Interesting detail in this story about Maduro desperately trying to stay afloat by exploiting his working class.

Venezuela’s fascinating gold tale - all the way to #Turkey. Reuters tracked Venezuelan gold from steamy jungle mines, through the central bank in Caracas to gold refineries & food exporters abroad, speaking w/more than 30 ppl with knowledge of the trade. https://t.co/BhfgmEIN6C

— Humeyra Pamuk (@humeyra_pamuk) February 10, 2019

……….
The Bolivarian Revolution now leans heavily on ragtag laborers such as Jose Aular, a teenager who says he has contracted malaria five times at a wildcat mine near Venezuela’s border with Brazil. Aular works 12 hours daily lugging sacks of earth to a small mill that uses toxic mercury to extract flecks of precious metal. Mining accidents are common in these ramshackle operations, workers said. So are shootings and robberies.
……..
Even Maduro’s critics acknowledge he has pulled off a neat trick of alchemy: By compensating hard-pressed citizen miners with inflation-ravaged bolivars and obtaining precious metal in return, he has found a way to spin straw into gold.

Doesn’t sound much like the much-dreaded Socialism, does it? Very Trumpish, in fact.