Amid the severe crisis that Venezuela is facing due to the drop of oil prices in 2015, the local government turned its sight into the second highest natural resource of the country: gold. In 2016, Venezuelan authorities opened the “Orinoco Mining Arch” to get the international certification of approximately 7000 tons of gold and other minerals.
With the entrance of criminal groups in the region around 2009, inhabitants of the main mining zones of Guayana have seen a critical change of their way of living: extorsion, killings, modern slavery and constant fear is common among guayanes.
On March 4th 2016, 28 people from Tumeremo, one of the towns in Guayana, disappeared when the were going to a mine. Tired of being ignored by authorities, their relatives blocked a road connecting Venezuela with Brazil asking for justice. It was 10 days later when the government found 20 bodies, killed and buried in a massive grave. The story doesn’t end at this point; retaliation, fear, and the war between criminal fans to take control over mines was the main reason of the massacre, and this was just a message, a golden message.
