PAIMADO, Colombia (AP) — Sediment and pebbles are all that remain on Earth around much of the small riverside community of Bernardino Mosquera in northwest Colombia’s Choco region.
Just a year ago, healthy shrubs and trees filled this important biodiversity spot full of native species. But then illegal miners arrived, using their heavy machinery to search the riverbeds for gold.
“It’s just desert out here,” Mosquera said. “Illegal mining affects the ecosystem in every possible way… it leads to degraded land. There are no trees. The water sources are drying up, it is contaminated by mercury.”
Mosquera is a river protector, a title given to him and 13 others. The unpaid guards act as the eyes and ears of the Atrato River, liaising with government agencies on environmental and social issues in the face of armed groups’ aggression and hoping to reverse the destruction they see along the river. But after eight years, they have become increasingly disillusioned by the lack of institutional support and the growing threat from armed groups controlling the region.
The Colombian Constitutional Court declared in 2016 that the Atrato River, which flows past this city of 2,500 inhabitants, is so important to life that it has rights equivalent to those of a human being. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the region is home to thousands of species, with 25% of plant and bird species being endemic. The legal status of the river was a first for Latin America and when the guards were established.
“It is an unbreakable marriage between the inhabitants and the rivers,” said Mosquera, 62, “that is why we must defend the Atrato.”
Illegal gold mining has become the fastest growing criminal economy in South America over the past decade. The boom started in Colombia and Peru and spread to Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil.
Illegal mining is widespread in Choco
Paimado, like many other towns in the Choco region, is an illegal mining hub firmly under the control of the country’s largest criminal organization known as the Gulf Clan. Every morning, small wooden boats carry plastic gasoline containers to feed mining machines along the Atrato, a river that winds some 750 kilometers (470 miles) through the northern Colombian jungle.
Dozens of illegal mines are located in the river between Mosquera’s home in Paimado, which borders Rio Quito, the main tributary of the Atrato River, and the capital Quibdo.
Large wooden rafts on stilts reach deep into the riverbed to extract material that is sifted through the machine in search of gold. Deep within the banks of the river, a different kind of mining takes place with heavier machinery. It is here that deforestation is clearly visible.
Drone footage taken by The Associated Press shows large swaths of empty land stretching long behind the riverbanks.
“Many people think there is no deforestation because it looks very green,” says river ranger and agronomist Maryuri Mosquera (42).
High poverty rates have driven many to gold mining, work that destroys land and pollutes their rivers. That destruction then destroys the local economy, making communities even more dependent on mining.
Colombia’s human rights ombudsman said in April that the government is failing to protect the river, saying there is “no evidence of any progress” since the river acquired personality. It called on the Environment Ministry to comply with the 2016 ruling.
In a written response, Colombia’s Environment Ministry said its minister Susana Muhamad has coordinated efforts with the Defense Ministry “to protect this important ecosystem.” its tributaries.
A community lifeline destroyed
The Atrato River has long been an important source of water, food and transportation for the rural, mainly Afro-Colombian residents who built communities on the riverbanks.
The small village of El Arenal along the Atrato is home to river protector Juan Carlos Palacios, 33, who says his role is a triumph for the black communities who fought for the 2016 ruling.
“It makes me very sad when I constantly see machines passing by, without any controls. They arrive on our land and we can’t even say anything because the miners come with armed actors,” Palacios said.
For most of his life, sometimes even now, Palacios has been involved in artisanal gold mining. A short canoe trip across the river from El Arenal is his mother, hunched over with a hoe and a wooden gold sifter pan. This has been her life since she can remember.
“I think if I stop doing this, I will die soon because I’m so used to it,” Ana Palacios Cuesta said, laughing. “The dredgers have pumped out the entire river, so we’re getting almost nothing.”
The small amounts of gold sediment she collects are sold in the nearby town of Yuto, or in Quibdo, about 40 minutes away.
Mercury and arsenic provide industrial-scale miners with a low-tech solution to extracting gold. But they are pumped into the water and poison the river and the surrounding lands. This tactic has killed marine life, altered the river’s natural flow and further weakened some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
Palacios, who has a degree in biology, said fish in the river are “highly contaminated” with mercury, which reaches humans from fish and can cause damage to vital organs.
“Of course we continue to consume them because we have no other choice,” he said.
Local women and their children stand in the river to wash their dishes and clothes, something only the most rural and needy communities do today for fear of the pollution of the water.
Guards are confronted with violence and threats
The guards have a precarious job in an area largely controlled by rebels and criminal armed groups, such as the left-wing guerrillas, the National Liberation Army and the Gulf Clan.
Mining machines along the banks are controlled by these groups and miners are forced to pay them protection money – known locally as ‘vacuna’ – in order to operate freely without being targeted.
“The act of raising awareness and denouncing the situations that the Atrato Basin is experiencing means that we face certain risks,” said guardian Maryuri Mosquera, especially her guardian colleagues in more rural areas.
Guardian Bernardino Mosquera has been given a bulletproof vest by the state after receiving several death threats over the years, the latest in March. He was kidnapped by the Gulf Clan and had bullet grenades placed under his door several times ‘as a warning’.
He almost stopped.
“But I realized that if we withdraw from the process, we are empowering them… no one will want to say what happens, you will end up riddled with bullets,” Mosquera said as tropical rain pelted. the tin roof of his house.
“We must continue to make the process visible. It is the only way for them (armed groups) to get the feeling that we are also in the area. So that stopped me and kept me going… And here I am.
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Follow Steven Grattan on X: @sjgrattan
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