BY TIM JOHNSON

 ALONG THE GUYANA-VENEZUELA BORDER -- With surprising vigor,
 Venezuela has revived a territorial claim on its small eastern neighbor, Guyana,
 for a region that covers two-thirds of that country and brims with uranium, gold,
 diamonds and timber.

 The dispute has touched off patriotic protests in Guyana.

 ``This is our country. This is where we were born,'' said a Guyanese miner, Frank
 Trotman, as he gazed sternly across the river at Venezuela.

 Venezuela's claims on the Essequibo region of Guyana took on unusual force
 Oct. 3 when Venezuela declared it had been robbed of the territory in a treaty
 signed a century ago in Paris. It demanded compensation ``for the grave injustice
 committed.''

 Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said in an interview that his
 country was the victim of a ``colonial swindle'' in 1899 ``that was very
 characteristic of the era.'' Venezuelans still feel the loss of territory sharply today,
 he added.

 ``This is a wound that Venezuela has in its flank, and it hurts us,'' he said. ``But
 we are not going to lose our heads over it.''

 TALKS, NOT WAR

 Rangel said Venezuela will press its claim through U.N.-sponsored negotiations --
 not through war -- and would be satisfied with a part of the disputed, mineral-rich
 region. He did not specify which part.

 ``We are proposing compensation, ways to leave the matter behind. We don't
 want this issue to poison relations with [Guyana], which is an important
 neighbor,'' Rangel said.

 At stake is a 56,000-square-mile region -- roughly the size of Florida -- that is
 covered with dense hardwood forest and is home to 160,000 of Guyana's 750,000
 citizens.

 ``The Essequibo area is very, very rich,'' said Rudolph Chance, a retired school
 headmaster in the border hamlet of San Martin, Venezuela. ``It's the area where
 you find the most uranium. It's got large deposits of gold and diamonds. It's got
 copper and other mineral resources. Let's not even talk about the timber.''

 In the past decade, Essequibo has attracted 80 percent of Guyana's foreign
 investment.

 Faced with Venezuela's campaign, Guyana's English-speaking neighbors in the
 Caribbean have rushed to its defense. In late October, 15 heads of state of the
 Caribbean Community stated ``firm support for the sovereignty and territorial
 integrity of Guyana.''

 DISPUTE RUNS DEEP

 The issue is touching a deeper nerve perhaps than at any time since Guyana's
 independence from Britain in 1966. On Oct. 20, protesters in Georgetown,
 Guyana's capital, carried placards outside the Venezuelan Embassy with slogans
 like ``We ain't giving up -- Not even the mud!'' and ``No, No, No, to Venezuela!'' the
 Caribbean News Agency reported.

 Newspapers in Guyana have carried accounts of alleged violations of airspace by
 Venezuelan aircraft and unusual troop movements along the border.

 Guyanese living in Essequibo County, the largest of Guyana's three counties,
 voice disbelief over Venezuela's claim.

 ``We want to live happy with our neighbors, man, but without Essequibo what
 would happen to Guyana?'' asked police Sgt. Terrence Semple in the hamlet of
 Itiringbang, across the Cuyuni River from San Martin.

 Even some Venezuelans living near the border say they don't understand why the
 country is reviving territorial claims on Guyana.

 ``It's so small. Why bully a small country?'' asked Jerrick Andre, a Venezuelan
 who spent part of his life in Guyana and has relatives there.

 `FAIR SETTLEMENT'

 Guyana is not the only neighbor peeved at Venezuela. So is Colombia. A
 Constitutional Assembly in Venezuela has proposed a new national charter that
 establishes borders as they were under Spanish rule in 1810. The article gives
 constitutional clout to Venezuela's territorial disputes with both Guyana and
 Colombia.

 The border friction with Guyana dates to an era when the United States sought to
 shut out European powers from any influence in Latin America.

 When British Guiana, then a colony, and independent Venezuela quarreled over
 their common frontier, the United States demanded that Britain accept
 international arbitration. Five international jurists -- two Britons, two U.S. citizens
 and a Russian -- handed down their decision in Paris on Oct. 3, 1899. Both sides
 accepted the ruling as a ``fair and final settlement.''

 Venezuela now says that it has uncovered a lawyer's diary from the 1899
 arbitration hinting that the Russian jurist helped defraud Venezuela.

 ``This is a historic, severe injustice,'' Rangel said.

 The United Nations named a mediator to the dispute in 1983 in an effort to reduce
 the friction. Talks fell largely inactive until Hugo Chavez, a former military coup
 leader, won the Venezuelan presidency this year.

 A new U.N. mediator, Barbados diplomat Oliver Jackman, took over Nov. 1 and
 will collect proposals from both nations, offering a resolution to U.N. Secretary
 General Kofi Annan at some future date.

 BORDER TROUBLE

 Along the border, though, tensions are rising.

 Villagers in San Martin say Guyanese soldiers recently raped a Venezuelan
 woman, and two bullet-riddled bodies of Venezuelan teenagers turned up on the
 Guyanese shore of the Cuyuni River last month.

 In early October, Venezuela briefly deployed greater numbers of troops along the
 border, contending it was for drug raids.

 ``They had a buildup of troops, man. Normally they have 30 over there,'' said
 Semple, the Guyanese police sergeant. ``Then all of a sudden they had 300.''