Venezuela’s Illegal Mining, Human Suffering & Environmental Disaster in the Amazon Forest

Cristina Vollmer Burelli:

For many in the international community, and indeed in the global environmental community, it’s probably surprising to hear that my home country, Venezuela, is one of the top 10 mega-biodiverse countries in the world. That’s right, alongside Brazil. But, it’s also highly mineral-rich, and it’s suffering probably the worst environmental crisis in the Western Hemisphere. The highest deforestation rate in the Americas and Amazonia. And many of you have probably not even heard or read about this in the media or from other environmentalists. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is probably worth a million.

So, I want to start this presentation with a short clip by [name unclear], of a flight over Angel Falls in Canaima World Heritage Site in Venezuelan Amazonia. The Orinoco River Basin is located in Amazonia and the Guiana Shield, a Precambrian geological formation, one of the last relics of the earliest part of the world’s history. What makes Venezuela’s Amazonian region unique within Pan-Amazonia is not its size, but the fact that it comprises lowland tropical forests and a wide range of ecosystems along an elevational gradient of up to 3,000 m. That’s about 10,000 ft above sea level.

And this is what makes it so biodiverse. One of the jewels in the crown of Venezuela’s Amazonian region is Canaima National Park, the land of the lost worlds, widely celebrated as one of the most stunning landscapes on the planet, home to the world’s highest waterfall, Angel Falls, which you’re seeing now on the screen. And because of this uniqueness, it was declared a world heritage site in 1994. Sadly, the collapse of Venezuela’s oil-based economy has pushed the regime of Nicolás Maduro to seek new sources of revenue. It has turned to plundering the country’s vast mineral wealth and selling it as contraband to international buyers.

This illegal trade threatens to destroy one of the world’s most biodiverse areas and decimate the region’s indigenous populations. In February 2016, without the approval of the democratically elected National Assembly, Maduro decreed that a section of the Amazon covering 12% of Venezuela’s territory would become a mining development zone. The area on this map outlined in red is the so-called Arco Minero or Orinoco Mining Arc. It contains vast reserves of coltan, iron, bauxite, diamonds, and gold. At 42,800 square miles, it covers an area bigger than Portugal. Maduro’s signature mining gamble gives the outward appearance of having a well-delimited geographical scope, but in reality, its intent has spread out into areas not defined as being inside the Orinoco Mining Arc.

This includes pristine national parks, including Canaima World Heritage Site. It has given rise to a gold rush throughout the entire region south of the Orinoco River, throughout the states of Bolívar and Amazonas. And now, even in parts of northern Venezuela. The regime has effectively signaled that indiscriminate mining has been given priority over the preservation of the extremely delicate environment found in Venezuela. Throughout the 20th century, prior to the arrival of Chávez, Venezuela had probably the most conservationist policy for its Amazonian region in all of Latin America. Various governments throughout the 20th century created laws that protected vast areas of pristine forest south of the Orinoco River.

Indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories were protected. Numerous protected areas were created between 1962 and 1993. And all mining was made illegal in the state of Amazonas. Most importantly, it protected its fresh water sources. Venezuela is within the top 20 countries in the world for renewable water resources. Very few people know this, as well. And it provides close to 70% of Venezuela’s hydroelectric power. Venezuelan Amazonia and Guayana region comprise 29 protected areas. Eight national parks, 19 natural monuments, and two biosphere reserves. Now, this doesn’t mean that there was no illegal mining, nor that there were foreign miners such as a Brazilian guy named [name unclear] exploiting mines illegally, but it was minimal compared to what we’re seeing today.

I’m now going to talk about a few of the most emblematic areas that are being devastated by Maduro’s criminal mining policy. The explosion of illegal gold mining in and around Canaima UNESCO World Heritage Site in the state of Bolívar is without doubt the most scandalous example. This is the violation of Venezuela’s most emblematic national park, home to Angel Falls, and many other remarkable tabletop mountains known as tepuis, such as Roraima. Just a few miles away from Angel Falls and the scenes you saw in this video at the beginning of my presentation, illegal mining is eating away at the forests and poisoning rivers with sedimentation and mercury.

SOS Orinoco has been studying the situation in Canaima and reporting on a regular basis to UNESCO and IUCN. At last count in July 2020, there were 59 illegal mining clusters, each containing dozens of mines, in and around the World Heritage Site. You can see these on the slide with the little dots marked on the map. This park is also the ancestral home of the Pemón indigenous people, many of whom have been forced to abandon their traditional activities and tourism to go to work in illegal gold mines in order to survive, and many have become the victims of criminal mafias and the Colombian ELN guerrilla.

