Nuestra Tierra: Extraction in Venezuela

Original images found at: http://lcc-condorverde.com/leisure/en/venezuela-tourist-information & https://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2017/04/02/mining-and-resistance-in-the-venezuelan-amazon/

The territory that is now the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a nation that spaciously covers 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and is made up of 23 states. Venezuela’s land can be thought of as four distinct regions geographically: Highlands (Llanos), lowlands, Andes Mountains and the Amazona. Venezuela’s land is home to one of the largest rivers in the world by water discharge, el Orinoco. More than 75 percent of the Orinoco River flows throughout Venezuela, with the remaining portion located in Colombia. Generally, the Orinoco River is divided in four unequal parts including the Upper, Middle, Lower Orinoco and the Delta Amacuro.

The Orinoco River has been pivotal to the development of the eastern portion of Venezuela. This regional arc is a large area of land covering about 111,844 square kilometers (43,183 square miles), and equating to about 12 percent of the nation’s territory. It’s estimated that about 486 kilograms of gold has been extracted from this region. In addition to gold, iron ore extraction in this region has taken place in two significant peaks, the first in 1890 and then 1940s. This is to say the Orinoco Mining Arc is not a new conception.The mining’s exploitative nature is trans historical. Venezuela is also known for being one of the top exporters and producers of petroleum; the nation bleeds oil. But what are some of the other bloody histories and stories of extraction? This page seeks to investigate the following large areas of extraction in Venezuela: iron, petroleum, and gold. This exploration on extraction will be done through historical analysis, creative responses, connections to other external sources and a post on current expeditions in the Arco Minero. 

Original image found at: http://amazonwaters.org/basins/great-sub-basins/negro/

Iron Mining in The Eastern Guayana Region of Venezuela

American mining corporations have dominated resource extraction in eastern Venezuela. Around the 1950s, the area around the Orinoco saw an exponential growth in iron mining that can be partly attributed to the prior increase in established infrastructure and industrialization of the Guayana region. The development of this region and increased mining activity have an intimate correlation; the primary focus of this piece is how development in the Guayana Region around the Orinoco has consequently impacted mining ventures and resource extraction of the region.

Historically, iron ore extraction in Venezuela has taken place in two significant peaks, the first in 1890 and the next happening around the 1950s. Iron mining in the Guayana Region, around the Orinoco, can be traced back as early as 1890 in the mountain of el Pao; however, “the real scale of Venezuela ore reserves was not realized for another half century”[i] . By the 1950s, iron mining in this region had skyrocketed and Venezuelan iron ore accounted for 38 percent of Latin America’s total iron exports[ii]. To understand subsequent success of the large increase in the iron mining and heavy volume of extraction, it is imperative to analyze the historic development of the region itself.

Original image found at: https://www.gettyimages.no/detail/photo/iron-ore-mine-cerro-bolivar-venezuela-royalty-free-image/71551799

The Guayana Region consists of the states Bolivar, Amazonas, and Delta Amacuro. Prior to the 1900s, the state of Bolivar was largely rural and by 1941 two-third of the region still remained rural. However, nearly twenty years later, in 1961, the state of Bolivar “had become predominantly urban[…] with about 62 percent of the population in the two cities Santo Tomé de Guayana and Ciudad Bolivar” [iii]. This drastic change in the urbanization reflects the trends in industrialization and speaks to the correlation between this area’s development and the increase in iron mining that took place in the mid 1900s.

The primary area of industrialized development was transportation; without a way to transport ore from Cerro Bolivar and el Pao to the Orinoco river and again to a shipment port, ample mining would not have been possible. Some of the infrastructure of transportation included an asphalt highway, connecting Ciudad Bolivar and the Orinoco. This, along with the Santo Tome de Guayana that essentially became a seaport allowed for “ore vessels to load up to 40,000 tons of ore at the docks and ship it to ports around the world” [iv]. In addition to these developments in transportation, a new steel mill in the Cuidad de Guayana, Planta Siderurgica, opened in 1963 contributing to the rapid of production of steel. This mill is speculated to have produced at an approximate rate of 600,000 tons per year, causing “an increase in the value of basic metals from thirty-four to seven hundred million Bolivares[…]” [v]. The growth in concrete infrastructure and industrialization of this previously rural region opened the door for American corporation’s iron extraction to become highly successful by easing methods of transportation and exportation of ore.

