The giant skeletons of burnt and dismantled gold dredgers litter the rivers of northwest Colombia, where the government is waging a full-out war on illegal mining.
Nicknamed “dragons” by locals, the massive machines used to suck gold from riverbeds are blamed for destroying the environment and financing organized crime.
Their dismantling in a massive army operation has been met with hostility by communities who depend on mining for their daily survival.
Photo: AFP
Around El Bagre in the gold-rich Bajo Cauca region, a protest by miners that started early last month has been marked by acts of vandalism that the government blamed on the Gulf Clan drug cartel for instigating.
“We have nothing to do with criminal groups,” said Luis Manuel Campo, 32, one of the miners.
Campo co-owns a dredger with three other people.
Photo: AFP
“We are not hiding. We just want the persecution to stop,” he said. “We want to be formally recognized as miners so that we can work in peace, without stigma.”
The names of the villages in this region such as Zaragoza and Caceres serve as a reminder of the Spanish colonizers who were already extracting gold in Bajo Cauca in the 17th century.
It became a bastion of rightwing paramilitary fighters in the 1990s, and is now a stronghold of the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s most powerful cartel.
Photo: AFP
Colombian President Gustavo Petro this month called off a ceasefire with the Clan, accusing it of being behind attacks on civilians committed by protesting miners.
Criminal groups in Colombia make almost as much money from illegal mining as they do from trafficking cocaine, authorities say.
With a recent rise in gold prices, Bajo Cauca has been gripped by a new type of gold rush, with poor communities scouring the gravelly river beds with shovels, bulldozers and dredging machines.
Photo: AFP
“Apart from gold, there is nothing here,” Campo said.
Locals say that about 350 dredging machines are active in the region — big and small — on top of those operated legally by the Mineros Aluvial SAS multinational.
The illegal dredgers range from simple machines with makeshift conveyer belts to larger mechanical contraptions that require several divers to guide a massive vacuum pipe under the dark water.
Then there are the “dragons” — three-story, 20m-long boats with massive engines.
There are about two dozen of these in the Bajo Cauca region.
One “dragon” costs about US$500,000, their owners say.
“At the current [gold] price, it is profitable,” said Alex Cossio, 41, who runs one of these dredgers.
One “dragon” can extract up to 2kg of gold per day — worth more than US$50,000, said a police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) visited a number of these beasts, including one named “Native” that has been operational for only two months in a branch of the Nechi River.
“The [army] helicopters fly over us every day. We are afraid,” said Cossio, who insisted there was no link to organized crime.
“Diesel, food, logistics... We buy everything in the neighborhood. A large number of families live from our activity,” he added.
AFP observed at least six “dragons” lying mutilated and burnt by the riverside, some already being repaired by their owners.
There is no official data on how many dredgers have been destroyed.
“We tried to stop them, it was terrible,” said Julia Tatis, who owns a small eatery, of a raid this month on three of the machines in Nueva Esperanza, a poor hamlet on the water’s edge.
“The military just arrived saying we are the Gulf Clan, and they burned everything,” dredge owner Juan Manuel Carcamo added.
Campo said that the dredges are working river beds “that were already exploited by Mineros 40 years ago... The damage has already been done.”
Lawyer Francisco Arrieta Franco is an advocate for the miners who he describes as victims.
“It is false to say the dredges belong to the Clan,” he said. “It’s complicated and expensive to operate a dredger. Criminals are more interested in extortion, which is everywhere in this region.”
Locals say the miners are subject to Gulf extortion rather than perpetrators of it.
In a gold shop in El Bagre, an employee warned of trouble if the government continues to “harass” the miners.
“We need these dredgers to work and to eat,” shouted the employee, who did not want to be named. “They serve the whole community.”
Added a miner, also on condition of anonymity: “It is when you have an empty stomach that you are forced to do illegal things.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six