War for gold
Venezuela The regime of ruler Maduro needs the mineral resources of the indigenous people to survive. That is why it is fighting against them - and does not shy away from massacres.
When she heard the shots, says Sorelis García Rodríguez, a 16-year-old girl from the indigenous Pemón people, her mother was baking corn pies. " Soldiers were driving down the road, firing at the people on the side of the road." When she went to look, she found her mother Zoraida dead on the floor of her house in the village of Kumarakapay. "Three bullets had hit her in the chest. "A few steps away, Sorelis found her seriously injured father. "He had rushed to help mum, and they shot him too," she says. Relatives took him across the nearby border to Brazil, where he died days later in hospital.
Sorelis has four siblings. Since March, three of the orphans have been living in an indigenous village on the other side of the border, in Pacaraima, Brazil. Behind the settlement, on the edge of a football pitch, they have buried their father. A nameless mound of earth lies in the glaring midday sun, the flowers on the grave have dried up. His children actually wanted to bury him alongside their mother in their home village. But Venezuela's ruler Nicolás Maduro had closed the border, and Sorelis puts her arm around her 13-year-old sister, who is lying next to her in the hammock. She sobs quietly, the memory of the murders still fresh. The mother of the orphans of Kumarakapay was not a political activist, she lived from selling corn pies.
The shooting in which Sorelis' mother fell victim was a climax to the conflict between the Pemones, who are defending their land, on the one hand, and the Venezuelan army and armed groups working with them to exploit the region's gold on the other. Indigenous people, the military and armed groups such as the Colombian guerrilla organisation ELN are waging a war for gold, diamonds and rare earths in the Pemones.
The conflict is taking place in one of the most remote areas of Venezuela: the Gran Sabana. It is one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, a high-altitude savannah, 10,000 square kilometres in size, characterised by table mountains up to 1,000 metres high, rugged gorges and huge waterfalls, including the highest on earth. It inspired the classic adventure novel "The Lost World" by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is home to the Pemonen people, and adventurers and tourists used to pass through here. Unesco declared the Canaima National Park, in which the Gran Sabana is located, a World Heritage Site in 1994.
The area is also home to gold deposits, which are believed to be among the largest on earth. And everything now revolves around this gold. Venezuela is facing an existential crisis. The country, which has the largest known oil reserves in the world, is on the brink of bankruptcy. The population is starving, there is no medicine, no affordable food in the shops, there is a shortage of toilet paper and even petrol. Oil production, previously the main source of income, has been declining for years. Corruption and mismanagement have led to the state oil company's production facilities falling into disrepair.
President Maduro's regime relies on petrol smuggling and drug trafficking, and the military stands by him because the generals are involved in illegal business. However, since the sanctions imposed by the USA and the EU, the government can hardly sell any oil and cannot obtain the foreign currency it needs to survive.
That is why the regime needs the gold that is stored in the Pemons' settlement area.
According to the UN, almost 1,000 pemons have fled to Brazil to escape the clashes. Most of them are now living in the protected areas of their fellow Brazilian tribesmen near the border town of Pacaraima. The United Nations has set up a transit camp there, distributing food and providing the refugees with mattresses and tarpaulins.
The shots at the indigenous people, which also killed Sorelis' mother, were fired at dawn on 22 February - one day before Venezuela's parliamentary president Juan Guaidó, who had proclaimed himself interim head of state in January on the basis of the constitution, wanted to bring convoys of aid supplies into the country. According to the UN, the security forces killed seven people in the clashes, including four indigenous people. The number of deaths may be much higher: Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, published a report on the situation in Venezuela at the beginning of July and wrote that she was "concerned about reports of a possible mass grave".
Pemon leaders who have fled to Brazil say that members of their community were taken away by the military and have since disappeared. The governor responsible for the region accused the indigenous people of "acts of terrorism". Maduro has not yet commented specifically on the allegations, accusing Human Rights Commissioner Bachelet of having bowed to "pressure from the USA". The document is full of "false allegations".
