El Gobierno de Venezuela anunció este jueves una serie de nuevos movimientos en el alto mando militar de la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB), que incluyen la designación de comandantes regionales en varias Zonas de Defensa Integral (ZODI) y Regiones Estratégicas (REDI), en lo que representa una remodelación de la estructura castrense desde que Delcy Rodríguez asumió la presidencia encargada del país a principios de enero de 2026.
Las designaciones fueron difundidas por el comandante estratégico operacional de la FANB, general Domingo Hernández Lárez, a través de su canal de Telegram, con la llegada de oficiales como el mayor general Pablo Lizano Colmenter al frente de la REDI de Los Andes y el mayor general Erasmo Ramos Iriza al mando de la REDI Oriental. También se anunciaron cambios en las ZODI de Miranda, Barinas, Delta Amacuro, Yaracuy y otras regiones, en lo que se describe como un reordenamiento de los líderes militares a nivel regional.
Estos cambios son los primeros que ejecuta Rodríguez en el contexto de una instabilidad política e institucional única para Venezuela, tras la operación militar que culminó con la captura del expresidente Nicolás Maduro por fuerzas externas e impulsó una crisis de liderazgo y sucesión en el país.
Al mismo tiempo, algunos analistas señalan que la reorganización militar responde a la necesidad de asegurar el control territorial y la lealtad de la fuerza armada, especialmente en estados fronterizos y claves para la seguridad interna, en un escenario marcado por tensiones externas y presiones internacionales.
Estas decisiones también subrayan un cambio en el enfoque del Gobierno al equilibrar la figura política de Rodríguez con el mandato de comandantes militares de confianza, en un intento de estabilizar el poder ante la mirada extranjera y dentro del propio estamento castrense.
En medio de la transición en Venezuela, la líder opositora María Corina Machado y la presidenta interina Delcy Rodríguez compiten por influencia ante Estados Unidos, generando incertidumbre sobre el rumbo democrático del país.
La crisis política venezolana vivió un nuevo capítulo cuando María Corina Machado, líder de la oposición y ganadora del Premio Nobel de la Paz 2025, se reunió con el expresidente de los Estados Unidos Donald Trump en Washington en un intento por consolidar apoyo internacional para una transición democrática.
Machado, que aseguró que la transición de Venezuela hacia la democracia es “irreversible”, hizo un gesto simbólico al entregarle su medalla del Nobel a Trump, reforzando su agradecimiento por la intervención estadounidense que contribuyó a la captura de Nicolás Maduro. Sin embargo, Trump mantuvo su posición de que Machado no cuenta con el apoyo interno necesario para liderar el país, incluso tras elogiar la figura de Delcy Rodríguez, exvicepresidenta de Maduro y actual presidenta interina, calificándola como “fantástica” en una conversación reciente.
Mientras Machado busca posicionar a su aliado opositor, Edmundo González, como presidente legítimo de Venezuela —candidato reconocido por algunos como ganador de las elecciones de 2024—, Rodríguez ha intentado equilibrar su discurso entre críticas a Estados Unidos y apertura diplomática, incluida la posibilidad de cooperación energética.
El enfrentamiento político refleja tensiones internas y la complejidad de la transición venezolana, con actores internacionales tratando de influir en el futuro político del país. Aunque Machado sostiene que el gobierno interino es “temporal”, la disputa por reconocimiento y legitimidad sigue en curso.
El gobierno de Rusia expresó su preocupación por el aumento de la tensión en torno a Venezuela y advirtió que una escalada del conflicto podría derivar en consecuencias difíciles de prever para la estabilidad regional y el escenario internacional.
La advertencia fue emitida por el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores ruso, en un contexto marcado por el endurecimiento de las acciones de Estados Unidos contra el gobierno del presidente Nicolás Maduro. Según Moscú, la acumulación de presiones políticas, económicas y militares eleva el riesgo de un deterioro mayor de la situación en el Caribe y América Latina.
