Las Claritas, Sifontes municipality of Bolivar state, is perhaps the only people in Venezuela where there isprosperity and where more than 400 people have come each month this year. Cash is not scarce, no food and no work for more than three minimum wages per week, but is also the union that controls the business and security in an area offered by Nicolas Maduro to a transnational company won a lawsuit to nation Gold Reserve.

One of the 35,000 to 45,000 miners work in the granting of Las Cristinas in Sifontes municipality Las Claritas. The government recently signed an operating agreement with Gold Reserve transnational │ Photo Clavel Rangel

By Clavel Rangel Bolivar Jiménez│Pitazo

Las Claritas. What more has cost barefoot Antonio is 24 hours a day. Monday through Friday, uniform this man is mud and two shorts that neither strives to change because water and mud, no pants resists.

Three months ago he worked in a marquetry in Guarico state. It's the work you're passionate about. He made with aluminum and glass figures, a trade which treasured family and inflation of 300 percent in Venezuela has forced him to leave.

It is part of the drama of the 4 million Venezuelans, according to official figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE), have joined to poverty since the beginning of the government of Nicolas Maduro.

Now is a mining over Sifontes municipality, in Bolivar state, a thousand kilometers road from his hometown. One of the 35,000 to 45,000 who have arrived in the last five years to replace pick, shovel, machinery and hoses technified activity was raised for Las Cristinas, the fifth largest gold deposit in South America project.

There are no air conditioners, no beds, no bathrooms, ceramics, or clean water, but plenty of gold, food and money, the Venezuelan form of "La Pampa" in Peru.

Is now home to professional thousands, housewives, technicians and engineers who have left their offices in the city to adopt a new lifestyle that goes by sleeping in hammocks and take care of malaria, the disease more prevalent and more lethal south of Bolivar; 80% of all cases occur in this municipality and, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Health, 18,805 cases have been exported this year from the state of Bolivar to other locations.

The effort, thinks Antonio and five of his companions, worth. Today is Thursday and rest of the day at the Four Dead (one of the richest) mine because the head of the cooperative, head of this group of miners came to town to get oil.

Those who call the boss before he was like them and, like so many in Las Claritas, with a couple of months may amount drainer (Picador rock), to hire their own staff to work an area. The rise has its cons: to stand up for all to the union, which must pay vaccine and respond in case one of yours out of the rules.

So they are relaxed. Passing the gate of Las Cristinas, a high firing squad is with the logo of the Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), five territories are controlled by an organization that villagers called "unions".Gunmen, motorbike, which guarantee order: there is no theft, no one is exceeded with a woman and another group that does not come to try to impose. In exchange for? A percentage of the gain by making the "summary" (compilation of all gold processing in the week) and sometimes control over the wealthiest territories.

This "union" in Las Claritas has earned the "respect". Unlike other mining areas in Las Cristinas, people feel calm. "At first it is difficult, they are the law, in the end one gets used and ends up being better than other places in dispute" reflects a miner who calls Alonso.

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To reach the village of Las Claritas, leaving Ciudad Guayana, you must pass at least six checkpoints in the National Guard, Army and Police Bolivar state (PEB).

It is in this area where a result of the slaughter of Tumeremo (March 2016) President Nicolas Maduro declared as a special security zone (additional to that provided by the Organic Law on National Security reinforcement), where the illegality flourishes and violence also.

According to monitoring Adón Soto, a leading party veteran Radical Cause, this year have killed 53 miners trapped in the conflict for control of the mines in Bolivar state; 20 of them in the Sifontes municipality and 13 in the city Angostura.

In contrast to the military deployment and passing the towns of Guasipati, Tumeremo, El Callao and El Dorado, about five hours drive from Ciudad Guayana and 12 from Caracas, this is also the land of smuggling. Gasoline, food, and, of course mercury gold.

The indicator of prosperity is the construction boom, the constant traffic through the passenger terminal of dozens of resellers food - when scarcity reaching alarming levels in Guyana - arrived in Las Claritas to find products disappeared from the shelves: rice, wheat flour, corn flour, shampoo and bath soap.

According to the Community Council of San Isidro, 400 people arrive monthly to this mining town at kilometer 88, just 40 kilometers from the border with Guyana Essequibo or four hours line with Brazil.

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According to the feasibility study of the Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana (CVG), it is estimated that in Las Cristinas there are 323 million tons of ore, of which the mines Host and Four Dead (today Antonio washes the earth) contain 286 millions of tons.

It's right there where the government has committed its operation with Gold Reserve, one of the more than 30 multinationals with which the Government has signed letters of intent. Not just any agreement, considering that Venezuela owes 769 million dollars as compensation for arbitrary nationalization of the Canadian mining concession.

