Investors cheered when Venezuela opened its vast mineral reserves to private capital in April, but gang control over many mines could prove a powerful obstacle.
The South American country, which is undergoing a profound transformation following the US overthrow of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January, has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
It is also rich in gold, diamonds, bauxite and coltan, a mineral essential for technology and defense that is classified as critical by Western powers, as well as rare earths.
Photo: AFP
Mining activity is concentrated in a vast area spanning 112,000km2 in the east known as the Orinoco Mining Arc, but there are also mines in southern Amazonas and Bolivar states.
Lisseth Boon, author of Oro malandro (Bandit Gold), about Venezuela’s mining badlands, called the gold mined in Venezuela “blood gold” — an allusion to the “blood diamonds” found in African conflict zones. Nearly all Venezuelan mining activity is controlled by gangs or guerrillas from neighboring Colombia, who call themselves sindicatos (syndicates) and impose a regime of fear.
“The syndicates control everything, it’s complicated,” a woman living in one gang-controlled area said on condition of anonymity.
Security experts say the “sindicatos” amass large amounts of money by extorting residents and workers.
In some areas, they act as the law, arbitrating disputes between neighbors and doling out punishment beatings, or even torturing alleged perpetrators of crimes including rape and murder.
And yet, some residents of El Dorado, a gold mining town in the heart of the Mining Arc, appreciate their presence, one inhabitant said.
“Before, if you found a big gold nugget, other miners could kill you for it,” he said. “Now everyone refrains from doing bad things.”
El Dorado is controlled by a gangster known only by his first name, Fabio, a Pablo Escobar-type character who has ingratiated himself with locals through acts of charity.
“When someone is sick he signs a piece of paper, and the person goes to the pharmacy and gets everything they need. He buys medicine for hospitals, renovates football grounds, has roads paved, and buys food for residents and teachers,” the resident said.
“Syndicates know not to touch [foreign] mining companies” and instead extract and smuggle their own gold through Brazil and Colombia, as do artisanal miners, who account for a large chunk of mining activity, they added.
A Transparency International report last year estimated that armed groups “linked to the authorities” control 20 percent of Venezuela’s annual gold production.
It estimated that 66 percent of the about US$5.5 billion generated by mining each year was controlled by political elites working in cahoots with organized crime through murky public-private “strategic alliances.”
“We don’t know the criteria used [by the state] to select partners, their obligations, the duration of the agreements, level of production, the contracts nor the amount of minerals,” Transparency International said, adding that over the past 10 years, gold production has increased, but the state’s gold reserves have not.
Boon said gangs started taking control of Venezuela’s mines after former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez suspended all foreign mining concessions in 2011.
“There was a vacuum. That’s when the syndicates began to force their way in,” she said.
The battle for control of mining revenues has claimed dozens of lives over the past decade.
In one of the worst single incidents, 17 miners were shot dead and their bodies buried in a mass grave in the eastern town of Tumeremo in 2016.
Isolated murders are also common.
Boon accused the state of being complicit in the lawlessness.
“A criminal system of governance was installed... with tacit accords between the syndicates and the state,” she said.
The Insight Crime think tank, which investigates organized crime in the Americas, has also warned of the syndicates’ “deep control.”
It gave the example of the Las Claritas syndicate in Bolivar state, which it accused of levying a “tax” on mining activities, and shaking down miners and traders for protection money, dubbed vacunas (vaccines).
Boon accused the gangs of keeping local populations in a state of “modern-day slavery” and said strong political will would be required to dislodge them.
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