Autoridades rusas señalaron que el uso de medidas coercitivas y la falta de canales efectivos de diálogo pueden conducir a errores estratégicos con impactos que trascienden el ámbito venezolano. En ese sentido, insistieron en la necesidad de priorizar soluciones diplomáticas y respetar los principios del derecho internacional.
Rusia, que mantiene una alianza política y estratégica con Caracas, reiteró su respaldo a la soberanía venezolana y llamó a evitar acciones que puedan agravar la crisis. Para el Kremlin, la actual coyuntura representa una amenaza no solo para Venezuela, sino también para el equilibrio geopolítico regional.
El pronunciamiento se produce en medio de un escenario de alta tensión entre Washington y Caracas, caracterizado por sanciones, declaraciones cruzadas y movimientos militares en zonas estratégicas del Caribe. Analistas internacionales advierten que la advertencia rusa refleja el temor a una escalada que involucre indirectamente a potencias globales.
Hasta el momento, el gobierno venezolano no ha respondido públicamente al comunicado ruso. Sin embargo, el posicionamiento de Moscú vuelve a poner en evidencia que la crisis venezolana ha dejado de ser un asunto estrictamente interno para convertirse en un tema de alcance internacional.
Las tensiones entre Estados Unidos y Venezuela alcanzaron un nuevo nivel este martes (16), luego de que el presidente estadounidense Donald Trump afirmara que el país sudamericano se encuentra “completamente cercado” y anunciara un bloqueo total a los buques petroleros que entren o salgan del territorio venezolano.
En una publicación realizada en su red social Truth Social, Trump acusó a Venezuela de “robar a los Estados Unidos” y aseguró que la medida forma parte de una estrategia más amplia para aumentar la presión sobre el gobierno del presidente Nicolás Maduro.
El anuncio se produce en un contexto de creciente escalada militar en el Caribe, donde desde el mes de agosto Washington ha desplegado un importante aparato militar. Inicialmente, la Casa Blanca justificó estas operaciones como parte de acciones contra el tráfico internacional de drogas, aunque las declaraciones recientes del mandatario estadounidense refuerzan el componente político y económico del conflicto.
Trump afirmó que Venezuela estaría rodeada “por la mayor armada ya reunida en la historia de América del Sur”, y sostuvo que el gobierno de Maduro utiliza los recursos petroleros para financiar lo que calificó como un “régimen ilegítimo”, además de actividades vinculadas al terrorismo, el narcotráfico, la trata de personas, asesinatos y secuestros.
Con base en estas acusaciones, el presidente de Estados Unidos anunció un bloqueo total y completo de todos los petroleiros que hayan sido objeto de sanciones y que operen en rutas de entrada o salida de Venezuela. La decisión podría tener impactos significativos en la ya debilitada economía venezolana, altamente dependiente de la exportación de petróleo.
Hasta el momento, el gobierno venezolano no ha emitido una respuesta oficial a las declaraciones de Trump. Analistas internacionales advierten que la medida podría profundizar el aislamiento del país y aumentar la tensión regional, con posibles repercusiones en los mercados energéticos y en la estabilidad política del Caribe y América Latina.
Caracas (EFE).- El ministro de Defensa de Venezuela, Vladimir Padrino López, afirmó este sábado que la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB) está cada día «más que preparada» para dar una «respuesta contundente» a aquel que se «atreva a agredir» al país, que se mantiene alerta por el despliegue militar de Estados Unidos en el mar Caribe, visto por Caracas como un intento de propiciar un cambio de régimen.
«Una Fuerza Armada, hoy más que nunca, cohesionada, unida al pueblo, como nunca antes en la historia de Venezuela. Una Fuerza Armada cada día más profesional, más popular y más preparada para dar una respuesta contundente a aquel que se atreva a agredir la integridad de la patria», manifestó Padrino, en una transmisión del canal estatal Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).
El titular de Defensa manifestó que, «bajo el liderazgo» del presidente Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela se va a defender «cuando sea necesario» para «mantener íntegra» la patria.
«No es una revolución desarmada»
Más temprano, el secretario general del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, afirmó que el país está en «una revolución pacífica, pero no es una revolución desarmada».
