"Venezuela Tackles Illegal Gold Mafias as Chávez Nationalises Gold Industry"

Venezuela Tackles Illegal Gold Mafias as Chávez Nationalises Gold Industry

By Rachael Boothroyd- Venezuelanalysis.com 8/23/2100

This Tuesday military chief Henry Rangel Silva revealed that over 40,000 hectares of land had been recovered and 15,000 people freed from conditions of “slavery” as part of Plan Caura, the Venezuelan government’s anti-illegal mining project.

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In an interview with state television station VTV, Silva condemned the clandestine mining mafias operating in the region for creating a “system of exploitation” which destroyed the environment and subjected miners to dehumanising conditions, including human trafficking and prostitution.

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(The task force has reduced) illegal mining activities by 85% in the state of Bolivar, where the practice had existed for 50 to 60 years.

Silva elaborated that mining activity had been particularly harmful to the nation’s river beds and estuaries, as the power of the water had been used to erode the river banks in order to search for gold, leaving the ground totally “destroyed.” This had also had a negative impact on the country’s electricity supply, which is 70% based in hydro-power, said Silva.

...we arrived at a military strategy of dialogue, of interaction with the miners, because we were sure that the miner that was in the jungle was not an enemy of the armed forces,” he continued.

Nationalisation of the Gold Industry

Following his announcement last week that his government planned to “bring its gold reserves home” and to nationalise the Venezuelan gold industry, president Hugo Chávez today officially signed a decree nationalising the industry. The Venezuelan mandate stated that this was the first step in “putting an end to illegal mining activities.”

Chávez also signed a document allowing for the formation of majority state-owned “mixed businesses” for mining exploration and exploitation. These businesses, formed between the state and private enterprise, will “undo the serious effects of the capitalist mining model, characterised by the degradation of the environment, irrespective of national laws, and the attack on the dignity and health of the miners and neighbouring communities,” said the president.

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http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6441
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It's quite interesting how a leftist government approaches a predatory capitalist industry, carefully distinguishing between the exploited and the Mob bosses. Consider, by contrast, the U.S. "war on drugs" which throws the exploited poor into prison--often for very long punishments--including drug users, drug addicts, mere possessors of drugs (even in small amounts), and drug traders including the least powerful people in that trade (street vendors). Tens of thousands of such people--people guilty of no other offense--are locked up in the U.S. "prison-industrial complex," while the cocaine trade flourishes, and the Mob bosses and the war profiteers and the prison profiteers rake in the billions.

The Chavez government policy--as expressed by Silva--is, first of all, to actually accomplish the purpose of the task force: to end illegal mining, and also to end exploitation of the least powerful people, to stop other collateral damage (in this case, to the environment) and to introduce proper controls on the trade--in this case, of a vital resource, gold--for the benefit of all.

The U.S. "war on drugs" becomes a war on the poor, and actually encourages increased militarization, brutality and organization of the Mob bosses, which, in turn, keeps the "war" going, to the profit of everyone except the poor--who end up in jail, or whose neighborhoods and futures are destroyed. And this horrendous damage ripples through society, creating generations of people who are unemployable because of minor convictions, who (in some states--Florida, for instance) can't even vote ever again, plus tens of thousands who are humiliated by drug testing (having to pee in cup to get a job), are banned from federal and state education loans and, in effect, become permanent pariahs, non-citizens, scarred by brutal prison experiences--while the rich, including the criminal rich, prosper, and while budgets for education and other social programs go bankrupt.

The Venezuelan government, on the other hand, in addressing this similar problem, is thinking FIRST of the poor--the people trapped at the bottom and exploited in an illegal enterprise--and is taking a constructive approach by creating state/private businesses subject to labor and environmental regulation. The left looks to the benefit of all, and the creation of a fair and decent society. The right looks to benefit of the few, and the creation of prisons, mafias, militarism and yet more suffering and degradation for the many.

In Colombia, we've seen the U.S. "war on drugs" flipped right over into the Mob running the country, with $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid to assist Uribe and his criminal organization--in spying on everybody (including judges and prosecutors!), in driving FIVE MILLION peasants from their lands with state terror (in favor of the big, organized drug operations and multinational corporations like Monsanto, Chiquita and Drummond Coal), and in slaughtering the opposition (trade unionists, teachers, community activists, human rights workers, journalists, peasant farmers, Indigenous leaders and others). This is the inevitable result of militarizing a social problem--the solution becomes the crime.

It is also the result of multinational corporations and war profiteers writing the laws--as they have been, here, since the Reagan Junta. So, it is quite interesting and heartening to see how the left addresses a problem like this. We have not seen such a thing here in many decades and will not likely see it for decades to come, if ever. The people of the U.S. have to get rid of the far rightwing-corporate controlled 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines before any reform can occur here. Venezuela, by contrast, has one of the most transparent, honest voting systems in the democratic world, and it shows.