Small-scale gold miners complain that the Russian Agapov Group is really capitalist 'gringos' in disguise!

VHeadline Venezuela reports: Minera del Sur (Southern Miners) director Paul Zambrano says a sudden change of managers, replacing Venezuelan staff with USA executives at the Russian Agapov Group's PMG in El Callao which has rekindled a conflict situation with local miners at the El Choco goldmine in southeastern Bolivar State.

Quoted in today's issue of El Diario del Guayana, Zambrano says the danger for local mining interests lies in the fact that the Russians have allied themselves with United States capital ... for example, that an expoerienced Venezuelan manager Jose Manuel Rodriguez, who was fully conversant with the social rights of workers and communities surrounding the mine, has been supplanted by 'gringos'.

Zambrano adds that the new mining executives know nothing of local conditions and that the Russians are being unmasked as covert North American capitalists responding purely to capitalist interests in direct contrast with Oresident Hugo Chavez' mining policies for the Republic. "We already know that the mentality of the 'gringos' is unlike anything in ours ... we are on the same path as President Chavez seeking social benefit ... Venezuelan management had understood this. Now we are warning the President about what is happening with the Agapov Group and also to Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz. They must understand that with these changes, the Russians are proving that they are not interested in the small miners and communities living close to mine, their interest is only capitalism."

The struggle of small miners in the affected municipalities, Zambrano emphasizes is that the Russians must be made to recognize their intrinsic rights which small-scale mining has agreed with the mining industry as long as they understands that small miners are needed in the process of extracting gold and be able to claim their rights.

Zambrano warns that if the Russian group remains committed to working with US managers, they will have to liaise with miners who have always had difficulty understanding foreign capitalists. "The Russian group is in breach of their own social commitments. When the Basic Industries & Mining (Mibam) Ministry and Agapov Group committed themselves to addressing the matter ... we were promised housing and other benefits. They reached agreements with miners in El Placer and San Rafael but none of the agreements has been honored and, when demanded compliance, we were simply ignored. Now, we see that if those commitments were not honored by the Venezuelan managers, there's less chance they will be honored by the North American managers. We need to unmask the Russians for what they are ... 'gringos' in disguise."

VHeadline Venezuela News
vheadline@gmail.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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