This conflict is about more than just “distracting people”. Guyana reportedly wanted to build US military bases around its border with Venezuela. Since the US can’t use Colombia or Brazil to launch a ground invasion of Venezuela, it wants to use Guyana in exchange for money and oil exploitation.
Also, Guyana has never cared about this territory, which is why the native peoples who live there tried to join Venezuela in 1968.
“Native people”?
They were white capitalist ranch owners who thought that the new indigenous leadership would strip them of their land rights, and give all their “hard earned land” to black people which they despised. They even explicitly stated that the leadership of Guyana was to “Afrocentrist”.
Two of the three leaders of the rebellion were Americans
The indigenous leadership wanted to grant land certificates to native indigenous peoples to protect them from encroachment on their land. Those ranchers were threatened by this.
Those are not native people. Those are greed driven capitalists who tried to defect to a (then) fascist Venezuela who they thought would protect them.
The native population stamped out that capitalist rebellion.
Also the claim that the US was going to build military bases came from the Venezuelan foreign ministry in September. Where is this base? There was no move to build bases or increase support from the US.
Ironically, Brazil has begun mobilization to defend Guyana, and Guyana will also likely turn to the US for aid. What did you think they would do? Let themselves get run over?
