2023-05-26 10:18:01
EL CALLAO, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela is famous for having the world’s largest oil reserves, but its soil also holds another valuable resource: gold.
The government established a huge mining development zone stretching across central Venezuela in 2016 to diversify its revenue.
Six years later, the mines where excavations are carried out to extract gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals proliferate.
The Orinoco Mining Arc is plagued by violence and shrouded in secrecy because many mines operate near limits or outside the law.
These places offer lucrative jobs to ordinary Venezuelans but face terrible conditions.
At an underground mine in Bolívar state, dynamite is used to dislodge rock some 80 meters (260 feet) below the surface, and workers descend daily to toil in sweltering heat without protective gear.
Miners typically begin their journey by strapping themselves to a thick steel cable, holding on as best they can as they descend regarding 200 feet (60 meters) down a shaft, entering a world where the only light available it is the one coming from the lamps in his head.
They wear shorts and flip-flops or rubber boots and need to bend down quite a bit to move 20 meters (60 feet) up some sort of ramp.
There they collect stones, throw them into sacks transported in a cart, raise them with pulleys to the surface and take them to a mill.
One of the miners, Alfredo Arriojas, said he did not like mining, but he has been working at the site for more than two years in the hope of buying a house and investing the excess money in something good that will earn him an income.
By law, around half of the gold mined must enter state coffers, but authorities and government critics have denounced an increase in illegal mining.
Defenders of workers’ rights say that the labor law is not respected and human rights violations abound.
Due to violence between rival gangs, many miners are forced to reconsider their trade.
Another nearby mine in Bolívar produces gold through open-pit operations at the surface, where workers spend times near ponds filled with mosquitoes that carry diseases such as malaria.
The miner José Rivas, who works in the open pit, said that he is fed up, that he just wants to buy a house and work on something else.
1685097471
#Gold #mines #proliferate #Venezuela