Durante una juramentación de comandos de comunidad bolivarianos, transmitida desde el estado Monagas (este) por el canal estatal Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), Cabello explicó que el presidente Nicolás Maduro ordenó, hace meses, una «resistencia activa prolongada», pero también la «ofensiva permanente» para defender Venezuela.
El ministro del Interior y Justicia de Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, en una fotografía de archivo. EFE/ Miguel Gutiérrez
«Una resistencia activa prolongada. ¿Qué significa? El país no se paraliza. Seguimos trabajando, disfrutando, seguimos haciendo lo que hacemos todos los días en este país, pero pendientes de los detalles. (…) No nos podemos dejar arrinconar por nadie», expresó Cabello.
«Cuatro meses intensos de amenazas»
Asimismo, afirmó que han sido «cuatro meses intensos de amenazas», en referencia al inicio del despliegue militar en el Caribe por parte de Estados Unidos, país al que acusó de ejercer «terrorismo psicológico» contra la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana y contra los venezolanos.
«Todos los días una amenaza. ¿Por qué lo hacen? Porque creen que nos van a doblegar por el miedo. Y no nos conocen. No saben de qué estamos hechos», subrayó el también ministro de Interior.
El ministro del Interior y Justicia de Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, en una fotografía de archivo. EFE/ Miguel Gutiérrez
En este contexto, el considerado número dos del chavismo auguró una «gran victoria» frente a Estados Unidos, al tiempo que advirtió que «el que se meta con Venezuela debe tener muy claro que no será una cosa de 48 horas, de tres días, no será una cosa de un mes».
«Si no se meten con nosotros, perfecto. Si se meten con nosotros, ahí estamos», señaló Cabello, quien hizo jurar a los presentes su compromiso de «asegurar la defensa» de Venezuela y «derrotar al imperialismo».
Mil nuevos militares juramentados
Venezuela juramentó este sábado a unos 1.000 militares, de entre 18 y 22 años, para hacer «frente a cualquier circunstancia» en medio de las tensiones con Estados Unidos, que mantiene un despliegue aeronaval en el mar Caribe que Nicolás Maduro interpreta como un intento de propiciar un cambio de régimen, por lo que ha llamado a la defensa del territorio.
En una transmisión del canal estatal Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), el comandante general de la Guardia de Honor Presidencial (GHP) y director de la Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (DGCIM), Javier Marcano Tábata, dijo que la juramentación «implica un compromiso» en estos momentos cuando el «imperialismo amenaza de manera ilegal, arbitraria, mentirosa».
«¿Juran ustedes mantener la libertad, la independencia y la integridad territorial? ¿Juran ustedes lealtad absoluta al presidente constitucional de Venezuela, comandante en jefe de las Fuerza Nacional Bolivariana?», expresó Marcano Tábata.
Tensión entre Venezuela y EE.UU.
El viernes, Maduro reiteró que la «amenaza y agresión imperialista» ha sido desproporcionada, innecesaria e ilegal, «a la luz de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas y del derecho internacional».
Además, pidió a los cuerpos policiales estudiar, tanto en la teoría como en la práctica, todo lo relacionado con la «resistencia popular prolongada» y también «todas las formas de lucha armada popular, militar, policial».
El gobernante venezolano sostuvo que en cada institución policial del país debe haber «un plan de ofensiva permanente».
Estados Unidos mantiene un despliegue militar en el Caribe, cerca de la frontera con Venezuela, bajo el argumento de combatir el narcotráfico, pero que Venezuela ha denunciado como una «amenaza» que busca propiciar un cambio de Gobierno.
Berlín (EFE).- El Instituto Nobel noruego, que asiste al Comité que concede el Premio Nobel de la Paz, afirmó este sábado que la galardonada opositora venezolana María Corina Machado asistirá en persona a la ceremonia de entrega el próximo día 10 de diciembre en Oslo, según les ha asegurado ella misma.
«Hablamos con ella la pasada noche y nos dijo que estará en Oslo», dijo a EFE el responsable de comunicación del Instituto Nobel, Erik Aasheim.
