Venezuelans and Guyanese live side-by-side in border town amid regional tension

  • last year
A mining village, Mango Landing, in a region close to Guyana's border with Venezuela, is home to people of various nationalities including Venezuelans, Brazilians and Guyanese, who live off farming, fishing and artisanal mining.

Essequibo has been administered by Guyana for more than a century and is the subject of border litigation at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In a controversial December 3 referendum, 95 percent of Venezuelan voters allegedly supported Venezuela being declared the rightful owner of Essequibo.
Transcript
00:00 [Sounds of fire]
00:05 [Sounds of breathing]
00:10 [Sounds of fire]
00:14 [Unintelligible]
00:20 [Sounds of fire]
00:25 [Unintelligible]
00:30 [Unintelligible]
00:35 [Unintelligible]
00:38 [Unintelligible]
00:45 Well, I don't mind. I am not a politician or a politics.
00:51 If it's Venezuela or Guyana, it's not my problem.
00:56 Because of the government, I don't get free food, free nothing.
01:00 I still have to buy from Venezuela. I still have to buy from Guyana.
01:04 So if it's controlled by Guyana or by Venezuela, I still have to maintain my family's work and maintain.
01:12 [Unintelligible]
01:17 [Sounds of fire]
01:22 [Unintelligible]
01:37 [Unintelligible]
02:02 At the end of the day, we want a good relationship with our neighbor. We don't want to worry. We come for the war.
02:08 [Sounds of fire]
02:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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