Bogotá, Colombia — Venezuelan security forces have clashed with gold miners linked to illegal armed groups in the eastern Venezuelan state of Bolivar.
The move is a sign of efforts by U.S.-backed interim President Delcy Rodriguez to reopen mining to foreign investors.
Yesterday, Venezuelan state security forces opened fire and dropped bombs on an illegal gold mining complex developed next to the village of Las Claritas in the city of Sifontes, 125 miles from the Brazil-Venezuela border.
Two AS 532AC Cougar helicopters belonging to the 10th Special Operations Aviation Group were confirmed. According to Venezuelan media outlets: As isOne helicopter conducted surveillance and the other fired.
The previous day, American mining investors had made a technical visit to El Callao, another mining town 185 miles north in the same state.
According to Bram Ebus of the International Crisis Group, illegal mining in the area is under the control of a criminal group called Sistema, led by Juan Gabriel Rivas Nuñez (alias “Juancho”).
Evers said Latin America Report Armed groups in Bolivarian state have access to military-grade weapons and will not be easily replaced.
There is currently no official information about the scope or purpose of its deployment.
The state of Bolivar has some of the richest deposits of gold, bauxite, coltan and rare earth minerals in the country.
Illegal gold mining in the region, including Las Claritas, is linked to serious human rights abuses, according to a 2020 report by Human Rights Watch.
The municipality of Sifontes is home to the mining concession Las Cristinas, which is estimated to have gold reserves of more than 12 million ounces, making it one of the top ten gold reserves in the world.
Las Cristinas was expropriated from Canadian junior miner Crystallex by Hugo Chávez’s regime, but the mine was never operational.
In 2016, the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Venezuela to pay more than $1.2 billion in compensation and interest. Venezuela has never paid Crystallex.
Crystallex has been granted legal authority by a U.S. Delaware court to seize and auction shares owned by a U.S. subsidiary of PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, to seek outstanding compensation.
According to Ebus, we must understand the deployment of Venezuelan troops in Sifontes in this context.
Featured image: Photo of mine destruction in Venezuela.
Image courtesy of SOS Orinoco, an NGO that monitors environmental degradation in the Orinoco and Amazon.
