What's Beneath Venezuela 🪨💰⚒️

Tierra de Gracia in Spanish means the Land of Grace. 

It was the name Christopher Columbus gave to Venezuela in 1498, when he first reached the coast of the Latin American country. The Italian explorer was awestruck by the abundance of fresh water, fertile land, and the promise of wealth that the land held. 

Nearly five centuries later, grace is the last thing anyone would associate with Venezuela. 

Many analysts argue that it is precisely the resources that once inspired such romantic descriptions that now sit at the center of the country’s geopolitical turmoil.

Years of economic collapse, sanctions, and institutional decay turned Venezuela’s resource wealth from an advantage into a source of instability. As the crisis deepened, external powers became more directly involved. The U.S. intervention is the most recent example.

After U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Operation Absolute Resolve on January 3, 2026, President Donald Trump immediately tied the intervention to Venezuela’s oil wealth. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” 

But oil is just one part of the story.

What did not make the headlines — and almost never does — is Venezuela’s reserve of critical minerals. 

Away from the oil fields and the capital, beneath forests and sparsely governed hinterlands, lie deposits of coltan, gold, iron ore, bauxite, and rare earth elements. These are not resources that move markets overnight, but they sit at the foundation of modern supply chains. The commodities the United States now finds itself increasingly dependent on.

In this issue of CrossDock, we examine Venezuela’s critical minerals story: where these resources are located, why they remained overlooked for decades, and whether they could alter the United States’ position in an increasingly competitive global race for critical mineral security.

To understand Venezuela’s mineral story — and why it is once again drawing global attention — you have to go back to the early 20th century, when the country’s relationship with its natural wealth first began to take shape.