Amazon Gold Rush Sees Changing Times

“Guarico” is lounging in a hammock near gigantic Amazonian gold deposits where he has spent 11 years searching for his jackpot. But far from counting his riches, he’s ticking off the days before he quits this onetime boomtown that’s going bust. “I’m not doing anything. I’ve been defeated,” says the 25-year-old gold hunter.

The Amazon rain forests of eastern Venezuela used to be a place where a poor man with a pick and shovel could strike it rich--or at least dream of it.

But now the government is chasing illegal miners off some of the best land to make way for international companies that have concessions to mine for gold.

That has environmentalists worried that miners are moving to untapped lands where they will leave more paths of destruction.

The miners “may cause even worse damage if they aren’t located in areas where they can be controlled,” said Jorge Padron, head of the National Ecological and Social Union.

Thousands of miners flooded into the Imataca rain forest in the 1980s. They searched for gold that over the centuries has attracted explorers like Sir Walter Raleigh, who sought the legendary golden city of El Dorado.

In Imataca they built a frontier town called Las Claritas on top of what is believed to be the richest gold deposit in Latin America. The town grew to 10,000 people, including entire families. They came from as far as Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic and built houses out of plastic sheets.

Each day they dug out rocks, put them into sacks and trudged to a mill where gold was separated from dirt. Everyone had good days and bad. But during the boom, miners earned as much as $5,000 a month at a time when the average worker in Venezuela made about $200.

At the center of Las Claritas they erected a statue of a miner with a pick in his hand and a dog at his side. In their minds they were pioneers, like the men and women who conquered the Wild West in the United States.

But ecologists said the miners destroyed the environment with mercury and high-pressure water hoses used to uproot trees. Government officials complained that it was impossible to collect taxes or control the miners, whose village was rife with drugs, violence and prostitution.

Several years ago, authorities forced Las Claritas’ residents to relocate a few miles away. The new town--Las Nuevas Claritas--prospered at first. But then the government sold rights to the prized mining site to Canada’s Placer Dome and other mining companies.

Today, Las Nuevas Claritas is fading. It used to boast a couple of dozen ore mills. Now there are two.

One of them, where Guarico works, used to operate 24 hours a day. Now it cranks up no more than six hours. The amount of gold sacks processed is down from 600 a day to 50. The town’s population has dwindled to 3,000.

Falling international gold prices have contributed to the hard times.

“Before, it was a situation of bonanza. There was lots of gold and it was easy,” said miner Juan Tremeria. “Now we have a situation where people are going hungry.”

Few miners have fortunes stashed away from gold’s heyday. Most blew their money on alcohol, prostitutes and wild parties in the remote jungle village, where goods were expensive. The gold diggers--like the rest of Venezuela, which was experiencing an oil boom--neglected to save for a rainy day. Nowadays, a miner is lucky to make $400 or $500 a month.

Officials say bringing in dozens of companies to the mining areas will provide thousands of jobs and decrease ecological damage. The companies use sophisticated technology and will run programs to teach illegal miners better techniques, they argue.

Environmentalists contend the companies will overwhelm the forest. And they question the government’s claims about jobs and training programs.

Some miners are already heading to new sites not sold to the mining companies, such as the fragile areas around the river headwaters that feed the Guri Dam, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants.

Padron and other environmentalists charge that National Guardsmen are collecting bribes from illegal miners to allow them to operate in the new areas. Officials don’t deny the allegation and say they are working to curb corruption.

Invasion of new territories may leave another “disaster in the middle of the pristine forest,” said Clemencia Rodner of the Audubon Society.