However, Bachelet, twice president of Chile, is a socialist and maintained good relations with Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chávez during her time in government. Indigenous authorities are "often exposed to threats and attacks by state actors", the Bachelet report states. Among the Pemones in particular, leaders are targeted by "targeted repression by state actors".
30,000 Pemones lived in Venezuela before the escalation, while around 800 had already settled in Brazil, where they call themselves Taurepan. They speak the same language and see themselves as one big family: "We have always travelled between the two countries," says Ivanete de Souza Affonso, the wife of a Brazilian cacique. That's the name of the indigenous leaders. "The border didn't exist for us." Thousands of indigenous people have fled to neighbouring countries. In their homeland, they suffer from hunger; children and the elderly die from influenza or malaria because there is no medicine.
In Venezuela, the Pemones used to live mainly from tourism: they hired themselves out as guides, ran restaurants and sold handicrafts. hen the economic and political crisis came to a head, the visitors stayed away. "What we grow is not enough to survive on," says René González, a refugee from the village of Kumarakapay.
The indigenous people tapped into a new source of income, which led to their current problems: "We opened small gold and diamond mines," says González. His people scoured rivers and gorges with pickaxes, sieves and shovels. They sold gold and gemstones to middlemen in the provincial capital of Santa Elena de Uairén, who in turn smuggled the goods abroad.
Today, gold is the only currency in the indigenous areas, says González. "The national currency, the bolívar, is worth nothing, and hyperinflation is eating up the money. Food and medicine are only traded in gold." There are dozens of illegal mines in the Canaima National Park alone. Satellite images show vast areas that resemble lunar landscapes. Rivers are contaminated with mercury; the miners use it to separate gold from the rock.
Last year, the environmental organisation SOS Orinoco, which is documenting the drama, informed Unesco about the overexploitation in Canaima. The organisation asked the government for a statement. Maduro did not respond.
The natural resources had already aroused the government's desires. Maduro wants to compensate for the loss of income due to the oil by selling gold and other natural resources - eight tonnes of gold stored in the central bank are said to have been sold in April, according to a report by Reuters. Turkey, a Spanish news portal reported, had assisted in the sale in the past.
Most of the gold comes from the Arco Minero, a mining region that stretches across the country. Various armed groups and criminal syndicates control the mines there.
"They force the indigenous people to work in the mines," says Bram Ebus, co-author of a study by the International Crisis Group. Some of the gold is bought up by the state, the rest is smuggled, and the armed forces cash in: "They facilitate business for illegal groups." Indigenous refugees report that soldiers demand tolls from smugglers. "The government wanted half of our income," says Kazike González.
The land of the Pemones borders the Arco Minero, but the government has never had as much power here as in other regions. Maduro's predecessor Chávezh had granted the indigenous people extensive rights. The Pemones were allowed to set up their own patrols and controlled the airport in the regional capital of Santa Elena. "Most of the indigenous people were Chávez supporters," says Kazike Alexis Romero, who headed the national indigenous organisation from 1999 to 2004.their relationship with the central power deteriorated after Chávez's death in 2013. "Maduro fears that control of the region is slipping away from him," says Romero.Ernesto Pulido, a chief fromKuma rakapay, says: "Politics has divided us." He adds: "Many caciques support Maduro; the government bribes them with gold and cars." Last year, however, an indigenous opposition politician was elected mayor of the administrative district to which the Pemonenland belongs - the government did not recognise him. In Kumarakapay, where the shooting took place, residents had put up a banner reading "Guaidó is president", report refugees.
When the opposition leader announced that aid from Brazil would be arriving in the country on 23 February, pemons set off for the border to escort the lorries. They were blocked by Maduro supporters. "It was a confrontation between indigenous people," says Kazike Pulido about the clash at the border.