El representante destacó que la institución no podía proporcionar ningún otro detalle sobre el viaje de Machado, que vive en la clandestinidad en Venezuela, ni sobre el momento de su llegada, por razones de seguridad.
El Gobierno de Paraguay anunció esta semana que el presidente Santiago Peña viajará a Noruega para acompañar a Machado a recibir el Premio Nobel de la Paz 2025, igual que harán los presidentes de Panamá, José Raúl Mulino; y Ecuador, Daniel Noboa
Machado fue galardonada con el Premio Nobel de la Paz 2025 «por su incansable labor en la promoción de los derechos democráticos del pueblo venezolano y por su lucha por lograr una transición justa y pacífica de la dictadura a la democracia», anunció el Comité Nobel noruego el pasado 10 de octubre.
El Comité Nobel noruego declaró el pasado 14 de noviembre que Machado ha dejado claro que viajará a Oslo para recibir el premio.
Sin embargo, el líder del Comité Nobel, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, consideró, en declaraciones al canal público NRK, que se trata de «un viaje peligroso porque el régimen de Venezuela ha manifestado que quiere quitársela de en medio», por lo que dijo esperar que se garantice la seguridad de la opositora y pueda llegar a Noruega, pero también regresar al país.
Machado declaró el pasado mes de octubre al diario noruego ‘Dagens Næringsliv’ que para poder viajar a este país nórdico, Venezuela debía ser «libre» y dijo que mientras Nicolás Maduro estuviese en el poder no podía dejar el lugar en el que se encuentra por motivos de seguridad.
«No puedo dejar el lugar donde me escondo porque hay amenazas directas contra mi vida», afirmó.
U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno declared this Thursday (14) in Cartagena, Colombia, that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will not remain in power until December. Speaking at the 10th Colombian Business Congress, Moreno stressed that Venezuela needs a leader who truly cares for its people and reinforced Washington’s tough stance against the Chavista regime.
“We will not tolerate a narcoterrorist who inflicts harm on the United States. We will treat terrorists the way the U.S. has treated them in the past. I don’t see him in office beyond the end of this year,” said Moreno, joined by former Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón and fellow U.S. Senator Rubén Gallego.
The remarks come amid growing pressure against Maduro. On August 7, the U.S. government announced a $50 million reward (around R$ 270 million) for his capture. The Venezuelan leader has been accused of drug trafficking and terrorism since 2020, under the Trump administration.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently stated that Maduro collaborates with international criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cartel of the Suns to smuggle lethal drugs and spread violence across American territory.
Of Colombian origin and a Republican Party member, Moreno stressed that Washington is treating the case as a top priority.
“We designated Maduro as a terrorist, offered a record-breaking reward, and deployed U.S. Navy vessels to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.
He also recalled that under Donald Trump’s presidency, eight Mexican cartels were designated as terrorist organizations, over 150 federal arrest warrants for drug trafficking and terrorism were issued, and more than 5,000 troops were deployed to the southern border and the Caribbean region.
Moreno’s declarations intensify the political and diplomatic pressure on Maduro and fuel speculation about the future of Venezuela’s government, already burdened by sanctions, criminal charges, and international tensions.
Poverty and poor border controls have allowed young women to be trafficked into the sex trade catering to illegal gold miners in Brazil’s border areas with countries like Guyana and Venezuela.
Research by the Federal University of Roraima identified 309 people who were victims of human trafficking between 2022 and 2024.
In the Guyanese border town of Lethem, young women, mostly from Venezuela but also from Brazil, are trafficked into bars from across the border in Brazil, seemingly without restriction.
Organized crime networks associated with illegal mining use elaborate recruiting tactics and exploit the vulnerability of victims, who often don’t recognize themselves as trafficked or are afraid to speak out.
BOA VISTA, Brazil — After crossing the Brazilian border into the town of Lethem in Guyana, a billboard declares that human trafficking is a crime. It’s a jarring message in this otherwise tranquil town with its streets full of stores selling products imported from China. Those are just some of the products that draw traders here from across the border in the Brazilian city of Bonfim, 132 kilometers (82 miles) away from the capital of Boa Vista, the Amazonian state of Roraima. Separated by the Tacutu River (or Takutu in Guyana), the cities are easily accessible by the BR-401 highway.
