VENEZUELA: THE GOLD THAT FUELS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

In August 2014, a young woman was murdered in a vacant lot in Villa Betania, a residential complex in Puerto Ordaz. It happened at dawn and in front of her little girl, after being taken around the city by her aggressors, allegedly to look for the money that her partner, murdered months earlier, had saved

By Jáckeline Fernández

The Orinoco Mining Arc was officially created on February 24, 2016 as the Orinoco Mining Arc National Strategic Development Zone. It comprises an area of 111,843.70 km² —12.2% of the national territory, twice as large as the Orinoco Oil Belt. Several human rights organizations, such as the Venezuelan Program for Education and Action on Human Rights (Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos, PROVEA), have expressed their disapproval of this project because it violates the right to free, prior and informed consent, no environmental impact assessments have been done, and because of the debt that the State owes to indigenous peoples in matter of land demarcation. In addition to the above, there is also concern about the militarization of indigenous areas and the violation of the Mining Arc decree and the right to work, since the government controls hiring.

The mining areas in southern Bolívar state are notably violent. Although most of the country did not know what was happening there, the notorious Tumeremo massacre exposed the actions of the various power groups that operate in these territories, the indiscriminate use of weapons and the absence of effective state controls. All these elements are now present in other cities of Bolívar state. And its consequences manifest themselves in a distinct way. Mining has very marked patriarchal and macho features. Women assume very specific roles: cooks, prostitutes or partners. In all of them, gender violence is prevalent, because the law is dictated by the power groups.

When women’s bodies wrapped in plastic bags began to be found on the Upata road, the femicides were attributed to their relationship with power groups. Some people claimed that they had “said too much”. The truth is that these women were murdered because a group of men thought that their power over them gave them the right to take their lives. These femicides were never solved. It is noteworthy that passive femicides have been increasing in Bolívar state as mining activity has become almost the only economic activity for most of its population. The same has happened with sexual violence. Passive femicides include deaths due to unsafe or clandestine abortions, maternal mortality, deaths from harmful practices (for example, genital mutilation), deaths linked to human trafficking and deaths resulting from deliberate acts or omissions by public servants or agents of the state, gang-related activities or widespread armed violence.

When we read the news, investigative bodies suggest the motives to be revenge or attempted robbery. But these causes are completely distinct and require a differentiated and gender-focused research process. That is not happening. Hence the lack of transparency regarding the data that could allow us to understand gender-based violence in the current context. Moreover, the absence of mechanisms to collect official data on the expressions of violence that affect women and girls in the mining context is a failure of the government to fulfill its obligations. This compromises the possibility of designing public policies aimed at eradicating the underlying causes of this type of violence. Girls and adolescents who have to go to the mines, either alone or with relatives, are exposed to a reality marked by machismo and the exercise of a power asserted through subjugation, violence and fear.

While violence against women is still considered a “private” matter in certain spaces, in mining areas it is not only a normalized affair between couples, but also a privilege associated with the exercise of temporary leadership by those who have the weapons. The UN has pointed out that when armed violence is generalized, gender violence increases. Because guns are a privilege of men.

Sanitary conditions in mining areas are another risk element for women. Most of these camps are limited to tents made of wooden sticks and black bags. There is no access to drinking water or safe spaces to practice body hygiene. Women are exposed to sexual violence on a daily basis. Normalized in this way, sexual exploitation and forced prostitution are commonplace phenomena considered part of the price to pay for subsistence.

The culture of violence in mining areas has spread to the city. And all of its manifestations of power and subjugation developed and accepted by the government and by society have begun to affect new venues, fuelled by the absence of development policies, the collapse of the iron industry and the complex humanitarian emergency. Bolívar is a mine... but not a gold one.

Victims beyond the mines

In August 2014, a young woman was murdered in a vacant lot in Villa Betania, a residential complex in Puerto Ordaz. It happened at dawn and in front of her little girl, after being taken around the city by her aggressors, allegedly to look for the money that her partner, murdered months earlier, had saved. Few months earlier, the bodies of three young women were found on the Upata road, wrapped in plastic bags and showing signs of torture.

In each of these cases, the reaction was total apathy. People said things like “they were looking for it” and “they were with the wrong men”. All these women (none of whom were older than 30) had dated men connected with criminal groups. All were killed because of that relationship, as an act of revenge by rival groups.

Those femicides disturbed me and made me see a side of armed violence that I only knew from the terrible stories of countries like Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and El Salvador. I knew that things were changing and that in this state, once considered an example of development, where the most important planned city in the country was built, deep cracks that were allowing an unprecedented type of violence to emerge had opened up. But women were still silent victims, not only of those who were their direct aggressors, but also of the indifference of society. Because they are not that many, because that “femicide” thing is still not understood by the very authorities who must enforce the law, because in other countries more women are murdered... And I felt powerless because for me a life is worth as much as a thousand lives. Because a dead woman is not just her: it is also her sons and daughters, if she has any. I thought of Atlimar, the young woman murdered in front of her daughter, and I could hardly imagine the overwhelming anguish she must have felt when she realized that she would die before the eyes of her little girl, and that she would then be alone in the hands of her mother’s killers. Who could erase that image from her mind?

Violence must reach pandemic levels for women to become recurrent victims, and that is what is happening in Bolívar. The massacres in the mining areas —the few of which we know, because violence mutes many— are just a sketch of the scenario that thousands of girls, adolescents and women live in search of a normal life. This state has distinct features, mainly due to mining activities and all types of violence resulting from the lack of control, the failure of security policies and the normalization of violence in this complex humanitarian emergency context. And in a context like this, it is urgent that we understand the need to forget numbers and prioritize lives. A life is not a number but thousands of numbers, thousands of additions and subtractions, of multiplications and fractions, of equations that transform other lives, that build spaces, that change the world.

Armed violence has a greater incidence of male victims, of young people who become disturbing data. And that concern seems to downplay others. But they are there, sometimes hidden in stories about other cases, sometimes only discussed in buses or grocery stores. Because they lack that necessary trait to make headlines: they are not many.

For those who need numbers to motivate their actions, 54 women killed in a year (42 of them because of mafias, criminal groups or actions of state officials) may not be enough. But I remember their names, or the fact that they were not identified. I remember Marisol, Liskeydi, Yenitza, Angela, Atlimar, Zoraida, Rosa, Yolianny, Rebeca, Yangeliz, Andrelis... Found under a bridge, on the tracks, on a highway, on the river... And I cannot stop writing, talking, feeling that we must take a clearer stance on a monster growing under the shadow of indifference. That is why whenever I have the opportunity, I mention them, I remember them. They are the memories that I keep of this sad time in our history, the ones that tell me that silence is an accomplice to injustice.

I won’t be silent!