evidence: "The stakes are high for both countries. For Guyana, retaining the claimed Essequibo territory, which gets its name after the river, is a life-or-death matter," Griffith writes. "One gets a sense of its existential nature for the Guyanese when it’s recognized that Venezuela claims all the territory west of the Essequibo River, which begins near the border with Brazil and runs 600 miles north to the Atlantic Ocean." Griffith explains that the Essequibo comprises 61,600 sq miles of Guyana’s 83,000 sq mi, almost 75 percent of the country. It’s more than five-and-a-half times the size of Massachusetts and could accommodate Jamaica fourteen-and-a-half times, and Costa Rica three times. "The territory holds six of Guyana’s 10 administrative regions, the equivalent of states or provinces in other countries, and some 300,000 of the country’s estimated population of just under 800,000, with a noteworthy amount of them being from various Indigenous groups," he points out.