Martín, 10 years old, digs with his 9 and 11 year old cousins in a mine open air in Callaotown of Venezuela deafened by the roar of mills that crush stones to search gold. He doesn’t know how to read, but he quickly detects golden traces in the ground.
Mining for gold in the dusty settlements of this town in the state of Bolívar (southern) begins as a game for children, but ends up being a matter of survival, denounce human rights activists.
Sitting in puddles of mud, dozens of minors move pans – wooden trays used in artisanal mining – between stones, glass and even garbage in search of gold nuggets that adhere to mercury, which is polluting and harmful to health.
Due to their size, the boys are responsible for getting into holes to bite ‘material’, as they call the precious metal. They work squatting, shirtless, covered in layers of mud.
“When the earth is like chewing gum, ‘the material’ comes. We put everything that looks good in a bag and wash it in water, what is gold stays stuck to the quicksilver (mercury)”, explains Martín, whose identity was changed for security.
With metal buckets, Martín and his cousins dredge a well to prevent it from flooding with water. When it is almost dry, they begin to take out dirt and stones, searching for gold.
Under the harsh sun and his back bent by the bag he is carrying, the boy walks as best he can to another nearby well and continues his journey. “job”.
“The worst conditions”
Martín lives in El Perú, a hamlet in El Callao. He has never been to school and barely scribbles his name and a few words. Only one of his cousins, the 9-year-old, receives an education “because his mother forces him to.”
“I prefer to get gold than go to school, my dad says that money is at work,” account . “With what we earn here I buy my own things, shoes, clothes, sometimes knick-knacks.”
Most children say that their “dream” is to be a miner.
Carlos Trapani, general coordinator of the NGO Cecodap, defender of the rights of children and adolescents, explains that child labor in mines takes place under “the worst conditions.”
“There are cases of exploitation”says Trapani, author of the report ‘Dangers and human rights violations of children and adolescents on the border and mining activities’. “They have normalized conditions in which children are clearly at risk, not only risks of accidents, endemic diseases, but also vulnerable to other forms of violence such as exploitation, sexual abuse.”
A thousand children work in the mines, according to the core in this region of the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB).
“It is a matter of survival (…). The family environment focuses not on promoting the preparation, professionalization, of the kids (children), but on survival”says Eumelis Moya, coordinator of the Human Rights Center at UCAB Guayana.
“I have met with parents (…) who say: ‘I prefer it with me working than alone at home, because it takes me out on the street and I get bad meetings.’”
Activists and environmentalists denounce a “ecocide” due to mining exploitation in southern Venezuela, as well as the presence of guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers.
“It scared me when the shootings broke out and there were deaths, I have been working and things like that happen,” relata Gustavo, another 11-year-old mining boy.
The authorities have reported the destruction of numerous illegal camps, especially in the Yapacana National Park, in the neighboring state of Amazonas, where two people died last week in a confrontation between illegal miners and the Army.
“Migrate to the mine”
Gustavo goes with a broom in front of the El Perú liquor store, sweeping away the dust. He fills three buckets and goes to the river with his three brothers, ages 8, 11 and 13, to wash it with a pan looking for gold.
Since everything in the town is paid in gold, he hopes that the days of partying have left residue on the ground.
“The other day I grabbed a grass (1 gram, equivalent to US$50),” says the boy, who has worked in the mine since he was 6 years old and does not go to school either. “I give that money to my mother to buy food and sometimes she buys something for us.”
Trapani regrets that “students and teachers” of schools have “migrated to the mine” in the face of the country’s acute economic crisis.
And the pandemic made everything worse.
Gustavo’s mother, 28 years old and a miner since she was 12, explains that it was at that moment when her children abandoned their education: “When classes started they were rebellious, they didn’t want to go and they didn’t go anymore.”
Hope that one day “Enter school again.”well “There are always risks” in the mine.
Source: AFP
Source: Gestion
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