An underground gold war in Colombia is 'a ticking ecological time bomb'

[Judi Lynn]

In Colombia’s Buriticá municipality, a gold mine owned by Chinese company Zijin has become a hotspot of environmental damage, criminal activity and conflict.

Zijin announced earlier this year that it had lost control of 60% of its mining operations to the illegal miners, who have taken over the mine’s tunnels or collapsed them.

Illegal mining has expanded in and around the mine, with miners using mercury, explosives and heavy machinery to extract gold, contaminating ecosystems and threatening the geological stability of the area.

The illegal miners flock here from around the country, and are associated with the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), also known as the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest criminal armed group.


Nearly 100 underground tunnels, running a combined length of more than 84 kilometers, or 52 miles, crisscross and plunge into the depths of the mountain that hosts the Zijin gold mine in Buriticá, northeastern Colombia. Since 2021, those tunnels have been invaded by informal miners associated with Colombia’s largest criminal armed group, the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), called the “Gulf Clan” by the government, who are digging their own honeycomb of tunnels into the same massive gold deposits.

Confrontations between the informal miners Zijin security personnel have at times escalated into underground gun battles. And as the mine acts as a magnet for increasing criminality, both social and environmental destruction have followed.

Residents describe the situation as “a ticking ecological time bomb.” Some say they worry that the thousands of poorly constructed tunnels built by the informal miners are in danger of collapsing the mountain entirely — a fear also expressed after investigations by the Mining, Environmental and Agrarian Office of Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office.

Concerns over contamination

In a public statement from July, the AGO warned that illegal mining is creating “grave environmental consequences” that include “structural geological risk to the base” of the mountain where the Zijin mine is located.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/an-underground-gold-war-in-colombia-is-a-ticking-ecological-time-bomb/

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Wikipedia description of the Gulf Clan:

Clan del Golfo

The Clan del Golfo (English: The Gulf Clan), also known as Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia – AGC) and formerly called Los Urabeños and Clan Úsuga, is a prominent Colombian neo-paramilitary group and currently the country's largest drug cartel.

Los Urabeños is one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Colombia. The crime syndicate recruits its members mainly from former right-wing paramilitaries and is said to have around 6,000 men under arms. In addition to drug trafficking, the Gulf clan is also involved in illegal mining and racketeering and is responsible for numerous murders and expulsions.[7] It is based in the Urabá region of Antioquia, and is involved in the Colombian armed conflict.[8][9][10]

Los Urabeños is one of the organizations that appeared after the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. In late 2011 Los Urabeños declared war on Los Rastrojos over the control of the drug trade in Medellín.[11] Their main source of income is cocaine trafficking as they appear to be the largest distributors of cocaine in all of Colombia.[12][10] As of late 2021, it is considered the most powerful criminal organization in Colombia, having some 3,000 members in the inner circle of the organization in 2016 with its current numbers unknown.[13][14] Its rivals include the National Liberation Army. The Gulf Clan has recruited accomplices at the highest level of the military hierarchy, such as generals and colonels.[15][16]

One of the many groups made up of former mid-level paramilitary leaders, the Clan have caused homicide rates to skyrocket in Colombia's northern departments. It is currently one of the more ambitious and ruthless of Colombia's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). The group's power base is currently in the Antioquia, Sucre and Córdoba departments, with a presence in various other departments and regions in the country including major cities such as Medellín and Bogotá.[17] Currently, the Clan is likely the single largest distributor of cocaine in the world having formed direct, highly-lucrative partnerships with drug cartels in Mexico as well as European crime groups such as 'Ndrangheta & Albanian mafia who made their billions in profit from the illegal cocaine trade with the Clan.[10][18]

. . .

The organization has emerged from paramilitarism and continues to specifically target political parties, unions and leftist associations. It is one of the main perpetrators of selective assassinations of community and social leaders, leftist political activists and forced displacement of people. In October 2017, it published a pamphlet entitled "Pistol Plan against the Patriotic Union" in which it threatened members of this political party or NGOs with death.

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_del_Golfo

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All these right-wing death squad people used to be known as A.U.C., the paramilitary narcotraffickers who wore uniforms resembling the Colombian Army's uniforms, without the insignias, etc. Upon occassion, they colluded with the Colombian military during massacres. During the latter part of deadly right-wing President Alvaro Uribe's rule, (his brother, Mario, being responsible for forming the Paras, himself, deeply involved) the A.U.C. went through the charade of demilitarizing itself, turning over its weapons, and ending their reign of terror. They immediately broke up into smaller groups, continued their murderous ways under different names, like the "Black Eagles" (Aguilas Negras), and the government pretended the Paras were gone, disbanded. Of course nothing could have been further from the truth.

In their earlier days they had been widely known to use chainsaws to publicly dispatch enemies they hated the most in front of their villager neighbors. They disemboweled victims, stuffed stones into their stomachs and threw them into water so they would sink, and somethings simply killed them and threw them into rivers. One article appeared regarding a woman and her husband who were going into the water and pulling out bodies and trying to find their relatives to inform them of their murders. I don't know if she lived long after that or not.

It seems destabilizing entire mountains now may be their most ambitious undertaking. They are right-wing monsters, have always been. Human rights groups indicate they have always, with Colombia's military, been responsible for the "lion's share" of deaths in Colombia's civil war.