I crossed the border from Brazil into Guyana without being subjected to any inspections, despite the presence of a Federal Police post on the Brazilian side. Over the course of seven days in Roraima, three sources told me that traffickers in Boa Vista often recruit girls in Roraima and take them to Lethem, where they’re dragged into the sex trade at bars catering to gold miners.
In Guyana, prostitution is prohibited and mining operations are supervised. However, sources who requested anonymity for security reasons told Mongabay that the sexual exploitation of young women, including Brazilians and especially Venezuelans, routinely occurs.
In general, according to the sources, bars and other places frequented by young people in Boa Vista are targets for groomers working for organized crime networks that have invested heavily in mining activities in the Amazon. They lure girls and young women with invitations to business trips and promises of high pay, using expensive clothes, jewelry and perfumes as a draw for these poor young people. Harassment has also been observed around schools, vulnerable communities, urban and rural peripheries and Indigenous villages. Municipalities such as Uiramutã and Bonfim — both of which lie on the border with Guyana, with Bonfim just across the river from Lethem — are common hunting grounds for recruiters, according to the sources.
Many young people are slow to understand that they’ve been victims of human trafficking, and even when they do realize it, they avoid speaking out for fear of violent retribution by the criminal organizations that operate the mines. This contributes to the lack of reporting of cases, and also explains the billboard at the Lethem border crossing.
The area’s poverty has made it a target for recruiters, in addition to its strategic border location for gold miners. Uiramutã, home to 13,700 people located approximately 300 km (about 190 mi) from Boa Vista, ranked lowest out of all municipalities in Brazil on the national Social Progress Index (SPI) in 2024. Bonfim was 10th from the bottom on the list, and two other Roraima municipalities made the bottom 20.
Machinery used in a garimpo is burned by IBAMA agents in an operation to combat illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Roraima in 2023. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
There are more than 80,000 open mining sites throughout the Brazilian Amazon, according to a technical note published in 2024 by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). Known locally as garimpos, these mines are a major driver of deforestation in the region, covering a combined area of 241,000 hectares (about 594,000 acres), twice the size of the city of Rome.
Researchers specializing in border studies from the Federal University of Roraima (UFRR) recorded 309 human trafficking victims in the state from June 2022 to June 2024. Of these, 73% were immigrants and the rest Brazilian. Women sexually exploited in gold mines made up the majority of cases, although LGBTQIA+ people and families with children, recruited to work in slavery-like conditions, have also been involved.
The research, led by UFRR professor Márcia Oliveira, focuses on families at the Brazil-Venezuela border in Pacaraima seeking to legalize their documents to escape Venezuela’s economic and political crises. According to UNICEF, 60,000 Venezuelans entered Brazil under these conditions between January and August 2024, and more than 500,000 since 2015.
“Mining devastates nature in the same way that it destroys human values,” Oliveira told Mongabay in an interview in her office at UFRR, where she leads the research group that also looks into violence against women in mining operations.
One complicating factor in the research is the reluctance of victims to report cases. Testimonies show that most victims are unable to recognize themselves as having been trafficked. Some only become aware of it when they learn about the activities of the groups behind the crime.
According to the researchers, most of the young women who are recruited only realize they’ve been duped when they arrive at their destination. There, the traffickers seize their documents and cellphones, and block them from speaking to family members. They may also take them on clandestine routes, the trochas, to evade security checks and leave the victims disoriented.
In Lethem, Guyana, a billboard (right) warns that human trafficking is a crime that must be reported. Image by Elizabeth Oliveira.
Families also find it difficult to recognize the crime of human trafficking. Researchers identified this situation when they phoned family members who had put up posters on walls and lampposts across Boa Vista seeking help to find their missing daughters. When questioned by the researchers, many families said the girls had already been found and were working as cooks in a garimpo, seemingly oblivious to the possibility of abuse.
