Bogotá, Colombia — Security forces in Venezuela have clashed with gold miners linked to illegal armed groups in eastern Venezuela’s Bolivar State.
The move is a signal of U.S.-backed interim-President Delcy Rodriguez’s efforts to re-open mining to foreign investors.
Yesterday, Venezuelan state security forces opened fire and dropped bombs on the significant complex of illegal gold mines that have developed beside the town of Las Claritas, 125 miles from the Brazilian-Venezuelan border in the municipality Sifontes.
Two AS 532AC Cougar helicopters belonging to the No. 10 Special Operations Air Group of the Military Aviation were identified. According to Venezuelan news outlet Tal Cual, one helicopter conducted surveillance while the other fired.
The previous day, U.S. mining investors conducted technical visits at El Callao, another mining town 185 miles to the north in the same state.
Illegal mining in the area is under the control of a criminal group, known as a Sistema, led by Juan Gabriel Rivas Nuñez, alias “Juancho,” according to Bram Ebus from International Crisis Group.
Ebus told Latin America Reports that armed groups in Bolivar State have access to military grade weapons and will not easily be displaced.
Currently, there is no official information about the scope or aims of the deployment.
Bolivar State holds some of the country’s richest deposits of gold, bauxite, coltan and rare earth minerals.
The illegal gold mines in the region, including at Las Claritas, have been associated with grave human rights abuses according to a 2020 report from Human Rights Watch.
Sifontes municipality is home to a mining concession, Las Cristinas, which is believed to have over 12 million ounces of gold reserves, making it one of the 10 largest gold deposits in the world.
Las Cristinas was expropriated from a Canadian junior miner, Crystallex, by the regime of Hugo Chávez, but the mine never became operational.
In 2016 the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Venezuela to pay in excess of USD $1.2 billion in compensation plus interest. Venezuela has never paid Crystallex.
Crystallex has been granted legal authority by U.S. courts in Delaware to seize and auction off shares belonging to a subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in the U.S., in order to satisfy the outstanding award.
According to Ebus, we should understand the deployment of Venezuelan forces to Sifontes in this context.
Featured image: Picture of mining destruction in Venezuela.
Image credit: SOS Orinoco, an NGO that monitors environmental destruction in the Orinoco and Amazon.
