Colombia's Gold Rush Has a Fatal Human Cost

Colombia is beginning to learn more about the devastation resulting from the country’s gold rush.

At around 11 PM on May 1, a mountain of dirt and mud collapsed at the Agualimpia mine near Santander de Quilichao, killing 12 people and burying dozens more. The victims were searching for gold inside one of the many illegal mines that are common in the southwest of the country.

The situation is grim for the victims’ families. Many amateur miners test their luck in the region, searching for gold as a source of extra income in the hopes of improving their living conditions.

“The interesting thing is that although they live in the area, they had not been interested in mining gold until this point; this is the first time they’ve done this, they preferred to work as laborers. As soon as they decide to try it, this tragedy happens,” an aunt of one of the victims told Colombian magazine Semana.

Lifeless bodies continue to be pulled from the mine in the Cauca region in Colombia's southwest, so the death toll is likely to rise as the days pass. “There is an undetermined number of miners, because the information is based on unofficial calculations of unregistered workers,” Graciela Tovar, a local official, told VICE News.

Members of the Colombian army, firemen, and other organizations attended the emergency, a situation provoked by poverty, hunger, and a lack of viable employment alternatives in the region. The director of the Colombian Red Cross, César Urueña, told VICE News that only 13 miners in the region have been reported missing by their families.

For the residents of northern Cauca, tragedies in the mining industry are becoming increasingly common. Two miners died while operating heavy machinery in an area where mining is prohibited in the town of Palmar in January — not far from the scene of this disaster.

“The workers who are forced to bury themselves alive so that some unknown millionaires, whom they have never met, can maintain and continue to increase their capital, are not the criminals,” Eugenio Arias, a family member of one of the victims, told VICE News. Arias recalled that the multinational corporations began requesting authorization to exploit gold in the region six years ago.

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“We are in a country with terrible social disparity, where there are no jobs, and many people are involved in mining gold, both legally and illegally,” Mario Tangarefe, of the Association of Miners in Marmato, Caldas, told VICE News.

There are many ways of extracting gold in Colombia, such as DIY mining, which makes up just a small part of the industry, medium–scale mining, and large-scale operations, both legal and illegal. Guillermo Rudas, a specialist in natural resources rights, told VICE News that in recent years the price of the gold troy ounce has fluctuated as high as $1,800 — it currently stands at just below $1,300. Rudas explained this is why “illegal mining has become the favorite new pursuit of criminal organizations.”

The Illegal Exploitation of Mineral Resources in Colombia, a report by Colombia’s National Comptroller General, states that armed groups intimidate the mines, grant “permissions,” charge “taxes,” control the machinery, steal fuel, allow the multinationals to extract resources so they can later take a cut, and impose a social order with threats of violence.

At this point the full consequences of large–scale mining in the country are unknown. Yet Colombia’s gold rush has definitely led to violence and affected local communities in a similar way to drug smuggling.

Armed groups have seen their income increase with the rise of multinational corporations in the country. Colombia’s historical political interest in defining itself as a mining hub also attracts large foreign investment.

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Rudas, who has been critical of mining policy in the country, emphasized that the gold fever is based on two facts. Firstly, there’s the spike in gold prices. Secondly, for many years tribunal extensions have been granted to multinational corporations in Colombia for the exploitation of natural resources, starting when Álvaro Uribe was president between 2002 and 2010.

Since then, several reforms have been implemented in the country to allow foreign companies — primarily Canadian, South African, Swiss, and American — to extract Colombian resources, adding to the international gold fever. Local communities have raised red flags about environmental concerns, including soil and groundwater contamination, and a massive displacement of peoples, leading to widespread poverty.

Rudas told VICE News that: “The state has to regain control and rectitude in the management of natural resources. In order to do so we need a powerful institution with the defense of national interests as a priority — one that respects the cultural, economic, and environmental rights of the Colombian people.”

Then he pondered, somewhat rhetorically: “Can the mining machine help remedy the challenge of overcoming poverty?”