One day before the planned handover of the food, the military intervened, says Pulido: "At three o'clock in the morning, soldiers entered our village." Three hours later, they returned. "They drove through the village in a convoy and fired around them," says Pulido. "They came to kill." The indigenous people had no chance to defend themselves: "Our only weapons are bows and arrows, and we only use them for hunting."
The indigenous people had previously stopped a jeep belonging to the military convoy and taken the four passengers prisoner. According to the UN Human Rights Commission report, "they were reportedly mistreated." In Santa Elena, the military brutally attacked anyone they considered to be an opponent of the government. The UN reports "excessive violence" against indigenous and non-indigenous people and quotes eyewitnesses: "The National Guard fired indiscriminately and at close range from armoured vehicles", even at the hospital.Soldiers, pro-government militias and gangs of thugs entered the city with armoured cars and tear gas, reports Pulido.
According to the Venezuelan human rights organisation Foro Penal, nine indigenous people were arrested by the secret service. Among them was Kazike Pulido, who says they were tortured in a barracks. "We were tied hand and foot for two days. They insulted us as 'damned Indians' and beat us." After his release, he hid in the mountains and a week later he fled to Brazil with his wife and child.
The indigenous people were not squeamish either: they arrested 42 members of the National Guard at the Santa Elena airport and then tortured them, two local residents told the news agency Reuters. The soldiers were allegedly forced to sit half-naked on piles of fire ants, which inflicted painful stings on them.
At least 14 indigenous people were injured in the clashes, according to eyewitnesses. As the hospital in the provincial capital of Santa Elena had neither bandages nor medication, the doctors sent the patients across the border, according to Pulido.
Most refugees in Brazil believe that the dispute over humanitarian aid in February was just a pretext for a large-scale purge. "Maduro now sees the chance to take back our country for good," says Alexis Romero, the former indigenous leader.
Behind the UN container village in Pacaraima, Brazil, lies one of the settlements where the refugees live. This is the beginning of a restricted military area. The indigenous people have posted guards.
The border is just a stone's throw away and new indigenous people are arriving from Venezuela every day. Most of them are fleeing because they lack food and medicine. "We have rallied the Brazilian caciques and asked them to take in the refugees," says Rafael Levy from the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR.
The pemones who have fled live in tents and huts left to them by their Brazilian relatives, some of whom have brought camping tents that they used to rent out to tourists. Three families have taken up residence in a wooden shed that was planned as a chicken coop.Two shotguns lean against the wall.Two days ago, he shot a jaguar, says one of the men.
There is an acrid smell of fire over the whole area, many hills are black and bare, in some places the vegetation is still on fire. The refugees torch the jungle in order to plant manioc and maize on the site. This causes horror among Brazilian environmentalists. The caciques of the Venezuelan pemons assure us that slash-and-burn is common practice in their homeland. The Brazilian environmental authority is apparently turning a blind eye.
On the Venezuelan side, the border area has been militarised and the Santa Elena airport has been placed under the control of the armed forces. "Maduro's soldiers have occupied our villages," says Kazike Pulido, adding that Santa Elena is in the hands of criminal gangs who have allied themselves with the armed forces.
International human rights organisations want to help the refugees to sue Maduro for the massacre. At the end of March, the US human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of the murdered US politician Robert Kennedy, was in Pacaraima. She wants to help the Pemones take the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Most refugees have no illusions about the prospects of success. "Maduro is firmly in the saddle," says Kazike Pulido. He does not believe he will return any time soon: "There is no future in Venezuela."
For the orphans of the murdered indigenous couple from Kumarakapay, the odyssey has only just begun. The Kazike Pulidom wants to relocate them to another refugee camp, they are to learn Portuguese and go to a Brazilian school.
This idea is difficult for 16-year-old Sorelis and her siblings. "I'm terribly homesick," says the girl. "I really only want one thing: to go home as quickly as possible."
Jens Glüsing
DER SPIEGEL Nr. 31 / 27. 07. 2019