The war for water and gold the story of the mine La Concepción dated to 1559

https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/actualidad/vivir/guerra-el-agua-y-el-oro-articulo-418227

24 Apr 2013 - 8:32 PM

Edinson Arley Bolaños / Special for El Espectador

Under the mountains, the páramos and glaciers of the Colombian Massif there are precious metals and abundant fresh water that nourishes 70% of the country

Libya Mamian and her eight brothers are the owners of the land where is the largest gold mine in the Colombian Massif: La Concepción. They have never exploited it, because they inherited it from their parents, who always dreamed that this place was a natural reserve to protect the water that springs from its mountains: the Agua del Oro stream and the Marmatos river. Doña Libia is over 68 years old and lives quietly in La Cuchilla, a few kilometers from the mine where the gold that the mining locomotive now covets is hidden. His house is located between the municipalities of Almaguer and La Vega, eight hours from Popayán, the capital of Cauca. It is a mansion for her and a mystery for which we barely know her inside. It hides among pine trees and borrachero flowers that exhale a bit of oxygen that inhales the heart of the Colombian Massif. La Concepción is the most important mine in this region, because from 1559, in the New Kingdom of Granada, 30,000 of the 40,000 pesos that the Government of Popayán produced, which extended to Antioquia, came from it. The story tells that Almaguer, the municipality where these mines are located, was going to be the capital of the Kingdom of Granada, which then reached Caracas and Quito. But there is nothing left of that opulence. After the earthquake of 1765, which totally destroyed the town and buried a large part of the gold veins, Almaguer today is one of the poorest municipalities in Colombia. 88% of its inhabitants live with unsatisfied basic needs, according to the DANE census of 2005. However, the development thought from the economic wealth, according to the Colombian Government, is under their own lands. This is what the map of the cadastre of the National Mining Agency indicates that, of the 22,400 hectares that the municipality has, 3,099 are titled and 14,112 are requested. That is, 77% of the municipality would be sitting on precious metals that could be exploited by AngloGold Ashanti and Palma Som multinationals or by businessman Rafael Herrera Contreras, who have titles and applications in these lands. When we arrived at the La Concepción mine, after four hours of traveling on the bridle path that the Spanish Pío Cid Martínez built to illegally exploit the mine in the 70s, there they were: eleven sinkholes. Forgotten by the man's ambition, but remembered by Dona Libia, his eight brothers, Floresmiro Gómez and two more peasants from the village of Buenavista, who consider themselves defenders of the Nudo de Almaguer.

The day the government of Juan Manuel Santos announced the mining locomotive as the engine of development of the country, the nostalgia returned to La Concepción. Even many who did not know her were given the task of caring for that mountain with yellowish water stagnant in the sinkholes, with the smell of sulfur, which after four decades is not yet absent from this hill called the Alto del Mono. That mountain is the canyon of the Agua del Oro stream and the Marmatos river, which run towards the Guachicono to give its torrent to the mighty Patía river.

If the Almaguer mines are exploited, as advocated by the defenders of the Massif, multinationals such as AngloGold Ashanti would arrive with more sophisticated machinery and possibly provoke what the geologist and environmentalist Julio Fierro announces: between 2,400 and 3,500 million tons of waste compared to cities such as Bogotá, which generate 2 million tons of garbage per year; if one takes into account that a large-scale mining project can last 25 years, extracting the metal would produce an amount 50 times greater than in the capital.

However, for Sandra Ocampo, communications manager of AngloGold Ashanti, that figure is still speculative and there is no precise data, since the multinational, which arrived in Colombia in 2003, is currently in the exploration stage throughout the country. "Every mining project is different, because it depends on the size of the project, the rock that is in that place and the studies that are carried out," he said.

For this case, Ocampo presents an accurate example of the Cripple Creek and Victor gold mine in Colorado, United States: "It is a mine where 70 million tons of waste are generated each year. Of these, 47 are waste rock that is dumped in what is called a waste deposit. When the deposit reaches the amount of rock it can store, it is proceeded to revegetalize it in harmony with the environmental environment, that is, with species specific to the area where the project is located ".