According to the researchers, these brief reassurances from the young women to their relatives, in the rare contacts authorized by the criminals, represent a kind of code to mislead them about the real situation, since historically in Roraima, working as a garimpo cook represents a certain status.
In some cases, the recruited girls send money back to their families. In others, they disappear, or are found dead, and family members opt not to get involved in investigations, fearing violence. Some victims manage to return from these experiences after being replaced, but to stay alive and deal with the trauma, they have to leave the state or even the country, with the support of humanitarian aid organizations.
Mute phone
Maria do Socorro dos Santos is the director of the human rights program at the Roraima state legislature. In her office, posters from the Prevention without Borders Project warn of the risks of human trafficking. One of them displays a phone hotline. The project was created in March 2024, but has never been activated since. Santos acknowledged that victims are often afraid to speak out, which nurtures the climate of impunity.
Santos advocates for education as a form of prevention, and has been collaborating with a network of partner institutions to arrange educational activities for students, teachers and other education professionals in Roraima. She’s visited 46 establishments to give talks and show videos and documentaries on the subject, and at each one she’s received reports of some kind of experience involving abuse, sexual exploitation or human trafficking. She said the state “lacks effective public policies to tackle the issue.”
Having studied sexual violence at the University of São Paulo (USP), and with more than 30 years of experience in research, educational campaigns and sheltering women and young people in situations of violence, Santos was invited by the Roraima legislature in 2015 to coordinate actions against human trafficking. Although she was already retired by then, she embraced the challenge because, she said, she believed there was still a significant gap in solutions to effectively tackle this crime.
“Groomers see people’s vulnerability as an opportunity to use their power of persuasion through a very well-organized network,” Santos told Mongabay. Over the past decade, she’s worked on research into criminal networks in Roraima and neighboring countries, looking for signs of sexual exploitation routes — a job that has proved a great learning experience on the subject.
In Boa Vista, the capital of the state of Roraima, a monument in honor of the gold miner was built in the city’s central district, where the headquarters of the State Government and the Parliament are also located. Image by Elizabeth Oliveira.
The situation in Roraima has attracted the attention of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops’ Special Commission to Combat Human Trafficking, or CEETH-CNBB, according to its executive secretary, Alessandra Miranda. Part of the commission’s work involves raising awareness, mobilizing governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and seeking to strengthen initiatives to tackle trafficking. The issue was the central theme of a 2024 publication by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Miranda and other members of the commission were part of a delegation that visited Boa Vista and the municipalities bordering Venezuela and Guyana in mid-2024 to understand the reality through dialogue with local stakeholders. “I was struck by the state government’s dissonance with the issue of human trafficking,” she said. “It’s clear that this is a territory with serious human rights violations.”
Against this lack of policy from the state, Miranda added, the narco-garimpo criminal nexus has strengthened and continues to financially sustain this practice.
I contacted the Federal Police multiple times about any investigations or operations against human trafficking in Roraima and the border areas, but received no response.
Deforestation, pollution and violence
As well as abusing trafficked people, gold miners cause environmental destruction and disrupt local communities. “Rivers and other water sources are contaminated [mainly by mercury used in illegal gold mining], a problem that snowballs as it prevents communities from fishing and the water becomes unfit for human consumption,” environmental engineer Luís Augusto Oliveira, a member of the research collective MapBiomas focusing on the Amazon, told Mongabay.
Mining-driven deforestation also degrades riverbanks, leading to pollution and erosion. “The environmental damage is what remains in the regions affected by garimpo. The generation of wealth does not,” Oliveira said.
Environmental degradation caused by illegal mining activities spotted by an IBAMA operation in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in 2023. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
Roraima is among Brazil’s Amazonian states that still has high forest cover. But the reduction of this cover from 98% to 93% in 39 years worries researchers and environmentalists. The losses to mining have been significant during this time: garimpos accounted for 83 hectares (205 acres) of deforestation in 1985, but by 2023 this had increased 40-fold to 3,325 hectares (8,216 acres).
