Deep in the Amazon, Canaima National Park in Venezuela is a green wonderland. Home to Angel Falls, the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world at more than 3,200 feet, it serves as a source of national pride, a showcase of the country’s uniqueness and natural beauty, the Venezuelan equivalent of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Niagara Falls all rolled into one.
And it is on the verge of being ruined.
Caught in the gold rush sweeping the southern states of the country, the fragile ecosystem is being threatened by illegal mining operations that have sprung up inside the national park, threatening the kind of widespread environmental devastation that has already affected other areas of the Bolívar, Amazonas and Delta Amacuro states.
According to environmental groups, there are now at least 30 different mining sites inside Canaima. These violate both Venezuelan law, which prohibits mining within national parks, and international treaties. The area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994 for its unique table-top mountains and biodiversity.
Some experts fear this is only the beginning.
“If this is not stopped now, this is going to grow immensely and fast,” a high-ranking military official who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly told the Miami Herald. “As they start to find more gold, more people are going to come and these mines will just continue to grow and grow.”
Any environmental damage could in the end be irreparable, because large areas of the park rest on solid bedrock and lack significant topsoil. Unlike operations in other, more fertile areas of the Amazon rainforest, “anything destroyed here could take centuries to recover,” the military official said.
Cristina Burelli, founder of SOS Orinoco, a group that advocates for the conservation of the Venezuelan Amazon, said Salto Angel, the falls’ Spanish name, is being encroached by at least eight different mining operations. Most of them can be easily detected on Google Maps, and one of them is on a bank of the Carrao River not 15 miles away from the iconic waterfall.
Her organization, which has been recording the gradual devastation caused by illegal mining in southern Venezuela since 2018, believes that around 3,700 acres have already been affected inside the national park, with some areas already stripped bare of vegetation.
But that is only a small fraction of the environmental devastation wrought to the country’s share of the Amazon rainforest by miners, and to a lesser degree by cattle ranchers. Between 2000 and 2024, the damage extended over 2.7 million acres, much of it taking place during the last few years, SOS Orinoco said in its last yearly report.
“Our projections suggest that by 2025 the reduction in natural cover in the Amazon will exceed 1,300,000 hectares [3.2 million acres] and by 2030 it would be greater than 1,500,000 hectares [3.7 million acres] if the trend observed over the last 23 years continues,” the report says.
The mining operations in Canaima, near Angel Falls, are being run in partnership with the Pemón indigenous tribe, which has jurisdiction over the region.
Sources disagreed on the extent of control that the Pemón actually have over the mines, with some believing they are silent partners receiving royalty payments for the right to produce gold out of their lands and others saying they are the ones actually running the show and hiring non-indigenous Venezuelans to work at the sites.
But what has become obvious is that gold has already entered their way of life, and tribes settled throughout the national park have come to appreciate the wealth associated with the prized mineral’s production.
“Where once upon a time they combated those entering into their lands wanting to mine the land, they have now become very fond of gold,” the high-ranking official said.
Burelli, who lives in Washington, said that while the mining operations have been going on for years, most Venezuelans have kept silent out of fear.
She was first drawn to the issue when she learned about the damages being caused in Canaima.
“Once I started checking I quickly found out that yes, there were illegal mining operations, but also that there was much fear; nobody felt they were in a position to denounce these illegal operations because they were afraid of the consequences,” she said.
The fear arises out of the violence surrounding the control of the illegal mining operations, which are run by an unsavory cast of actors, including criminal gangs, leftists guerrillas and high-ranking members of the Nicolás Maduro regime.
In fact, Maduro’s family and inner circle have directly benefited from the smuggling of hundreds of millions in the precious metal while sending only a minor fraction to the state’s coffers, a Miami Herald investigation discovered in 2019.
Multiple sources have disclosed that a consortium, primarily composed of Maduro family members and high-ranking government officials, was amassing approximately $1.5 billion annually through illicit mining and smuggling activities.
The illicitly mined resources, which included valuable minerals and precious stones, were smuggled out of the country through clandestine networks, bypassing official regulatory controls for the benefit of consortium members at the expense of the state coffers.
“The one at the front of this criminal enterprise is Maduro,” exiled Venezuelan Gen. Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who headed the regime’s Bolivarian National Intelligence Service until he broke with the Venezuelan strongman, said at the time. “It is unprecedented, the pillage exercised by the criminal enterprise that Maduro administers while heading the state. This is something never seen before.”
The introduction in 2015 of new laws establishing a huge mineral exploitation zone called the Mining Arc sparked a gold rush reminiscent of California’s in the mid-1800s.
Fueled by the country’s economic collapse of the past decade, tens of thousands of people have left the big cities and headed to southern Venezuela to work in small, illegal mining operations. These operations, often run or controlled by armed criminals organizations, are tolerated by the regime as long as their production is sold to the consortium.
But conditions have turned dire for these Venezuelans, most of whom have ended up working under a system of indentured servitude. Those that resist or at some point threatened to disrupt mining operations met with tragic ends.
“We have seen serious violations of human rights. We are talking about crimes against humanity… murders, tortures, severe beatings, mutilations, things that in Venezuela we had never heard before but that show the mafia type of control that is now in place in that region,” said Sonia Zapata, founder of the environmental group Embajadores del Orinoco.
“And it is not that regime officials are turning a blind eye to this, it is that they are directly involved, because it is no secret that it is the Venezuelan military that is in control, in alliance with criminal groups and leftist guerrillas,” she said.
The violence surrounding the country’s mining operations had been previously reported by other non-governmental organizations that have recorded a range of human rights abuses and environmental damage linked to mining activities, including forced displacement of local communities, violence against those who resist mining operations, and pollution of water and soil resources.
“The various criminal organizations that control the mines exercise strict control over the populations that live and work there, impose abusive working conditions and subject those accused of theft and other crimes to brutal treatment. In the worst cases, they have dismembered and killed, in front of other workers, those who allegedly had not complied with their rules,” Human Rights Watch said in a recent report.
The report was one of several that have provided a distressing picture of the working conditions within the mines, drawing upon interviews with local residents who were directly involved or had first-hand knowledge of the situation. These individuals revealed grueling 12-hour shifts where workers were not provided with essential protective gear, leaving them vulnerable to myriad health and safety risks.
Adding to the gravity of the situation is the disturbing presence of children as young as 10 years old, toiling alongside adults in these hazardous environments, deprived of their childhood and education.
In addition to the threat of violence, workers face risks related to the use of mercury in the process to extract gold from ore.
Though prohibited in Venezuela, mercury remains prevalent in the mines, exposing workers to serious health risks. Even small amounts of mercury can cause severe health problems to the nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as the lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes.
Studies carried out in mining areas in Bolívar detected high levels of exposure to mercury, including in women and children, among whom the health risks are even greater. In the case of pregnant women, the risks include severe fetal malformation and death.
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