In Venezuela, a significant part of mineral extraction is gathered first at centers run by the state-owned Venezuelan Mining Corporation (CVM). The collection centers for tin and coltan in Los Pijiguaos and Morichalito, two neighboring towns in the northwestern Bolívar state, were only established in 2023, following the Venezuelan government classifying tin, nickel, rhodium, titanium, and other rare earth-related minerals as strategic resources for exploration, extraction, and marketing.
Just west of Los Pijiguaos, in Morichalito, ten collection centers identified by the CVM logo remain operational. Two of these have export records to China and the United States.
According to information from the trade platform Sicex and the transparency firm Sayari, large amounts of tin concentrate have also been exported through the La Guaira port, near Caracas. In addition, a significant shipment of 120 tons of niobium, tantalum, and vanadium concentrate was recorded in 2023 from Maracaibo, the capital of Zulia state in the northwestern part of the country, to India.
Some CVM-registered collection centers have been identified as exporting to China. The Orinoco Global Group, based in Puerto Ordaz, the industrial and commercial city in northern Bolívar state, sent minerals to Ganzhou Ainuodeng Electronic, in China; meanwhile, Inv. Mineral & Lab C.A. exported tin to China C&D Logistics in Qingdao and to Traxys Europe S.A.
Guerrilla groups also buy and transport these minerals, often collaborating with what Venezuelan miners call “Chinese buyers.”
A young miner states, “When I was out there, I worked with tin. The buyers are there: the same irregular groups, the guerrillas, and the Chinese.”
Similar testimonies have come from other miners. “The Chinese are buying stones too; they are together with them, the Chinese and the ELN [referring to the National Liberation Army, an irregular armed group from Colombia]. It’s no secret because we are miners. They are mixed in. I guess they are the same people because they eat together, buy materials together, and come down from the helicopter together,” explains a lifelong miner working in the Cedeño municipality of Bolívar state, which includes Morichalito and Los Pijiguaos.
The People’s Republic of China currently has 91% of the processing capacity for rare earth elements. Rare earth elements exist in many countries, but processing them is technically challenging, costly, and polluting. China invested decades in developing this refining capability, which grants the country significant geopolitical power: even if other nations extract rare earths, they require sending them to China for processing.
“I know they are taking it by the tons through Carlos Lata,” continues the miner, referring to a Colombian village on the left bank of the Orinoco River, close to the Venezuelan Isla Ratón in Amazonas state. He also admits to having worked for the ELN, transporting minerals across the border, “To Colombia. I have seen it, I have done it all. I’ve helped load it on my shoulder or with rope, getting the canoes ready. Tons. I’ve filled canoes with tons, 15 tons, 20 tons in one canoe. I’ve made money. For now, when it’s there…I have to do it.”
In Venezuelan territory, state forces, according to multiple testimonies, reportedly cooperate with Colombian guerrillas and take their cut from the illegal business.
“Everyone raises their hands there because military personnel from the Guard [Bolivarian National Guard] are involved,” assures one miner.
“The Guard or the Army, the Venezuelan Navy, and the guerrilla are all there… as if they worked for the same people, you know? So nobody pursues the others. It’s like the guerrilla pays them a percentage. That’s what happens,” says a local resident.
Another miner describes the transportation, involving agents from Venezuelan security and intelligence agencies: “The government itself takes it by car. The Sebin [Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, the political police of the Chavista regime] uses a white car without plates that says ‘For Official Use Only.’ There is transport for everything: coltan, tin, gold.”
While it’s true that some strategic minerals extracted in Venezuela pass through official exit ports like La Guaira or Maracaibo, where the business is handled by Venezuelan state companies and foreign investors, it’s also true that those seeking a bigger share of the mineral trade prefer to smuggle the minerals through green paths to Colombia or through alternative aerial transport networks.
From Venezuela, the route crosses the Orinoco River, enters its basin rivers on Colombian territory, and then follows the landway through Santa Rita, in the Cumaribo municipality—an area of the Vichada department larger than the Netherlands—before connecting with a road called “the 48” towards Puerto Gaitán in the Meta department, before ascending to Bogotá’s altiplano.
The route can have detours, of course. In Colombia, transportation methods for minerals vary significantly based on seasonal conditions and geography. For instance, during the rainy seasons, they mainly move by river, through interior waterways connecting to unpaved roads leading to larger towns.
Traffickers and traders employ concealment methods along these land routes. Heavy sands containing minerals are hidden beneath thick layers of regular sand in trucks, making detection difficult during routine inspections.