Original image found at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comando_Estrat%C3%A9gico_Operacional.jpg

US Steel and Bethlehem Steel and their respective subsidiaries were the two major US corporations that controlled and dominated resource and material extraction in much of Latin America, including Venezuela. In Kenneth Warren’s Bethlehem Steel, he notes that “in 1933, Bethlehem obtained exploitation rights to twenty thousand acres of land, and by mid-1944, it had begun work on a mine projected to yield 2 million tons of ore a year” [vi].The large sums of monetary profit US Steel and Bethlehem Steel’s made after the 1940s were contingent of the extraction of iron ore in Venezuela, enabled by developments and industrialization of the Guayana region. This drove Venezuela to become one of the world’s largest producer of direct-reduced iron[vii]. Moreover, “by the early 1950s, Venezuela was the largest overseas source of [iron ore for] Bethlehem Steel, accounting for half of its total supply. And in the course of the first postwar decade, Bethlehem Steel was reshaping its ore supplies[…][viii]. Iron mining in the Venezuela’s Guayana region was pivotal in helping feed the industrial steel boom. Additionally, the surge in this extraction was highly productive and a result of the previously virgin tropical areas’ industrial infrastructure development and expansion.

Embed from Getty Images
Eastern Venezuela is an important and under examined topic of historical, political, and economic exploitation. American mining corporations fail to mention where their raw material originate from, pushing much of the narrative and analysis around US Steel and Bethlehem Steel to solely focus on steel production in the United States.  More research on iron mining in Venezuela could provide further insight on how iron mining helped shape Venezuela’s economic and political development. The Orinoco River and the industrialization within the State of Bolivar enabled multinational steel corporations to extract and export Venezuela iron ore to a global market; thus securing and profiting from a cheap source of iron steel production during the WWII and post-war era of reconstruction.


PGH2VZLA: Examining the Connection

Photo mosaic by: Kevelis Matthews-Alvarado

Written and read by: Kevelis Matthews-Alvarado

Petroleum’s Asphyxiating Grip

“A two month journey across Venzuela, from Lake Maracaibo to the Orinoco Delta. The people of the oil fields and the mining centres talk of their close encounters with these exploitations.
For the first time, in the “revolutionary” Venzuela, a documentary delves deep in the problematic of oil and coal, from the angle of the life experience of communities, oil workers, indigenous people.
The film takes a look at world politics on oil and other extractive actitivites, jointly with the themes of sovereignty and self-determination of a people engaged in a real process of change.”

Directed by: Elisabetta Andreoli, Gabriele Muzio, Sara Muzio & Max Pugh
Photgraphy: Max Pugh & Sara Muzio
Edit: Max Pugh & Sara Muzio
Production: Edizioni Gattacicova (Italy) & Yeast Films (UK) ; 2005
Our Oil And Other Tales (2005) from Edizioni Gattacicova


Marked with Blood and Lined with Gold: Venezuela’s Return to el Orinoco Mining Arc

Click here for a post on current mining expeditions in the Orinoco region


About this page’s author:

Kevelis Matthews-Alvarado is an undergraduate student at Lehigh University, double majoring in Africana Studies and Health Medicine and Society with a minor in Latin American and Latino Studies. She was raised in Pittsburgh but her family is from Valencia, Venezuela. As a proud Afro-Latina, her academic interests include: intersectionality, mass incarceration, critical race theory, and connections between racial disparities within the US public school system. At Lehigh, Kevelis, is a Residential Assistant, and holds the title of Vice President of the Black Student Union. This past semester she participated in the Act Like You Know 10 Year Anniversary theater production, a celebratory show encapsulating 10 years of hip hop theater at Lehigh. Additionally, she has received a Student Achievement Award for her academic work in the Latin American and Latino studies program, and has been recognized with the Advocate Award for Multicultural student leadership.

 


Works Cited:

[i] Warren, Kenneth. Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America. 1st Pbk. Ed.: U of Pittsburgh, 2010. Print.

[ii] Miller, Elbert E. “The Guayana Region, Venezuela: A Study in Industrial and Urban Development.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, vol. 27, 1965, pp. 77–88. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24041377.

[iii] Miller, Elbert E. “The Guayana Region, Venezuela: A Study in Industrial and Urban Development.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, vol. 27, 1965, pp. 77–88. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24041377.

[iv] Miller, Elbert E. “The Guayana Region, Venezuela: A Study in Industrial and Urban Development.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, vol. 27, 1965, pp. 77–88. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24041377.

[v] Snyder, David E. “Ciudad Guayana: A Planned Metropolis on the Orinoco.” Journal of Inter-American Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 1963, pp. 405–412. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/165135.

[vi] Warren, Kenneth. Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America. 1st Pbk. Ed.: U of Pittsburgh, 2010. Print.

[vii] McKelvey, Charles. “Iron in Venezuela and Brazil.” Global Learning. N.p., 24 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Feb. 2018.

[viii] Warren, Kenneth. Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America. 1st Pbk. Ed.: U of Pittsburgh, 2010. Print.

“Guayana Region, Venezuela.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Feb.2018. Web. 19 Feb. 2018.

Kreuter, Gretchen. “Empire on the Orinoco: Minnesota Concession in Venezuela.”Minnesota History, vol. 43, no. 6, 1973, pp. 198–212. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20178247.

“Venezuela – Mining.” Encyclopedia of the Nations. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2018.

Orinoco.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Jan. 2018. Web. 19 Feb. 2018.