We live next door to a criminalised state. The formal structures which normally sustain governmental operations in any nation have been subverted in Venezuela by entrenched corruption. That corruption affects not just civilian institutions, but also the armed services and the police, the guardians of the state. In fact central government has lost control of swathes of territory to criminal gangs, some of it abutting our border.
The week before last we reported on a press release issued by the GDF saying that a routine joint patrol comprising ranks from both the army and the police had come under fire from the Venezuelan shore while they were on the Cuyuni River. Fire was returned, the statement said, and no Guyanese was injured. What was significant was that the military believed the gunfire emanated from Sindicato gang members, in addition to which they added that it was not a new occurrence. At least the assurance was given that “aggressive” joint patrols by the Guyanese security forces had since been intensified in the area, and one can only hope that this really does mean frequent in the ordinary sense of that term, and that they are also exploring other measures as was claimed.
The Sindicatos are criminal groups in control of gold mining on the other side of the Cuyuni, facilitated by the government in Caracas. Like the Venezuelan National Guard and army before them, they treat the Cuyuni as a Venezuelan waterway, and have menaced and attacked Guyanese on the river, as well as raiding our miners on land. It is worth repeating that under the 1899 Award the whole of the Cuyuni from where it meets the Acarabisi up as far as the Wenamu belongs to Guyana.
Former President Chávez terminated the contracts for foreign mining companies in Venezuela in 2011, and his successor sought to encourage small-scale mining in order to bolster the economy in circumstances of a dramatic drop in the price of oil and subsequently the imposition of US sanctions. While gold is what is mined along the Guyana border, in other parts of what is called the Orinoco Mining Arc other minerals are extracted such as diamonds, coltan, iron and bauxite.
The Caracas Chronicles has alleged that the state-run mining company Minerven, which has been sanctioned by the US, was a front for the criminal gangs which mined gold. These worked in league with military forces exploiting the natural resources while paying the soldiers bribes. Furthermore, according to the news outlet, the gangs “impose[d] the terror methods of Venezuelan prisons on innocent citizens and miners.” A portion of the gold mined went to the state through Minervan, the Chronicles said. It called it a form of ‘blood gold’.
A UN report two months ago confirmed that some mines were largely controlled by criminal gangs, and that these “impose[d] their own rules through violence and extortion.” They exploited, beat and even killed workers, the investigation found. Not only had security and military forces failed to prevent crimes, they had also participated in some violence against miners. Of the 149 people reported to have died in or around the mines between March 2016 and 2020, the security forces were implicated in half the incidents, said the report.
That is the Amazonian interior. But a strange story from Reuters published in our newspaper last week pointed to the corruption of naval and other security officials on the maritime front. It involved theft on board a ship owned by a Guyanese company no less, although it was not registered in this country, and the murder of its captain. In the end a Venezuelan state court ordered the arrest of three sailors from the Venezuelan navy and four soldiers from the National Guard who have been charged with murder, aggravated robbery and illegal possession of firearms. The vessel had set out from Georgetown on a mission to purchase Venezuelan fuel, a risky enterprise in the current circumstances, but it had broken down off the coast of Venezuela. It had been held there, and some of the officials who had boarded it during the period it was moored were the ones who were arrested.
The news agency commented that gangs and paramilitary groups run much of Venezuela’s black-market economy, and that now “the public sector is in on rackets ranging from drug trafficking to bribes and kickbacks that grease the wheels of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry.” In addition, there has been a large increase in piracy off the coast of Venezuela, according to Control Risks, a London consultancy quoted by Reuters, while the International Maritime Bureau has said that the authority in Puerto La Cruz (where the ship was being held) failed to respond to captains’ calls for help in the case of two separate tanker heists in 2018.
The soldiers and sailors who guard coastal facilities earn very little, and so the temptation to engage in criminal activity to supplement a wage that cannot maintain them is very great. Reuters said that police and military officials had “grown infamous for theft and violence,” while the UN report said that the security forces had systematically committed extrajudicial killings, torture and various human rights abuses, “likely under orders from senior government officials.”
In a country where the economy is in a crisis, where so many people cannot get enough to feed themselves or their children, where the health sector is in a critical state, where many are exposed to the depredations of criminal gangs and cannot depend on the state authorities to keep them safe and where there is a shortage of almost everything, one would expect protests or disturbances. Well, last week there was. Previous demonstrations had had a political character, since they had backed self-declared interim president Mr Juan Guaidó, who is recognised as such by most of the western world. However, once it became clear he had as much hope of dislodging Mr Maduro as he would have of cutting down a silk cotton tree with a pair of scissors, the public became disillusioned, and the demonstrators melted away.
Last week they returned, beginning in the state of Yaracuy and then subsequently in other states across the country too. They protested against the shortage of fuel, the frequent power cuts, the poor water supplies and the lack of cooking gas. These shortages have existed for a long time, but according to the BBC the coronavirus pandemic has made them more acute, with the lockdowns exacerbating the situation. People who have to stay at home more than usual can’t get gas for cooking, and there is anger that water is not regularly available for the washing of hands.
According to the BBC too, the demonstrators were joined in some places by those protesting about the poor conditions in the nation’s hospitals, and by teachers campaigning for better salaries. They all were met with the customary tactic of tear gas and rubber bullets. In the meantime Mr Maduro is waiting for a supply of fuel, courtesy of Iran, but even if it does arrive it will not be nearly enough to solve his problem.
One has to be concerned about the situation of the ordinary people in Venezuela and the hardship and institutional breakdown they are enduring. Unless they get some relief it is impossible to predict what direction events might take. It may be that they will continue to suffer without taking action, or try to migrate. From Guyana’s security point of view what would not be in our interest would be an implosion in Venezuela. At least with the revived shiprider agreement with the US we have some cover on the maritime front, but the Cuyuni and Region One borders are a different matter. One can only wish that the GDF and the relevant political sections in government are applying their analytical skills to a worst case scenario in terms of the breakdown of order to our west in the hopefully unlikely event that this occurs.