In a recent joint operation, Colombian police seized more than 400 kilos of metals smelted in Santa Rita. They found 29 ingots of tin, 36 bags of high-tin content material, and smelting tools. According to tests conducted on-site, the seized material had between 80% and 90% tin purity. The arrested, alleged members of the support network of the José Daniel Pérez Carrero Front of the organized armed group GAO-ELN, were handed over to the competent authorities.
Before their final export, Venezuelan-origin minerals are processed in various places in Colombia. Bogotá hosts several operations that produce tantalum and tin in smelted bars, transforming raw stones into refined metals that are easier to export and harder to trace back to their illegal origins.
In a case investigated in Vichada, authorities seized a bar containing 80% tin and 20% rare earth elements. Puerto Carreño, the capital of Vichada, has emerged as another significant processing center. As noted by a mining investor: “You’re going to find a phenomenon happening right now in Puerto Carreño, they’re going to start appearing foundries, melting tin, and they’re getting metal and the police do nothing.”
The final stage involves exporters at Colombia’s international maritime ports, mainly those in Santa Marta or Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, and Buenaventura on the Pacific coast. There, instead of declaring materials under the appropriate tariff classifications, exporters processing minerals ship them as ferro-tantalum, for instance, effectively changing the classification from raw mineral to processed material. This transformation increases the value and reduces scrutiny. A Colombian law enforcement official complained that more than 40 official customs codes are used for these maneuvers.
“This is going to blow up in our faces because it’s massive,” warned the official. “The oversight of this at the DIAN [National Tax and Customs Directorate, the tax authority of Colombia] is ridiculous,” referring to the lack of knowledge and ability to recognize critical minerals at Colombia’s exit ports.
These smuggling operations are supported by sophisticated financial networks, designed to avoid detection. Small money transfers between cities such as Medellín, Bogotá, and Villavicencio are deliberately kept below 10 million Colombian pesos (around $2,500) to stay below authorities’ scrutiny thresholds. A Colombian intelligence official estimates profit margins between 5,000% to 10,000%, comparing the profit margin of this activity to “buying an iPhone for 100,000 pesos,” or about $25.
Gracor, a Model (of Opacity) Enterprise
Law enforcement officials, community representatives, miners, and mineral traders consistently identify Gracor as one of the corporate facilitators involved in orchestrating this illegal trade. According to sources, who requested anonymity for security reasons, the company maintains direct relationships with the entire criminal network, from the ELN and the Segunda Marquetalia (a dissident faction of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) to individual miners and Venezuelan state officials.
According to a Venezuelan mineral trafficker speaking to Amazon Underworld, “The illegals buy and sell from these people… Gracor does not finance the resource; it’s the irregular groups that handle the money and deal with them. What we do is take the goods to these groups, and they take care of negotiating with the Colombian company.”
To legitimize minerals from Venezuela, traders use refined document fraud schemes. They utilize documentation from subsistence miners—often from indigenous communities—making it appear that the materials were extracted within Colombia. This practice exploits Venezuelan land and resources, the traditional mining rights of indigenous peoples, and the Colombian government’s efforts to formalize small-scale mining.
Despite frequent seizures, numerous shipments of minerals confiscated by authorities have remained in procedural limbo for months and end up being returned to traders due to supposed procedural irregularities and administrative errors. Officials from four state agencies cited both suspected corruption and inadequate training of field personnel as factors contributing to these failures. Lina Beatriz Franco, president of the National Mining Agency (ANM), responsible for managing mineral resources in Colombia, generally admitted the inability to differentiate what is extracted legally from illegal, referring to black sands.
Gracor recorded a net profit of over 311 million pesos (about $81,000) in 2024, according to documents submitted to the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, representing an increase in its profits of 257 million pesos ($67,000), or 479.62%, between 2022 and 2024. At the same time, it increased its net profit margins. Additionally, during that same period, it achieved sales growth to more than 14.7 billion pesos ($3.8 million), according to reports submitted to the Chamber of Commerce.
In 2023, International Company Gracor SAS carried out two export operations of tin concentrate, totaling 45,890 kilograms, according to the Sicex trade platform. In 2024, the company executed nine export transactions amounting to 248,342.7 kilograms. And just during the first two months of 2025, three additional export operations were completed, totaling 81,479 kilograms.
During this three-year period, all of Gracor’s exports were directed to Bluequest Resources AG in China. It’s worth noting that, although the receiving company operates in China, Bluequest actually has its headquarters in Baar, Switzerland, along with offices in Shanghai. According to the company’s corporate website, Bluequest Resources AG is a leading commodity trading group specializing in the global physical trade of refined metals, minerals, and non-ferrous and precious metal concentrates.
Gracor denies all allegations. According to Alfonso Graffe, its legal representative, who welcomed Amazon Underworld in a community hall in a building in northern Bogotá, the minerals the company buys (tin oxide, basically) come from indigenous reserves and are products of subsistence mining. However, Idárraga acknowledges that “that is not subsistence,” referring to the tin.
