For decades, the bullion buried beneath the Segovia hills in Colombia has attracted sun-scorched dreamers, global corporations, and those desperate enough to believe they can make a living digging in the dirt. Now, the government is worried that the nation’s gold wealth is luring less savory individuals: guerrilla groups and criminal bands eager to expand their drug-running and extortion rackets.
In September, President Juan Manuel Santos warned that the nation’s oldest and bloodiest guerrilla group, the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the smaller National Liberation Army, ELN, were involved in gold mining.
Last month, amid a government crackdown on illicit crops and illegal mining near the town of Anori, the FARC dynamited a bridge and were said to have forced thousands of villagers from their homes.
Jairo Caleta, a burly gold miner wearing rubber boots and a baseball cap, said it’s no secret that mine owners are often required to pay off guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups. The vacuna, or vaccine, as the protection payments are called, are ubiquitous wherever money is being made. And right now, Segovia is flush with cash.
“I worked in one mine for four years before I found out that the owner was a guerrilla member,” said Caleta, who admitted he was using an assumed name for fear of retribution. “But nobody talks about it. You just keep your head down and keep working because it’s happening everywhere.”
The global economic crisis has sparked a rush toward gold and other commodities, which retain their value during tough times. With gold now selling at more than $1,300 an ounce, a torrent of illegal mining has swept the globe.
Authorities in Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador have been scrambling to crack down on wildcat operations that have been punching into pristine jungles and polluting rivers with mercury and cyanide. In Colombia, the National Police have shut down 56 illegal gold mines since September — impounding millions of dollars worth of heavy equipment, firearms and cash. But yellow fever is also attracting big capital.
In Colombia, from 2002 to 2010, the number of mining permits went from about 1,500 to more than 8,500, the Ministry of Mines said. The revenue from the country’s legal gold exports now exceeds that of its signature crop: coffee.
Worldwide, gold production hit 2,652 tons last year — a record, according to precious metals consultancy GFMS.
These international forces have thrust traditional mining villages like Segovia — population 45,000 in northern Colombia — into the spotlight.
Segovia’s mayor, Luis Alfonso Ochoa, sports a cowboy hat and a traditional poncho thrown over one shoulder. A former gold miner, he wears three gold rings, a thick gold bracelet, a gold watch and a gold chain embedded with a piece of quartz the size of a thumb.
Mining is a matter of regional pride, and Ochoa said the vast majority of miners, including small-scale operators who may not have permits, are honest and upstanding citizens.
But he admits there are other shadowy outfits that flout the law. There are crews with heavy machinery digging along the banks of a river everyone calls La Cianurada because of all the cyanide — one of the toxic byproducts of the refining process — that has been dumped into it.
“These people are working with bloody backhoes and without any sort of environmental controls,” he said. “And they’ve never come through here to ask for a permit or declare how much gold they are extracting.”
Ochoa said he’s heard those operations pay about $5,500 a month in what they call taxes.
“Who are they paying those taxes to?” he asked. “It’s certainly not the municipality.”
The mayor can only surmise those fees are protection money going to criminal gangs or guerrilla groups, but he said the municipality doesn’t have the manpower to investigate or take on the outlaw miners.
Hit with a rash of mining accidents that have killed 30 people in the past month, the government last week announced a “shock plan” to inspect and shut down mines that are violating safety codes. The government is targeting coal mines first — where 90 percent of all accidents take place — but many in Segovia think the gold mines are not too far behind.
The government has also launched a national mining census — the first since 1988 — to pinpoint and register the number of miners.
McClatchy-Tribune