In Boa Vista, the activity is largely embraced, thanks to the long history of mining here. The centerpiece of the city’s main square, facing both the governor’s office and the state legislature, is a monument in honor of the miners, or garimpeiros.
Francilene dos Santos Rodrigues, a professor at UFRR and leading expert on the history of mining in Roraima, said organized crime is the major driving force behind the new wave of mining in the Amazon. According to Rodrigues, it’s similar to what happened in Colombia, where miners paid FARC guerrillas to protect them in the absence of the state.
UFRR sociologist Rodrigo Chagas, who studies violence, said he believes the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC in 2016 displaced the mining there to other Amazonian regions. Another push was the twin political and economic crises in Venezuela, he said, coupled with domestic factors in Brazil, where Jair Bolsonaro, president from 2019-2022, openly advocated for mining on Indigenous lands.
In 2023, IBAMA burned an airplane used by illegal miners who had invaded the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Roraima. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
Chagas said the gold route runs through the north of the Amazon, crossing the borders of Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, French Guyana and Suriname. “The sex market follows this route,” he told Mongabay.
One issue that worries researchers in his group is the level of violence of drug trafficking groups associated with the garimpos. One emblematic case involved the murder of a miner in front of his colleagues, according to Chagas, solely because he wanted to marry one of the young women he was sexually exploiting. Chagas saw the episode as “a breaking point,” as well as “a message about changes in the rules of the game” that have generated more fear and tension.
In addition, the rise in the price of gold, which has hit record highs, has supercharged mining. “This is a risk that has become worthwhile,” researcher Francilene Rodrigues told Mongabay.
According to the Hutukara Yanomami Association, which works in defense of the ethnic group, many girls have been taken for sexual exploitation and, in remote areas, young men have been recruited to work on mines — illegal on Indigenous lands under any circumstances, according to Brazil’s Constitution.
After an environmental and humanitarian crisis, the new government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 elections, began to tackle the invaders in 2023 through a series of more than 3,000 raids. The offensive pushed the invaders to other areas of the state and neighboring countries such as Guyana and French Guiana, where the Federal Police have identified cases of exploitation of Brazilian workers by criminal organizations.
Lula’s administration tackled a humanitarian crisis after the Yanomami Indigenous Land was invaded by thousands of illegal miners, who brought disease, pollution and violence, under the watch of Bolsonaro. Image courtesy of Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil.
“Within this society in which we live in Roraima, and lacking everything, there is a public that is very focused on getting something more quickly, and mining offers that,” mining researcher Joel Valério, who heads the Boa Vista-based Conviva Institute, told Mongabay.
“But what drives these people into a garimpo? Is it those who are harassing them or is it the lack of a way to survive in the interior of Roraima or on the peripheries of the capital without any financial success?”
For Valério, the innocence of some young women about human trafficking networks makes it easier for traffickers to lure them using false promises of well-paid work and a return to their families with money in hand.
Poster for the Prevention without Borders Program encourages reporting in Boa Vista. Credit: Elizabeth Oliveira.
That’s because, at a mining camp, the cooks are the only ones paid a fixed amount and protected by the leaders. Their duties also include washing clothes, and according to Valério, they’re not meant to be sexually exploited. The promise of attaining this elevated status in the hierarchy of the garimpo environment — being paid well while being untouchable — lures many young women to the mining camps.
Much of the social life of garimpos takes place in the currutelas, areas with bars where exploited women drink and dance to attract customers. Márcia Oliveira, the UFRR professor, said she’s heard testimonies from victims that young women are subjected to a routine of sexual exploitation with almost no right to rest in these places.
They also live in degraded environments, in lodgings without bathrooms or access to clean drinking water, according to Oliveira. The young women are paid in grams of gold, a common currency in the garimpos, but arrive at the site already in debt because the business owner expects to be reimbursed for the cost of the victim’s travel and stay. Oliveira said this work is analogous to slavery.
Banner image: IBAMA raid to fight illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land in Roraima in December 2023. Image courtesy of IBAMA. fonte https://news.mongabay.com/2025/05/amazon-illegal-gold-mines-drive-sex-trafficking-in-the-brazil-guyana-border/
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