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The Quest for El Dorado: Venezuela's Hunger for Gold Transforms its Last Frontier
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Journal Article
The Quest for El Dorado: Venezuela's Hunger for Gold Transforms its Last Frontier
1997
Overview
The brazenness of Venezuela's rush for gold in particular the mining of the sensitive Imataca forest, has led to a small backlash, and scandals have erupted over the awarding of concessions. But for a government that was named by the business research group Transparency International as \"Latin America's most corrupt country\" -- no mean feat the future appears to be in the hands of the international mining companies. Government minister Teodoro Petkoff was blunt regarding Venezuela's great forest: \"nobody, but nobody, repeat nobody is going to impede the government's plans to open up the Imataca to mining interests.\" And the minister of the environment, Luis Castro Morales, has squashed any thoughts about evicting the miners in Canaima National Park, arguing that the concessions are \"giving security to the investor, that is what they are looking for.\" Naturally, the relaxed environmental rules have attracted some of mining's most notorious polluters, including Robert Friedland, whose Summitville mine in Colorado and Omai mine in Guiana both ended up spilling cyanide into nearby rivers, effectively killing them. (see \"World Bank Quietly Insures Major Polluters,\" in the Hemispheric Digest, Native Americas, Spring 1996) According to Leda Martins and Patrick Tierney, writing in the New York Times in 1993, Friedland's Venezuelan strip-mining venture is co-owned by a prominent naturalist who happens to be a respected research associate at the University of California and the New York Botanical Gardens. Charles Brewer-Carias, known for his work protecting the Yanomami, is \"running open-pit mines on more than 12,000 acres in the environmentally protected headwaters of the Cuyuni River.\" According to an investigation being conducted by the Venezuelan government, Brewer was using his anthropological field trips \"as a cover for illegal mining\" and he had previously been charged by the police with \"using unsalaried Maquiritare Indians in illegal mining operations in the Amazon.\"
Publisher
Akwe:kon Press, American Indian Program, Cornell University
Subject
