.........a number of people here in our town that I know work the mines. I talked to one fellow one day who told me all about the process they use. In many areas (but not all), it's basically a strip-mining process, except a lot of work is done by hand. Sacks of topsoil are brought to a central collection area where the product is washed, the heavies collected, and what's left over is tossed aside. One can image what's left behind. Open land stripped of its thin layer of topsoil, exposed to the heavy rains of the Venezuelan winter. It'll take generations, if not longer, to recover.

And much as I was afraid he'd tell me, they then use mercury to extract the gold.

I worked with mercury for over 20 years in a laboratory setting. As many of you might know, it's a difficult metal to control, escaping easily in the liquid form, and also vaporizing easily when heated. We kept our lab at 60F because between 60 and 70F the vapor pressure of mercury is cut by about half. In the air it easily enters the human body through the lungs and is excreted slowly over time. Bad for the brain. You've probably heard the term, mad as a hatter. They used mercury in their work fashioning hats.

One can only imagine how much mercury is lost to the ground and rivers, ultimately ending up in the ocean contaminating fish and other sealife.

Step-son-in-law has an aunt with a huge farm in southern Bolivar state. As mining activities encroached on her land, she got a call one day from a sindicato. "Leave alive, or you'll leave dead". There wasn't even an offer to buy her place. Just leave. Not even the national guard could bring the pressure needed to make them back off. They finally cut off her power and then started killing her cattle. She finally gave up, loaded everything she could on trucks and left....alive.

For the most part, it's lawless down there. The GNB extracts bribes all along the way at checkpoints but don't really try to control the territory.