02/22/2024 12:50
At least 16 people died and 11 were killed in a gold mine collapse in a rich and isolated region of southern Venezuela, where experts have denounced “ecocide” due to the spread of illegal mining.
The tragedy
The disaster occurred on Tuesday in the Bulla Loca mine, seven river hours from La Paragua, in Bolívar state, the nearest city where the found bodies were taken as rescue operations began the next day.
A video released by authorities shows dozens of miners working in the openpit quarry fleeing as a landslide hits them, burying several.
“A hole opened and collapsed to a depth of 30 meters and a length of 100 meters,” President Nicolás Maduro said on Wednesday evening.
The NGO SOS Orinoco, which denounces “ecocide” in the region, recorded 54 deaths in 17 incidents in mines in the states of Bolívar and Amazonas between 2017 and 2022. In the absence of official data, the source for this is local press reports.
In December, for example, twelve people died after a mine collapsed in the indigenous community of Ikabarú, Bolívar, where a partial collapse had occurred days earlier without causing any casualties.
“Dozens, hundreds of men and women who chose this job are dying or becoming disabled,” many with no knowledge of “a job considered one of the most dangerous,” SOS said in a report last year.
The balance
Deputy Minister of Citizen Security, Major General Carlos Pérez Ampueda, updated the death toll to 16 in the latest official tally.
The death toll was reduced by the national government after a preliminary tally by the local authority reported 25 deaths.
The bodies arrived in La Paragua on boats that struggled to access fuel, which was chronically in short supply in the region.
An elite civil defense rescue team traveled from Caracas to respond to the emergency. Two helicopters are being used for rescue operations, said Maduro.
The model
In 2016, Maduro created the Orinoco Mining Arc, an area of nearly 112,000 square kilometers with reserves of gold, diamonds, iron, bauxite, copper and coltan for exploration.
The model, intended to compensate for the decline in oil revenues, opened the door to illegal operations that spread throughout southern Venezuela, says Cristina Burelli of SOS Orinoco.
“We have been denouncing this systematically since 2018,” Burelli told AFP. “The reaction was initially to deny this and from 2022 military 'operations' began.”
The armed forces reported that around 14,000 illegal miners were evicted from the Amazon's Yapacana National Park last year, but Burelli sees those operations as “a media spectacle” that has not solved the problem.
The latest report from SOS Orinoco suggests that illegal mining has resumed its activities.
Activists also denounce that Colombian guerrillas and criminal gangs have taken over the area where the mine collapsed due to state abandonment, and in many cases accuse the military of “complicity.”
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