See also: Venezuela does not want to pay the Canadian miner Crystallex

The camp, which in theory is guarded by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), the presence of the FANB is practically a salute to the flag, or a tax, as applicable.

Plaza El Minero, where artisans expect the cars to go to at least four of the mines Las Cristinas, walk daily in front of one of the plates that transnational mining left in his first foray into Venezuelan territory.

Plaza El Minero where workers await the arrival of the truck that transports them to the fields. Photo Clavel Rangel

The abrupt termination of the concession by the government of Hugo Chavez, after six years has cost Venezuela a fortune that the Government has traded handing the award again.

The state Minerven president Luis Herrera, does not believe that the incursion of transnational meaningful because the intention is to profit from the stock exchanges. "It's what they've always done", says a resident of the area, also Minerven worker and leader of the "Anti-Imperialist Front South of Bolivar state" who prefers anonymity because he has been threatened.

Herrera says that the agreement with Gold Reserve is like doing business with a "clean". Because "this company is going to get money to the Venezuelan State in the stock markets to lend to the State for the State to pay the demand, and silver will look out for them to invest in the project."

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In this area, where the government has promised the development of a joint venture (with 55% of its shares) and where the new settlers arriving by bus, after hours of travel, with a bag in tow. Few know what is Gold Reserve, the Arc Minero not know, what we do know is that there is work without intermediaries.

The economic crisis has displaced hundreds of Venezuelans from the east and the west of the country, to the Sifontes municipality of Bolivar state, whose main economic activity is mining. Photo Clavel Rangel

In Las Cristinas run news three days past due, perhaps because of the weak phone signal is only possible through the state company and analog telephones.

Paradise, as many call it , also lives outside the Arco Minero del Orinoco (AMO) which commits 12% of the national territory and which has been signed bypassing the consultation of the National Assembly and indigenous peoples.

See also: Venezuela does not want to pay the Canadian miner Crystallex

Sifontes Mayor Carlos Chancellor, recognize that they are living a "visible unquantified but significant demographic explosion". "In 88 (kilometer, Las Claritas) there is an invasion of new people who come from all over to work the mine, to stand before the state of national crisis. Gold represents a hope in this context. "

Migration, according to the INE ceased in the 80s, has reemerged and in areas like Las Claritas, caused problems. "They are people who require services. We have problems with garbage collection, with the road, water demand, more demand for electricity, we must make investments. "

For Anti-Imperialist Front leaders, who prefer to reserve its name because of hired killers in the area, agreements with transnational looked to come. Even they believe that the ruin of Minerven was deliberate to justify the entry of the AMO."We always denounce that was the intention."

"Trading in the stock market is what these companies have done a lifetime," says the technician who says that all the violence and anarchy is linked to transnational landing. "Even those who murder are victims of transnational manipulation.At the end they will come for them, because they have to do cleaning, sweeping, clean the area so what means? Eviction of a number of mining and murder of many, that somehow, through manipulation, they did seize several sectors. "

In contrast to the mining anarchy, the Anti-Imperialist Front believes that the AMO could bring "some order", "but that is not how many people have to die? (...) For me this is betraying what Chavez raised. Pdvsa bled and broke the industry. "

The president of Minerven, one of Chavez supporters that was set aside by the government's dome, theorizes that the lack of control of the southern municipalities of the country began with the deinstitutionalization of state mining. Why?"This company was like a mayor for three municipalities. That the government lost and has to rescue him. "

The order has promised to AMO, says Herrera, who come accompanied by a reindustrialization process that miners can not agree.

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Light dawns in Las Cristinas and Antonio counts the days to go to visit his wife. Pedro Perez, an employee of the "company" also left his job at CVG Bauxilum, the state-owned refiner of alumina to resolve the family digging in the earth.

Photo Clavel Rangel

"Here you win your silver two to three times more than they would earn a basic wage in the city," says Pedro. No longer imagine working for a formal company as proposed by Maduro through AMO.

The deputy to the National Assembly, Américo De Grazia, has been insistent proposals for the redevelopment of mining: bring technical expertise, research universities, integration with communities and identify areas of lower environmental impact.

Although the deputy of the Legislative Council of Bolivar state Psuv, Aldrin Torres says that the mining census has been successful in Las Cristinas nobody knows of such registration. 40 thousand associations, he notes, have enrolled in the Government's initiative to reorganize mining in Roscio, El Callao and Sifontes.

But in the meantime, drill more than 100 meters deep blow resonates with the water hoses on the rock. And thousands of hectares have been devoured.

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