R31: Ecocide: Extractivist Projects in the Americas

The world continues to be involved when it comes to ECOCIDE, we are still constantly working to develop legal frameworks in countries that penalize environmental crimes that affect each of the factors that make up the State with greater weight. We have had an involution in the world with this issue, generating problems of great magnitude that today affect America more frequently. Political persecution, the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, the violation of human rights, water pollution, drug trafficking, corruption and white slavery are some of the problems that the region presents due to extractivist projects, and it is the case of Venezuela that has become an evil that spreads throughout the Amazon.

The Venezuelan Mining Arc is an immense extension of the Venezuelan territory of 111,843 km² close to the south coast of the Orinoco River and that also represents the framework of a policy provided by the government to promote the opening to mining in general, likewise it has as main ambition the function of violently obtaining precious minerals such as gold and coltan. This represents challenging political, social, and environmental conditions promoted by a failed State that promotes anarchy, the absence of the rule of law, the breach of international treaties and agreements, and the disproportionate looting of the Nation's natural and mining heritage.

The Venezuelan Mining Arc not only represents a territorial space of the state, it has a socio-political-economic-environmental impact, which is represented in the environmental area with an extension on the map that includes the Canaima national park, the Paragua river basin River, the middle and upper basin of the Caura River (Caura National Park), the Yapacana National Park, the Alto Orinoco Casiquiare Biosphere Reserve, the entire north of the state of Amazonas and the border. Socially, the extension of mining has led to the promotion of anarchy, has decisively affected the quality of life of Venezuelans, has encouraged trafficking in women, prostitution and child labor, as well as the violation of the fundamental rights of most vulnerable groups, highlighting the native peoples who are persecuted, killed for their defense and/or permanence in these spaces.
Another factor that we can mention in the interior is the economic sector, where the financial actors are private investors and are the ones who contribute the economic resources and enter as financial partners of the political operators of the Venezuelan presidency.
In conclusion, mining in Venezuela, represented by the Arco Minero, has become a submerged activity within a large network of organized crime that reaches all levels of Venezuelan and Latin American political and military power.