or it may be right of property. Such a theory that recognises, as a principle, only an erroneous idea about the nature of the possession which serves as a title to acquire, by the Law of Nations, cannot be sustained, cannot be accepted, without confusing and shaking the territorial domination of all nations, because none of them occupies materially all the territory which they have declared in their possession. That theory, inadmissible under all aspects, would be extremely disastrous to all the nationalities of South America.

More than this—Great Britain can produce no argument favourable to her right as emanating from the explanations and data to which we have referred. Of whatsoever nature may have been the asseverations of our Minister-Plenipotentiary Fortique in London, they are null, and of no value, since our Government denied its approbation to the preliminaries of the boundary treaty initiated by him, and they cannot be the object of any reasonable pretension. As regards Codazzi, it is certain that Lord Aberdeen replied to Señor Fortique, in a diplomatic note, denying the Essequibo for the dividing line, and supporting himself on the demarcation of Codazzi, that presents the Moroco. Such an agreement has no value whatever. The map of Codazzi is not an official map. There is no act of competent authority which declares it such; on the contrary, our Government has lately rejected claims from the Government of New Granada for possessions on the bank of the Orinoco, founded on his demarcation. Great Britain cannot constitute an exception.

The records and official data to which reference has been made, are opinions of citizens and public functionaries which in nowise compromise, or diminish, the rights of the Republic. It is certainly strange that our Government, being in possession of the documents that we have analyzed—the Instruction of the Intendente of Venezuela, and the Exploration of the Delta—it being allowed that Messrs. Baralt and Fortique refer to them, they should have been presented to demonstrate our boundaries by the Essequibo, when they prove most abundantly that they extended beyond that river. There not existing then any act of our National Sovereignty which defines our boundaries with Great Britain in detriment of what we are sustaining, the rights of the Republic continue to have unalterable force.

We have demonstrated that since 1810, we find ourselves in legal possession of the territory which constituted the ancient Captaincy-General of Venezuela with its legitimate boundaries, and it was only in 1814 that Great Britain obtained possession of some Dutch colonies which the Sovereign of the Netherlands transmitted. Well, what were the boundaries of that transmission? What the boundary lines traced by Holland in the ceded territory? None, because Holland herself was without them. Her possession was only in fact. She only held in Guiana what Spain, the discoverer and first occupier, had seen fit to permit her. And for that reason, with the good faith which ought to distinguish nations in their treaties, in the Third Article in which she ceded to Great Britain some of her colonies in Guiana, she does not mark out any kind of boundaries whatever. It is to be noticed that that treaty was an agreement between Holland and Great Britain, without the intervention of Spain; that it establishes bonds and obligations between the contracting parties, but in no way can it bind Spain, that no longer legally possessed that territory, nor her legitimate successors, in all that may prejudice them.

We have founded our right to the territory which constituted the ancient Captaincy-General of Venezuela on the “uti possidetis” of 1810. We are going to make clear that right beyond all controversy. Nobody has ever put in doubt, not only in Venezuela, but in all the sections of South America, that by virtue of the political transformation that gave rise to our new nationalities, these were substituted respectively for the territorial Seignory of Spain in all her former dominions. Brazil herself, in spite of the diversity of her institutions, has recognized that principle, and could not proceed differently without grave inconsequence, because, in short, what other right did the new empire represent but the one proceeding from the old kingdom of Portugal? If she has maintained controversies about boundaries with adjacent nations, it has not been in denial of the principle cited, but rather confirming it, for having believed herself helped to rights which she could enforce before Spain herself by virtue of old treaties. Our succession to the seignorial rights of Spain in all the territory of the ancient Captaincy-General of Venezuela was constant prescription, and an infallible arrangement of all our constituent bodies-politic, even in the midst of our great struggle for independence.

The Liberator, in incorporating the Province of Guiana in 1817 with the territory conquered by the Republican arms, traced its boundaries after the tenor of the Royal Decrees of Spain which he expressly mentions. The first Congress assembled in Angostura, which sanctioned the Fundamental Law of Colombia, established in its Second Article: “Its territory shall be that embraced in the old Captaincy-General of Venezuela and the Vice-royalty of the new kingdom of Granada.” The “Constituyente” of Cúcuta in 1821, ratifies the former Fundamental Law by that of July 12th, whose Fifth Article reads: “The territory of the Republic of Colombia will be comprehended within the limits of the old Captaincy-General of Venezuela and the Vice-royalty and Captaincy-General of the new kingdom of Granada, but the assignment of its exact boundaries will be reserved for a more opportune occasion.”

The same “Constituyente” sanctioned, at last, the Constitution of the New Colombian nationality, and ratified the former prescriptions in its Articles 6th and 7th.—7th. “The towns of the said extension still under the Spanish yoke, at whatever time they may free themselves, will form part of the Republic with rights and representation equal to all the others that compose it.”