Exploiting Venezuela’s Uncertain Future: Resource Conflicts and the Environment
Publisher: Wilson Center
Author(s): Bram Ebus
Date: 2022
Topics: Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources
Countries: Venezuela
The oil sector greased the wheels of Venezuela’s economy for close to a century. But around 2013, the economic model based on the industry collapsed after many years of severe mismanagement, a lack of maintenance, and corruption in the sector. Looking for new opportunities, the government of Nicolás Maduro decided to bet big on mining. Maduro claims that Venezuela possesses the second biggest gold reserves in the world, but the rapid expansion of mining operations in the country’s south are tainted by human rights violations and illegality.
Gold mining in particular faces increasing international scrutiny. In March 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Venezuela’s gold sector. The European Parliament called for a ban on the trade and circulation of Venezuelan gold in July 2020.
Meanwhile, armed groups continue to use violence to control Venezuela’s mines. The debate about Venezuela’s conflict gold must be drastically changed for a real impact to be made and to stop the atrocities occurring in the country’s southern mining districts. Sanctions, trade bans, and rhetoric about ‘blood gold’ serve to fuel the black market in minerals and have increased revenues for criminal actors without changing anything on the ground.