(Triángulo de Telembí) From the helicopter, holes in the jungle indicate the presence of illegal gold mines. Colombian security forces suddenly arrive detonating bulldozers and other construction machinery in an attempt to stifle the finances of armed groups in the country.
More than 100 uniformed members of the army, police and a riot squad arrive in four helicopters in the Traingulo area of Telembi in southwestern Colombia.
Their mission: to destroy the construction machinery that allows the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissident groups of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which reject the peace agreement signed in 2016, to finance their activities. .
In the middle of the vegetation, in this border region with Ecuador where AFP was able to go, not far from the craters dug by the miners, eight construction machines were destroyed using explosives or grenades.
At least five square kilometers of jungle have already been razed by the machines. According to the latest UN report, in 2021 illegal mining devastated more than 640 km2 in Colombia.
“Illegal armed groups […] profit from this gold mining. If they are not the direct owners of the machines, they make sure to get paid a tax,” explains Major Hugo Nelson Gallego, head of the special police command against illegal mines.
Teargas
Dozens of young people are throwing stones at the security forces in an attempt to save the bulldozers they have so hard brought here. Some try to extinguish the flames with water. Riot police respond with tear gas.
Families with their children watch from their wooden houses, where they struggle to survive under the yoke of armed groups and the effects of mercury, used in mines, but which ends up in waterways.
Colombia has been facing this type of illegal mining of gold, but also of platinum, silver or other minerals, since 2012. Since that date and under the renewed impetus of leftist President Gustavo Petro, who arrived at the head of the country in August, more than 800 construction machines used in illegal mines were destroyed.
Seen from the sky, brown spots amidst the green of the dense jungle show the damage. Gold mining involves cutting down trees and turning over the ground. Turbid pools betray the use of mercury to separate gold from other sediments.
The miners “dump it into the river […] and this has the effect of contaminating the entire area where the activity takes place”, explains General Javier Africano, of the command of the fight against drug trafficking.
Authorities suspect its smuggling from Ecuador and Venezuela. Another more concentrated and powerful, “red mercury”, would come from Brazil.
Mercury pollution
Despite limiting its production and use since 2018, Colombia is the country in the world with the highest mercury pollution in proportion to population, according to official data.
“To extract one gram of gold, you need about five grams of mercury,” explains Major Gallego. A small quantity, however, capable of polluting 600,000 liters of water.
Illicit mining and cocaine trafficking are the main sources of funding for organizations that continue the armed conflict in Colombia after the disarmament of the FARC.
According to the authorities, gold is almost as profitable as drugs because of the difficulty of tracing its origin.
According to official estimates, 85% of the gold exported by Colombia is illegally mined. “It is probably destined for North America and Europe,” said General Africano.
The operation in the Triangulo area of Telembi resulted in losses for the armed groups equivalent to some US$794,000, according to the army. In 2022, the losses inflicted on them approached $14 million.
“All the controls are aimed at drugs” in Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine, “but gold is much easier to move”, underlines the soldier Carlos Romero. A person can go to the airport with “his chains, his watch and pass through the metal detector without any problem because it is a jewel”, he laments.