AFP, Ecuador :
In a desolate area of Ecuador’s northern Andes, dozens of electricity generators are cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape as armed security forces keep watch.
Nearby, sacks of earth and rock have been piled up next to a sign reading:
“confiscated gold material.” A month ago, 2,400 police and military personnel descended on La Merced de Buenos Aires in the mountains just north of the capital Quito to put a stop to indiscriminate illegal gold mining in the area.
Up to 15,000 miners and their families once flocked to the remote area, where they could earn the equivalent of $150 each day breaking up rocks that can contain up to 40 grams of gold per-ton.
All that remains of the black market industry are the terracotta-colored scars the miners have cut into the green landscape and the dozens of shelters they jury-rigged from tarpaulins and sticks.
The government raid chased away the miners and the criminal groups that accompanied them, while also removing an obstacle to Ecuador’s plans to wean its economy off its main export oil and encourage the development of mining, as fellow Andean nations Peru and Chile have done.
“In the next five to seven years, mining will be the economic pillar,” Deputy Mines Minister Fernando Benalcazar told AFP.
Buenos Aires was once a mountain village home to 1,800 peasants, but in late 2017 it was transformed by a huge influx of prospective gold miners.
“As the number of people increased, the gold came out. People came from Venezuela, Peru, Dominicans, from all over Ecuador,” 50-year-old German Fraga told AFP.
“There wasn’t enough food in the stores. So they began to stock up, to bring in trucks, as much as they could.”
Prices soared amid the hoarding, and at one point there was so much money in circulation that a 15 kilogram (33 pound) household gas canister, whose official price was $1.60, was changing hands for $40 in the mines.
In a desolate area of Ecuador’s northern Andes, dozens of electricity generators are cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape as armed security forces keep watch.
Nearby, sacks of earth and rock have been piled up next to a sign reading:
“confiscated gold material.” A month ago, 2,400 police and military personnel descended on La Merced de Buenos Aires in the mountains just north of the capital Quito to put a stop to indiscriminate illegal gold mining in the area.
Up to 15,000 miners and their families once flocked to the remote area, where they could earn the equivalent of $150 each day breaking up rocks that can contain up to 40 grams of gold per-ton.
All that remains of the black market industry are the terracotta-colored scars the miners have cut into the green landscape and the dozens of shelters they jury-rigged from tarpaulins and sticks.
The government raid chased away the miners and the criminal groups that accompanied them, while also removing an obstacle to Ecuador’s plans to wean its economy off its main export oil and encourage the development of mining, as fellow Andean nations Peru and Chile have done.
“In the next five to seven years, mining will be the economic pillar,” Deputy Mines Minister Fernando Benalcazar told AFP.
Buenos Aires was once a mountain village home to 1,800 peasants, but in late 2017 it was transformed by a huge influx of prospective gold miners.
“As the number of people increased, the gold came out. People came from Venezuela, Peru, Dominicans, from all over Ecuador,” 50-year-old German Fraga told AFP.
“There wasn’t enough food in the stores. So they began to stock up, to bring in trucks, as much as they could.”
Prices soared amid the hoarding, and at one point there was so much money in circulation that a 15 kilogram (33 pound) household gas canister, whose official price was $1.60, was changing hands for $40 in the mines.
