Tensions Rise in Venezuela's Amazon | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Tensions Rise in Venezuela’s Amazon

August 10, 1998 | Bart Jones | Associated Press

El Dorado, Venezuela — The Pemon Indians rolled a huge log across the highway to block traffic. The tribe, some dressed in red loin cloths and their faces streaked with paint, was defending its piece of paradise.

Tensions are rising in Venezuela’s Amazon rain forests, where Indians and environmentalists are clashing with mining companies and government officials who want to exploit some of the richest gold deposits in Latin America and build towns and tourist hotels in the wilderness.

Rapid economic development “is going to mean the death of the jungles and of the indigenous people,” said Pemon leader Jose Luis Gonzalez.

Workers with chain saws and bulldozers recently started cutting a swath through the forest in southeastern Venezuela for a 470-mile high-voltage electricity line that will be the lifeline of the projects.

During the last two weeks, about 400 Indians trying to stop the line periodically blocked traffic on a highway used by construction crews as national guardsmen stood by in riot gear.

The $110 million line is to provide hydroelectric power to northern Brazil, remote communities in eastern Venezuela and scores of gold mining companies eager to work the pristine Imataca rain forest reserve.

They’re being drawn by gold deposits thought to be worth billions of dollars and that over the centuries have attracted explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh looking for the legendary golden city of “El Dorado.”

Last year, President Rafael Caldera authorized large-scale logging and gold and diamond mining in nearly half of Imataca.

The 9 million acre reserve — twice the size of Switzerland — sits in southern Bolivar state and boasts a variety of wildlife that few places in the world can match: jaguars, pumas, red howler monkeys, bearded bluebells, neon-colored butterflies and the world’s largest eagle, the endangered harpy.

Imataca “is one of the most gorgeous endemic forests I’ve ever seen,” said Mary Lou Goodwin of the Audubon Society in Venezuela. Nature lovers and scientists from around the world come to visit it.

The power line also will slice through Canaima National Park, one of about 100 U.N.-designated World Heritage Sites. The park is home to the mysterious flat-topped mountains that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure story “The Lost World.”

Government officials see the region as a vast untapped source of wealth that could help alleviate the poverty that afflicts more than half of Venezuela’s population. Thousands of jobs would be created through projects including a proposed 500-room hotel to be built on sacred Pemon lands in Canaima.

Authorities deny their plans will wreak widespread environmental and cultural destruction. They contend the damage should actually decrease since large companies will help control thousands of illegal miners who poison rivers with mercury, knock down trees with high-pressure water hoses and create lawless boom towns rife with drugs, prostitution and violence.

“There are a lot of unfounded fears,” said the Environmental Ministry’s Santos Carrasco.

Environmentalists and Indians say they aren’t opposed to all development in the jungles, but the government plan is too much, too fast, and officials won’t properly regulate the mining and logging companies.

Bringing large-scale development to still mostly unexplored Imataca is “sort of like destroying a treasure chest before you even know what you’re destroying,” said Atossa Soltani of California-based Amazon Watch.

Bulldozers already have leveled some of the Indians’ yucca, corn, banana and pineapple crops. The Pemons and three other tribes say they plan to keep shutting down the highway until the government halts the electricity project.

They also want officials to overturn last year’s mining and logging decree, grant them title to what they say are millions of acres of their ancestral lands and recognize their right to decide the future of the region.

Pemon leader Lloyd Henrito said, “We’re the owners of this land. We were here before Colombus, but in the eyes of the Venezuelan government we are nothing.”

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