SOS Orinoco did an evaluation of the scope of mercury contamination, and an estimated 70% of the Caroní River, which is the eastern border of the park, may well be polluted with mercury. The second area I’d like to draw your attention to is the state of Amazonas, and in particular to two areas within this state. The first is the Yapacana National Park, close to the Colombian border. It has become a FARC fiefdom, where dissident FARC lord over this previously uninhabited national park, now home to 2 to 3,000 illegal miners. The Colombian guerrillas control all the illegal gold mines and provide all types of services to the miners.

In this slide, you can see the scarring of the Amazonian forest with illegal mines around and on top of Yapacana mountain. Yapacana has become a financial and logistical center for the FARC, as well as their main entry point to all of southern Venezuela. Drug money is laundered through gold mining, and every gram of gold illegally produced enriches the coffers of the Colombian guerrilla, which by the way is granted safe passage and haven by the Maduro regime. So, as long as the FARC have unfettered access to Yapacana, Colombia and the broader region will be under growing threat of their terrorist activities.

The second area in Amazonas that I’d like to focus on is the upper Orinoco region, which is a biosphere reserve, where illegal mining by Brazilian garimpeiros and FARC dissidents is expanding rapidly. The presence of both garimpeiros and FARC is threatening the existence of the Yanomami indigenous people, but it’s also a security threat to the neighborhood because the FARC are demonstrably in alliance with the invading Brazilian miners. Venezuelan armed forces also profit by providing logistical and air support with helicopters that, incredibly, transport fuel, machinery, etc. Into the mines, some of which are on top of the tepuis within La Neblina National Park, that at 3,000 m has the highest peak elevation of all the Amazon region.

At this very moment, just yesterday, I received a message from a Yanomami leader informing me that there are over 500 illegal Brazilian miners in Hashimu. This is a region in the biosphere reserve. And there is a huge risk of the COVID pandemic exploding in all of this area threatening the Yanomami and the [people’s name unclear] people. All medical facilities, except for one, have closed down in this forest area. These three very large areas of illegal gold mining are mere examples of what is happening all over southern Venezuela. Illegal mining and smuggling has become a lifeline for the regime, which has put the military in charge of management of illegal mining.

They man checkpoints, control access to the mines, they manage the flow of gasoline used for equipment, and they extort tribute from workers and criminal groups. All other groups operating in the area, including criminal syndicates, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN), are in connivance with the military. So, we’re witnessing an intensification and expansion of mining operations by state and non-state actors that are being shielded by the government and recur to violence 24/7. This mining policy promotes violence, slave labor, child labor, prostitution, and a deeply troubling dismantling of indigenous social structures with countless silent and not-so-silent killings of indigenous and non-indigenous people.

It’s also responsible for the explosion of a malaria epidemic that is spreading to the rest of Venezuela and now neighboring countries. Close to 450,000 new cases of malaria were recorded in 2019 for a total of almost 900,000 cases, 90% of which are south of the Orinoco, and guess where? In the illegal gold mines. On July 15th of this year, the UN Office of Human Rights accused the Venezuelan military of failing to prevent crimes against [miners or minors; unclear] in the country’s south, including extortion, amputations, and live burials. The report shines a light on a topic that has received limited media attention.

Illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon is fueling rampant human and environmental abuses. Venezuela’s mining industry has become an activity that is imbued in a vast organized crime scheme that reaches all levels of Venezuela’s political and military power structure. Top government officials are being rewarded and loyalties bought by the regime that is parceling out access to this vast wealth. We started with breathtaking images of Venezuelan Amazonia, and sadly, I’d like to conclude this presentation with this horrifying photo of illegal mines on the Caroní River, which borders Canaima World Heritage Site. It’s critical to point out that the speed at which this tragedy is evolving will surely define a future transition, the governability of that transition, and the nature of Venezuela as a nation-state for years to come.

The emerging threats to security in Venezuela and surrounding countries cannot be analyzed or understood without considering the role of its vast minerals and its fragile environment. So, what can you do? Well, for starters, you can demand to know the origin of gold and minerals used in jewelry and devices such as your phone, your watch, computers, and all these things that you buy and that you use every day. And just make sure and ask whether blood gold and blood coltan from Venezuela is being used. The international community needs to increase the tracking of these high-value resources and the networks that traffic them in international markets in order to minimize the potential for these resources to finance lasting conflict in Venezuela and the neighborhood.

We cannot allow the fight for mineral wealth that has decimated so many African countries to take hold in the middle of the Western Hemisphere. Thank you.