Ecocidio in the Caura

Environmentalist groups of the state Bolivar come denouncing the damages that the illegal mining is causing in the zone of the Caura Stop. The alarms catch oned already four years ago, but never like now: political, investigating leaders academic and indigenous caciques agree in warning on ecocidio.

“It is a situation that comes aggravating from year 2006”, the deputy of the Indigenous Parliament alerts, Jose Poyo. “Of the 600 illegal miners who were before, the number has increased more than 3,000, between which there is displaced of Brazil, Colombia and Guyana”.

During years, the Caura Stop was one of the few intact territories of the country. The shelter of almost 1,500 animal species and 2,600 vegetal varieties was a luck of oasis in the middle of the mining campings that appear and disappear to the south of the country. Who allowed then that thus stopped being? where they are the authorities?

The director of the Ecological Research center of Venezuela, Alexander Lanz, blames the Army and the National Guard to foment this situation. He does not explain himself of another form how he is that in these months he has been able to photograph machineries, boats and rafts inside a forest in which, during years, they had only coexisted indigenous and official of the Theater of Operations Number 5.

In order to enter the river basin of the Caura river it is necessary to on foot undertake a trip of 12 hours in boat and. Also alcabala is necessary to pass one that the National Armed Forces have in the zone of the Playón. “If they are there is for not letting enter miners, fuel, spare parts and machineries”, Lanz remembers.

It makes click to extend the infografía

One is not about an isolated denunciation or photographies that show environmental damages in specific zones. For a month, nongovernmental organizations, indigenous communities and until political leaders come noticing that the situation is every time worse. As much so Oswaldo Ponce, precandidate by the Socialist Party Together with from Venezuela the National Assembly, assured that the military and civil service stops of the Government are involved in the depredation of the Caura.

It mentioned until the name of one of the campings. It warned on an establishment that is called Blessed City, in which the Army acquires a species of tax of 50 grams of gold weekly by the use of hydraulic pumps, as well as another tariff for each one of the people who make life in that place.

“The mining population exceeds the 4,000 people, reason why it makes a weekly average of more than 20 kilos of gold”, the past declared Ponce Sunday in the newspaper the Fighter of Bolivar. “To all this the vaccine must also be added that pays by each fuel drum that these military allow to enter in the zone, as well as the product pays as a tax by it of the foods that enter the retailers”.

They declare emergencia

The voices are many that have been raised to come up on the subject. Members of the indigenous organization Kuyujani traveled the week last from the Sucre municipality de Bolivar, to be on the awares of the Atmosphere Commission of the National Assembly. The Experimental National University of Guayana realised this week in Ordaz Port a forum on “the Caura and the problematic miner”, in whom the panelistas asked to declare the environmental emergencia. On the other hand, the NGO Provides will take advantage of east Thursday the World-wide Day of the Earth, to protest the situation to the doors of the Ministry of the Atmosphere.

The ex- vice-president of the Republic, Jose Vicente Rangel, also assured the past 28 March that more than 4,000 miners turned the natural space of several indigenous communities, in campings where they keep arms, fuel and heavy machineries.

And in the own ye'kwanas communities and sanemas also problems jump: “They are increasing to the cases of malaria by the erosion and water wells that the miners leave open”. That was what Rodriguez said to Alberto, representative of the indigenous organization Kuyujani, the 7 of April in the Atmosphere Commission of the National Assembly.

It is impossible to determine how many fortune hunters deceived the military wall of the Caura but even so the damages are in view, explains the professor of the Anthropological Research center of the Experimental National University of Guayana, Nalúa Silva. “There is no a study that can say the degree to us of environmental impact; nevertheless, the caliber of the machineries that show the photos notices a high danger in fragile ecosystems”, says.

Without mentioning the source, the precandidate by the PSUV to the National Assembly, Oswaldo Ponce, it alerted that a recent analysis of quality of the water indicates a mercury contamination in more than 80%. Although from another trench, the deputy of the Popular Front Humanist, Medina Shepherd, reiterates this situation. “We do not know until where the environmental damage arrives, but what yes we know it is that mercury has increased the cases of leporino lip in the children of the 53 indigenous communities that make life in the Caura”.

They go and they come

The maps of world-wide forests locate to the Caura like the green point greater than it has in the region. Except for a small spot in Africa and others in countries like Brazil and Guyana, there are no vegetal lungs like this in all the planet. The environmentalists remember that the natural reserves of Russia, Finland and North America remain inactive during autumn and winter. For that reason the alarms, denunciations and warnings on the Caura.

In the last four years, the Theater of Operations Number 5 has evacuated several times to the miners of the zone. They go and they come. One is becoming a cyclical process. The map of the illegal mining has been changing: the controls that the government of Brazil has applied to the north of his territory and the closing of some mines that surround places as the Paragua has brought about a migration of capitals. The market of gold is entering a territory on that five areas under regime of special administration weigh, between that emphasize tepuyes like the Jaua Sarisariñama.

“The present displacement of thousands of miners in the affluents of the Caroní river increases the diminution of the water volume that feeds the dam on the Guri”, it prevents Lanz. The Atmosphere Commission of the National Assembly for that reason prepares an inspection in situ. In these times, the debate of the country concentrates in parliamentary elections, urban militias and communicational guerrillas. But the voices are many that have been noticing that there are many reasons to turn around the glance to the south.





jpoliszuk@eluniversal.com

Joseph Poliszuk