To Libya what torments her the most about the ambition for gold, is the memory of her mother, who was assassinated in 1971 with a machete on that farm, for stealing her money. That memory pierces his heart. In 1992 his father died of cancer and moral pain, and his last wish was to turn that mountain into a natural reserve area: "Do not go to sell the land, so that when they do not have work in the city, return to them" , he told all his children.

But that dream seems to collapse. According to Francisco Vidal, deputy director of Environmental Patrimony of the Autonomous Corporation of Cauca (CRC), although that mountain where the mine is located would have to be protected, "unfortunately it is not within the framework of an ecosystem that prevents the development of mining activity". This argument distances the Mamian family from the pretensions of closing the mine and preventing "the rocky waste, which has a high amount of sulfite pyrite, generating acidity in the waters of these lands," as explained by the geologist Julio Fierro.

Even so, the persistence of this family and of the Integration Committee of the Colombian Massif (CIMA) continues. Through municipal forums, for the last two years they have promoted the figure of civil society reserve zones to protect 362 lagoon bodies, 13 paramos, the high Andean forests and the glaciers that are born in this region and that supply water to more 70% of Colombians.

Eight hours after touching a piece of massif, we returned to Dona Libia's mansion. And then the mystery is solved when we get to the patio of his house. There, in a tomb surrounded by purple flowers, are the remains of his father and mother, who buried with suspicion so that their energies and their dreams are always latent: protect these lands of abundant fresh water and virgin forest.

The Sierra, Cauca, is the door of the Colombian Massif. From there you can see the ambition for these lands: of the 20,300 hectares that the municipality has, 12,193 are titled, that is, 60% of the territory. Moreover, 2,655 hectares are requested, which increase 13% of this municipality. Of those titles, six are from the AngloGold Ashanti and amount to 10,177 hectares. The rest of the concessions are divided between Carboandes and individuals.

In that municipality is the path Frontino Alto and there lives an Indian and humanist berraca: Omaira Rojas. 42 years. Her black and straight hair makes me categorize her as indigenous, however, she does not belong to the town hall of her path. Eleven years ago he lives in this area at the point of harvesting coffee and cane, and going down to wash gold to the Esmita River, another tributary of Patía.

Since 2003, when the multinational AngloGold Ashanti arrived, at the time with the name of Kedada, Rojas has opposed the mega-mining project and that has cost him threats from people who are in favor of the project. The wife of Abelino Garzón, former president of the communal action board of the village, told him in 2011 that "because of the fact that she was against the company, she was lying on the road any day," recalls Omaira. In front of her house, in a symbolic hill for her and her community, is the school of the path. "They also want to turn it into dust and extract the gold," he says. The project belongs to the multinational AngloGold Ashanti and is called Cerro Gordo. But, for Sandra Ocampo, communications manager of the multinational, to say that gold is going to be taken from that hill is hurried. "The interest of AngloGold Ashanti for now is not to extract gold, but to know and explore the country, to know if there is a possibility of developing a project in those places." This has generated concern among the residents of La Sierra, Cauca, which has led them to convene together with the social organization CIMA a mining forum in defense of the territory and the environment on June 16. If it is done, this would be the fourth in the region and it would be without the help of the mayor of the U Party, Húver Ramos, who has refused to support him. That fact and the refusal to defend their peasants in the past coffee stop, have cost him that the settlers are collecting signatures to revoke his mandate. This is how most of the 89 municipalities that belong to the Colombian Massif live. In Cauca and Nariño, with mobilizations and actions, they defend this great region, declared by Unesco in 1979 as a Biosphere Reserve. In the village of Santa Cruz, municipality of San Lorenzo, Nariño, its residents are going to build a cemetery on the hill where the AngloGold Ashanti has a mining title. And in La Sierra, Cauca, Omaira says that from her land they only take it out with their feet forward.