Colombian blacks’ gold-dredging victory comes at a price

When something goes bump in the night, Benedesmo Palacios not only jumps but also reaches for his revolver.

Who could blame him? The Afro-Colombian father of eight led his riverfront community’s successful effort to remove a fleet of polluting vessels that dredged for gold, and now he fears he’s a marked man.

“My nerves are on edge. I’m afraid of people following me and I trust no one,” said Palacios, who is Paimado’s community council leader. “I’ve heard there are two contracts out to kill me. But I’ve left it in the hands of God.”

Three years of appeals to the government to expel the illegal dredges from the stretch of Rio Quito fronting this isolated village in northwestern Colombia finally brought results last May, when police swooped in and confiscated the fleet of 16 ore processors.

The seizures were a red-letter date in the struggle of Afro-Colombian communities here to exercise the territorial rights they were granted in the early 1990s and which they are finally wielding, thanks in part to legal empowerment programs financed by international aid agencies.

For the majority of poor blacks in Paimado, the expulsion was a milestone, ridding the town of equipment that scarred the environment and altered the course of a river carved over centuries.

But others say that mining is the only economic stimulus going in desperately poor Choco state and that the dredges should stay. Several owners of confiscated machinery have initiated legal action in a bid to resume operations this month.

The box-shaped vessels suck up tons of ore a day by chewing up river bottoms and banks. In Paimado, they caused the collapse of seven houses and extensive loss of crops, said Jose Romana, city clerk of Rio Quito township, of which Paimado is a part. He fears that spills of mercury used in refining and the blockage of feeder streams have killed off fishing grounds.

“The dredges brought no benefit to us, only erosion, armed groups, prostitution and discord within the community,” Luis Carlos Romana, 27, said as he delivered ice in the sweltering town of 2,000.

But the owner of one of the seized dredges said that each vessel extracted up to 12 ounces of gold a day, generating $6,000 in profit -- much of which circulated through the local economy.

He disputed the charges of illegality, saying the dredges are “informal,” a classification commonly used in Latin America to describe businesses that, although not strictly permitted, are allowed by authorities to function.

The man, who declined to give his name so as not to alert authorities, said local officials don’t hesitate to register gold sales and collect a 4% tax.

“Illegal mining would be something obscure or hidden,” the owner said. “We operate in the light of day, under open skies.”

But legal experts within the Afro-Colombian community disagree.

“The dredges operate without licenses, have no oversight and so areillegal on the face of them,” said attorney Carlos Rivas, a Choco native who practices in Bogota, the Colombian capital.

The 1991 constitution and a subsequent law carved out semi-sovereign status for more than 120 black communities in Choco. But those rights, including autonomy over 2 million acres, are hardly protected, said attorney Richard Moreno. He is legal advisor to Cocomacia, a council that represents the 120 communities.

“It’s been an evolutionary process slowed down by ignorance of the law,” said an official with the Pan American Development Foundation, an arm of the Organization of American States that has administered legal and economic aid in Choco since 2006.

“But we are seeing small signs of progress in the recognition by the authorities of the right of these communities to territorial control and by Afro-Colombians themselves,” said the official, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

In the last three years, as global gold prices skyrocketed, dredges appeared in many parts of Choco, where rivers are the main mode of transport. Dredges are built illegally in the state capital, Quibdo, under the noses of local authorities paid to look the other way, aid agency officials say.

Asked whether he could provide the names of officials or politicians who would endorse dredge mining as beneficial to Choco, the anonymous owner said, “Yes, but they’re both in jail” for alleged support of paramilitary groups.

Although he denied any knowledge of threats against Palacios, he said the seizure of the dredges has made Palacios and other community leaders powerful enemies.

“The politics here are such that whoever is against mining is against progress,” said Father Ulrich Kollwitz, a priest with the Quibdo diocese.

Palacios is accompanied by a police bodyguard when he goes to Quibdo. “One guy was filming me last week and I had to pull my gun on him to stop,” he said.

But he has no intention of giving up his struggle, which he sees as one that pits economic interests against justice and the environment. He said he has refused bribes of $2,500 per dredge to allow the mining to continue.

“The money is not important,” Palacios said. “The real question is what we are leaving to our children and our children’s children.”

Kraul is a special correspondent.