The propaganda agencies of US imperialism and the spokespeople for Venezuelan reformism have launched a noisy media frenzy following the attack and bombing, carried out between June 9 and 12, against an alleged camp of the transnational gang “Tren de Aragua” in Bolívar State, an action in which its “main leader,” Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias “El Niño Guerrero,” was supposedly killed. Presented to world public opinion as a supposed “victory for international security and humanitarian cooperation,” this joint performance by Washington and the Caracas government is nothing more than a crude ideological distraction operation.

Behind the smoke from the explosions and the supposed crackdown on drug trafficking lies a purely economic operation to clear land along the banks of Kilometer 88, Las Claritas, and its surrounding area—the territory with the highest concentrations of gold in all of Venezuela. The objective is not to protect the population or safeguard the Amazonian ecosystem; the objective is to forcibly expel irregular competitors to ensure that large transnational corporations gain absolute monopolistic control over the extraction and exploitation of mining in the area.

A Military Invasion Agreed Upon by the Bourgeoisie

The military action, carried out through tactically directed bombings by the United States armed forces with logistical support from the Venezuelan bourgeois government, constitutes an open military invasion of national territory. However, far from provoking the traditional sovereignty concerns, this landing enjoys the full consensus of all factions of the local bourgeoisie.

Under the new bourgeois government, installed after the kidnapping of the previous president on January 3, the local bourgeoisie (both the traditional bourgeoisie and the capital associated with the Chavista “civic-military” clique) has meekly accepted subordination to the Pentagon in exchange for securing a share of the pie. The restructuring of extractive industries demands order for private US investments; therefore, the military force of imperialism acts as the armed wing tasked with clearing the way so that multinational firms backed by Washington can operate without logistical obstacles in the coveted mines of Las Cristinas and Brisas.

Background of Transnational Plunder in the Orinoco Mining Arc

The handover of Venezuela’s subsoil to international consortiums is not a new phenomenon in 2026. The Orinoco Mining Arc region has historically been the stage where global capital has tested its dynamics of dispossession:

- Anglo-Saxon and historical presence: Canadian, American, and European corporations have paraded through for decades, obtaining exorbitant concessions for the large-scale exploitation of gold, diamonds, and bauxite. The clearest historical example in Kilometer 88 and Las Claritas was that of the Canadian company Crystallex International Corporation, which operated the Las Cristinas deposits until their concession was terminated and a protracted international arbitration battle ensued. Similarly, the Canadian company Gold Reserve Inc. controlled the Brisas project for years and later re-entered the Las Claritas area under a mixed State-owned scheme through the company Siembra Minera.

- The shift towards other powers: During the hegemony of Chavismo, the bourgeois State reoriented the delivery of resources by granting massive mining concessions to transnational companies from China, Russia and Turkey under the figure of mixed companies that never altered the conditions of exploitation of the workforce.

The geopolitics of mining in 2026 reveals a violent realignment. Following the military clearing brought about by the US intervention, large North American capital seeks direct control. Private transnational corporations and consortiums, protected by OFAC licenses and Western financial capital, are positioning themselves to reactivate large-scale projects in Las Cristinas, displacing not only the local gangs but also sweeping away the remaining influence of Chinese and Eurasian State monopolies and interests. The current substitution of one power for another in the control of these deposits—estimated to have a potential value of billions of dollars—confirms that for capital, the territory of Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro is simply a prize in perpetual dispute.

The “Pranato” and the State: Partners in the Plunder

To justify the current intervention, official discourse feigns surprise at the existence of criminal gangs and organized crime structures. However, historical analysis demonstrates that mining governance in southern Venezuela has operated under a perfect “military-paramilitary-criminal” symbiosis.

The pranato is a system of criminal power in Venezuelan prisons. The main leader is called a pran. The pran rules within the prison and extorts money from others. The use of this term has spread in Venezuelan politics to refer to gangs that operate within and from the government or in neighborhoods controlled by certain criminal gangs led by a pran. The Venezuelan bourgeois government has relied on these gangs to control certain businesses or territories and to confront the protest movements that frequently arise due to economic demands or to confront the groups and parties of the so-called “democratic opposition.”

Since the late 20th century, and with particular force during the last two decades, the so-called "syndicate" (the criminal organization of the common criminals) has exercised real territorial control over the mines in close coordination with the regional and military authorities appointed by Chavismo. Historically, the criminal organization has had free rein to exploit, extort, and traffic, as long as it paid the corresponding fees to the heads of the ZODI (Integral Defense Operational Zones), REDI (Integral Defense Regions), and the local high command, even sharing the territory with demobilized factions of the Colombian guerrilla group ELN. When these gangs and irregular structures cease to be useful or attempt to increase their demands against the formal owners of capital, the State bourgeoisie does not hesitate to resort to massive military operations to displace them and replace them with corporate managers in suits.