Camave Got Overly Clever and Got Caught
In March 2021, the Colombian Army seized 6,176 kilograms of strategic minerals in the Guaviare River, in the Guainía department—adjacent to the Venezuelan Amazon—transported aboard a vessel named José Abel. The material included 196 bags with coltan and 51 bags with tin concentrate. Tests performed by the Colombian Geological Survey also detected uranium in the samples, an element used in electronic components and nuclear weapons.
The mineral belonged to Camave SAS, a company registered in Bogotá in 2018, dedicated to the importation and trade of minerals. The company moved minerals without legal extraction licenses, fraudulently using a traditional mining formalization request that had been rejected in 2019 and whose holder had, to top it off, passed away. Authorities, still employing aerial surveillance and satellite analysis in the area, were unable to confirm visible mining activity in the extraction zones declared by the company.
Camave SAS’s logistics operator collected minerals from indigenous communities (Huecitos, Guamirza, San José, Vaquiro, Berrocal, and Maimachí) along the Inírida and Guainía rivers, where the material was probably purchased for meager payments without labor guarantees. Authorities determined that the mineral likely came from the ELN and the dissident FARC front, Acacio Medina, which operate in the triple border area between Colombian departments Vaupés, Guainía, Vichada, and the state of Amazonas in Venezuela.
The operation was financed by a company based in Miami, Florida (United States), owned by an American citizen, who provided an initial investment of $300,000. The agreement stipulated a profit distribution of 80% for the Miami investor and 20% for Camave SAS. Despite the seizure in 2021, Camave SAS continued to export minerals until 2023, with China as its primary destination.
In May 2025, the domain extinction over the six tons of minerals and the seized vessel was declared. Ricardo Barrantes Balcázar, the alternate legal representative, was sentenced in March 2025 to 14 years in prison for illicit enrichment, conspiracy, forgery, illegal mining exploitation, money laundering, and bribery. The process against Carolina Vargas Godoy, the main legal representative, is in the inquiry stage.
The Brazilian Case
Unlike the legal labyrinths of Colombia and the conflicted informal landscape of critical mineral exploitation in Venezuela, a neighboring country to both, Brazil, which also has many indigenous communities displaced or affected by mining and armed groups, has ample geological information.
In the spirit characteristic of the national-developmentalist dictatorship of the time, in 1970, the Radam Project emerged under the slogan “Integrate to Not Deliver.” In this context, military radar technology was used to systematically map the mineral deposits and natural resources of the Brazilian Amazon. This mapping opened the region to prospectors and investors, endowing Brazil with the detailed metallurgical maps that largely distinguish it from its other neighboring countries in the Amazon basin.
100 kilometers from Belém, the capital of Pará state, which today hosts COP30, lies Barcarena. The city has been characterized over the last four decades by the expansion of the aluminum industrial hub and the development of the Vila do Conde port complex. This transformation has remodeled the urban landscape and caused the city to revolve around the port and mining. In three decades, the population has multiplied more than seven times: from 17,000 inhabitants in 1970 to about 127,000 in 2020. The change is apparent to newcomers: truck traffic is intense, passing through neighborhoods where “evacuation route” signs alert to the risk of dams possibly overflowing or breaking, reflecting the close presence of mining companies.
Between January and June this year, the Vila do Conde Port Complex handled 11.5 million tons of cargo, mainly inorganic chemical products (27%), which includes minerals like bauxite and soy. Outside the port perimeter, however, the reality is harsher. The feeling is that the reddish dust from bauxite, a mineral from which aluminum is extracted, covers the streets and houses; and on rainy days, the water can burn the skin.
According to Moisés Sousa Lopes, president of Setemep (Union of Stevedores and Mineral Stevedoring Workers of Pará), the port complex employs around 10,000 people, including 350 stevedores. “Our job consists of loading and unloading in the holds of the ships. We arrange the cargo that comes in and dock what arrives. Everything that comes in and out by water passes through our hands,” he said.
But Lopes doesn’t seem that interested in the “energy transition” achievements. “What we understand about what we do here is that mining not only serves the energy factor but also returns as income for Brazil. Because the mineral is transported here by internal rivers and comes back as aluminum for export. It’s bidirectional. It works for the energy sector and also for revenues, for the government and for Albras [the largest primary aluminum producer in Brazil], too, through the cargo, which is the aluminum exported to China.”
