Writer: Andrea Iskandar
Editor: Bérénice Louveau
Over the past decade, the Venezuelan states of Amazonas and Bolivar have become a strategic mining frontier where paramilitary groups and criminal organizations have established illicit mining networks and gained control over extraction territories. The consolidation of this criminal governance is more than just a consequence of a collapsed state and weak institutions; it is a deliberate political and economic strategy, facilitated by Chávez and Maduro’s regimes to generate revenue and exercise political control.
Following in Chavez’s footsteps after Maduro’s rise to power in 2014, Venezuela experienced a devastating economic contraction, with GDP shrinking by roughly 80% between 2013 and 2021, largely due to the collapse of the oil industry and the weakening of democratic institutions. To offset the crisis and, in theory, stimulate the economy, Maduro turned to the mining industry. The states of Bolivar and Amazonas sit atop one of the world’s largest deposits of gold, coltan, and other rare minerals, making them ideal sites for extraction. Maduro established the Arco Marinero del Orinoco in 2016, opening about 12 percent of Venezuela’s territory to mineral extraction, all while demonstrating a clear and intentional lack of state authority and regulation mechanisms from the start. Maduro’s regime generated millions of dollars that reinforced Maduro’s military control, elite loyalty, and accelerated the expansion of established illicit mining operations in the region, instead of bringing economic prosperity and strengthening state control.
Colombian guerrillas, including the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), factions of the FARC such as Segunda Marquetalia, and the Estado Mayor Central, have created a parallel system of criminal governance by controlling access to pits and collecting taxes on miners. They operate outside of national justice systems, enforcing a coercive “legal” system which often includes violent punishments and executions to maintain territorial control and discipline locals and workers. However, these networks do not operate entirely independently from the state: illegal mining is a self-reinforcing system in which state actors, armed groups, and criminal networks benefit simultaneously.
There is a broad network of trafficking and smuggling pathways through which these illegally extracted minerals move to reach the global supply chain. Gold and Coltan are often sent through river networks in the Amazon and via informal airstrips before entering Brazil and Colombia, where they are smuggled and laundered through legal channels into global markets. Venezuelan government officials have reported intercepting and shutting down these mining sites, but many of their “crackdowns” have proven to be “political theatre”. Brazilian authorities documented intercepting a 104Kilogram shipment of Venezuelan gold, and Colombian authorities have confiscated about 381 tons of illegal coltan between 2012 and 2025, while Venezuelan officials have only reported seizing roughly one ton in the same time frame. Venezuela now has the highest proportion of illegal mining in Latin America, with about 90% of illicit gold production and 70% of that production smuggled internationally. These dynamics are increasingly perpetuated by global forces, as the demand for critical minerals, which are essential for artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and defense technologies, has intensified due to geopolitical competition between the United States and China. China’s dominance in processing many of these materials domestically has heightened efforts by the United States and its allies to secure alternative supply chains.
This major discrepancy reveals the political incentive for withdrawn state authority: Maduro’s regime enabled illegal mining as the demand for these materials increased, and the revenue became a financial lifeline to stay in power. Military units control the supply of fuel in the region and collect informal taxes from smugglers and miners, known as “vacunas”, in return for the protection of trafficking routes. State-run enterprises like the Corporacion Venezolana de Mineria, along with other state actors, launder and purchase illicit gold, which then reaches Venezuela’s Central Bank. In 2018, the country reported internally purchasing 9 tons, but rampant corruption makes these numbers untrustworthy. Illicit mining has inadvertently created a source of revenue for the regime to fund a system of political patronage, reinforcing loyalty among elites and political leaders in exchange for profits from this backdoor stream of income.
This complicated, entrenched system of reproduced corruption and violence has consequences that fall heavily on local communities. Criminal groups coerce locals into working in mines through torture and violent threats, systematically enforcing forced labour and child exploitation. However, with no accountability mechanisms present, disappearances, executions, limb amputations, sexual slavery, and physical and psychological torture are only very sparsely documented. Mass grave sites have been found in mining areas as evidence of these atrocities. Further, more than 725,000 hectares (in 2024) of mining-related deforestation have dwindled biodiversity and forced displacement of Pemón, Yanomami, Uwottuja, and other Indigenous peoples, and mercury contamination has posed marginal health risks, with contaminated waterways and prolonged exposure causing neurological damage and birth defects.
The political uncertainty following the United States’s extraction of Maduro raises new questions about whether these illicit dynamics will halt, persist, or reconfigure. As Maduro awaits sentencing within the U.S., Washington has continued to establish interest in Venezuelan oil and made claims to secure strategic resources to reduce dependency on China, while also claiming to prevent a return to Chavez/Maduro-era systems by enabling a democratic transition. However, navigating and decoupling the deeply entangled structure of parallel authority with state actors poses significant challenges, especially while the U.S. allows Delcy Rodriguez and Maduro’s close circle to remain in power.