The Government Manages the Interests of the Bourgeoisie in the Mining Business

The Ministry of Popular Power for Ecological Mining Development and Basic Industries and the State corporation MINERVEN do not operate as social or environmental protection agencies, but as the essential institutional structures for the administration, legalization and distribution of extractive surplus value in the Orinoco Mining Arc.

The actual role they play within the mining system in the region is defined under the following guidelines:

1. The Ministry as the Legal Window for Transnational Plunder: Far from its rhetoric of “ecological development,” the Ministry is the entity responsible for adapting the bourgeois legal framework to provide security for foreign corporations. Its key function has been the design and fragmentation of exploitation areas (such as Area 4, which includes Kilometer 88 and Las Claritas) to facilitate the creation of joint ventures. It is the body that processes the concessions and operating licenses that today seek to protect the arrival of US capital and that in the past protected Chinese, Russian, and Turkish monopolies. Its role is to normalize extractivism, operating as the operational arm that legitimizes handing over the subsoil to the plunder of the global market.

2. MINERVEN and the Marketing Monopoly: The Link to Variable Capital. The General Mining Company of Venezuela (MINERVEN), as a State-owned gold mining and processing corporation, fulfills the economic role of centralizing the precious metal. In practice, it acts as the cog that connects the brutal exploitation of the working class and artisanal labor force with the international financial system. MINERVEN is responsible for receiving, smelting, and distributing the gold extracted under inhumane conditions. Its economic structure serves to absorb the value generated in the mines through processing plants that impose poverty wages and nonexistent safety conditions on workers, guaranteeing the flow of gold bars to the reserves of the bourgeois State or to transnational markets.

3. Enforcers in the “bourgeois consensus” and mining governance. Within what they promote as the “civic-military union,” these institutions have been fully aware of the extortion and violence scheme of the “syndicate” (the pranato) and the Colombian guerrillas. Both the Ministry and MINERVEN have validated and coexisted with irregular governance in southern Bolívar, serving as a legal smokescreen while the regional authorities appointed by Chavismo and the military commanders of the ZODI and REDI collected their cuts on the extracted gold.

When transnational capital demands “legal security” and “order” to enter – as is happening with the current US-coordinated military deployment – ​​these institutions proceed to rescind old agreements and sign new alliances, demonstrating that their only permanent goal is to maintain the flow of capital accumulation at the cost of irreversible environmental devastation and the exploitation of the working class in southern Venezuela.

Neither Legal Mining Nor Illegal Mining: The False Dilemma of Reformism

Petty-bourgeois currents and environmental NGOs seek to ensnare the working class in a false dilemma: choosing between illegal mining (controlled by gang leaders) and supposedly legal, technologically advanced mining under corporate control, within a supposed scheme of “sovereign management of natural resources.” From the perspective of political economy critique, this distinction is an opportunistic trap.

Whether gold mining is controlled by criminal groups, companies legally authorized by the IMF, organized artisanal miners, or a combination of all these actors, and even “without foreign interference,” the law of value dictates the same outcome. Absolutely no improvement can be expected in the poverty wages or the brutal living conditions of the more than 200,000 people who depend directly on this activity in the Venezuelan Amazon. Under the logic of monetary profit, the working class will always be treated as disposable variable capital, exposed to disease, accidents, and employer violence.

Likewise, “legal” industrial mining is a relentless destroyer of ecosystems, even when undertaken by State-owned enterprises without transnational involvement. The massive use of cyanide and mercury, the deforestation of forest reserves, and the irreversible contamination of the Orinoco River basin do not stop simply because a company is listed on the New York or Beijing stock exchanges. Extractive industries, by their very nature, devour the landscape and socioculturally displace Indigenous communities in their pursuit of accumulating surplus value.

The Revolutionary Alternative

The program of the International Communist Party is categorical on this point: the aggressions against the environment and the human carnage in mining areas will not be solved with “green” regulations, democratic oversight or corporate social responsibility codes.

Under capitalism, gold functions as the universal equivalent of commodities, a lifeless substance for which human lives and entire bioregions are destroyed solely to sustain the capitalist financial system. Only the destruction of the bourgeois State and the advent of a universal communist society will eradicate these extractive activities that plunder nature and add no real value to the emancipation and development of humanity. By abolishing commodity production, the market, and money, socialist society will plan its relationship with the natural environment according to the vital needs of the species, forever burying the barbarity of the Orinoco Mining Arc and the wage-labor subjugation of its workers.