However, illegal tin extraction within the Yanomami indigenous territory in Roraima state, northern Brazil bordering Venezuela, is carried out through networks managed by external investors, for example, from Rondônia state, who provide fake documentation to legitimize trade. The scale of the operations is considerable, with an estimated volume of around six metric tons per river transport and helicopter shipments of up to 10,000 kilograms of mineral. The mineral reaches prices of between 60 and 70 reais (around $13) per kilo in the city of Manaus.
The trade has become so normalized that even Uber drivers in Roraima are openly hired to transport bags of tin concentrate, illustrating how deeply rooted these illegal activities are in local economies. According to a Brazilian intelligence official, some mines are located in areas controlled by the criminal multinational Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), originating from the distant industrial and financial city of São Paulo, much further south. “There is tin extraction at several points in indigenous territory, including areas controlled by the PCC in Waikás, Alto Uraricoera,” he adds.
The involvement of organized crime groups has transformed tin trade into a more complex security operation. Brazilian authorities reported that criminal factions not only control extraction areas but also provide protection services to miners, while maintaining ownership of areas, structures, and specific weapons.
As pointed out by a law enforcement official, “There are areas and structures that belong to criminal members. They sell security.” There also seems to be areas, structures, and weapons that would belong to the criminal group as a whole, as if it were a corporation. Federal authorities have responded with Operation Ouro Negro, aimed against fraud in granting environmental licenses that enable this illegal trade. The operation uncovered a plan involving the Environmental Foundation of the State (Femarh) to facilitate the granting of irregular environmental licenses aimed at laundering illegally extracted minerals. In September 2025, the Brazilian Federal Police executed 13 search and seizure orders in Roraima, Amazonas, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, resulting in the freezing of over 265 million reais in assets and the suspension of the economic activities of the companies.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), critical mineral demand is expected to quadruple by 2040, intensifying geopolitical competition. China is leveraging its dominance in mineral processing through export controls; the United States, in turn, is rushing to rebuild domestic supply chains after decades of neglect; and the European Union has initiated its Critical Raw Materials Act to ensure strategic independence. These materials have become the focal point of a new global competition, intertwining technological power, economic security, and geopolitical influence.
China’s current dominance over rare earth elements has become a heated geopolitical issue. In April, Beijing imposed export restrictions in retaliation for tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, wielding critical resources for defense, electric vehicles, and renewable energies as weapons.
The rare earth and critical minerals market has seen significant price surges, driven by China’s supply restrictions, electric vehicle demand, stock shortages, supply restrictions, and export controls imposed by China in April on seven critical elements.
The market has transitioned from speculative cycles to structural demand driven by the global energy transition and the electrification of transport. Global electric vehicle sales soared from approximately one million units in 2017 to 17.1 million in 2024, creating unprecedented demand for rare earth elements used in electric vehicle engines and batteries.
This escalation triggered a global race for supply diversification, with Western countries seeking alternative producers in Africa and Southeast Asia. Accessing these materials has become a geopolitical priority, as well as an economic necessity, impacting sectors ranging from consumer electronics to defense production.
Amid the intensifying race for strategic mineral supply chains, the Amazon may soon become the frontline of the energy transition, where illicit actors and companies outrun governments and regulators, exacerbating conflicts between resource demands, indigenous rights, and environmental protection.
The paradox is evident: while nations compete to meet their development and clean energy goals, essential mineral extraction is devastating communities and ecosystems in the Guiana Shield and the Orinoco and Amazon basins. This connects the dynamics of the global market and consumers worldwide with the fate of populations in the region, whether indigenous or not, and one of Earth’s most important climate regulators.
In its current state, critical mineral extraction not only destroys the natural environment but also funds violence and armed groups listed as international terrorists in regions where the sector is most conflictual, such as Venezuela.
Meanwhile, especially in Brazil, companies are obtaining legal mining titles on indigenous lands in rainforest areas. The scale of mining pressure is dramatic. At least 188 indigenous territories are impacted by 1,286 critical or essential mining processes for the energy transition. Of the ten most pressured indigenous lands, eight are located in Pará state, one in Amazonas, and another in Roraima.
Sacrifice zones in the Amazon to build a more sustainable future: a paradox so ironic that it seems inevitable. This story connects remote Amazonian communities with global consumers through smartphones in their pockets and electric vehicles in their garages.
While the Chorrobocón community in Colombia’s Guainía, for example, faces the crossroads represented by gold and critical minerals exploitation, seeking formalization but condemned to operate illegally; in Venezuela human rights violations are worsening; and in Brazil, multinationals are entering with full force,
Juan Guillermo García, the mining investor behind Minastyc—a rare earth venture in Vichada—eloquently highlights what’s at stake: “Remember that we are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is technology. And what do you need for technology? The raw materials for this.” When asked what will happen if nobody puts order in the sector, he smiles slightly and replies, “Welcome to the new Congo of Latin America.”
