Amazonas

Amazonas State exemplifies how state collapse creates vacuums filled by armed competition rather than anarchy. The Venezuelan government's inability or unwillingness to assert territorial control has produced a governance landscape where Colombian guerrillas (ELN, FARC dissidents), Brazilian garimpeiros (illegal miners), and criminal syndicates share control of gold deposits through violence, extortion, and trafficking networks.

The Yanomami indigenous people—whose traditional territories span the Venezuelan-Brazilian border—face existential threat from this convergence. Armed groups finance operations through gold trafficking, extortion, and drug routes; they recruit indigenous youth as fighters and collectors. Mercury contamination from mining has reached 100% of tested Yanomami individuals according to 2024 Fiocruz research. Malaria has killed at least 390 Yanomami in two years. The traditional subsistence economy cannot survive poisoned waters and hunted game.

The cross-border dynamic creates "balloon effect" pressures. Brazil's Lula administration intensified operations against illegal mining in Brazilian Amazonia, pushing garimpeiros into Venezuela, Guiana, and Suriname where enforcement is weaker. The February 2024 Operation Neblina 2024 attempted response—dismantling camps, fuel containers, dredges, and airstrips—but intermittent operations cannot counter permanent armed presence.

Over 1,500 indigenous communities from 30 ethnic groups reside in Amazonas and Bolívar, facing pressure to acquiesce to mining. The alternative—resistance—brings violence: displacement, trafficking, forced labor. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has called on Venezuela to protect Yanomami, but the state lacks capacity even if it possessed will.

By 2026, Amazonas's trajectory depends on whether coordinated cross-border enforcement can suppress mining operations, or whether the zone continues evolving toward de facto criminal governance of extractable resources.