7 days ago
Women were killed for mining. Now the world wants their emeralds
We hurry along the long, steep, endlessly twisting mountain path that leads to the emerald mines.
Yawning drops loom below us while jagged foliage forces us to duck as we race along the route to give ourselves a chance to return before nightfall. There is no safe way back in the dark.
Holding my hand is Margot Rictiva, 45, one of the small but growing number of female miners, or guaqueras, who have overcome decades of prejudice and resistance to seek their fortune below ground in Coscuez, Colombia.
I tell her I'm afraid of falling off one of the cliff edges. How quickly can a helicopter get down there? Surely, I would be dead before it arrives. 'You can do this,' she says. 'Have some confidence in yourself.'
Generations of miners have made this 90-minute hike before us, most of them setting out well before sunrise, hoping to avoid the mid-morning heat that engulfs the forest. But Rictiva and I have started the journey late, and alone. All we can hear is the sound of crickets, birds and our own heavy breathing in the hot, damp air.
Finally we arrive at the entrance to a small mine, one of several scattered along a towering mountain face. Its rocky arch blends in with the vegetation and as we enter, darkness envelops us.
Inside Rictiva tells me why she puts herself through this grinding routine day after day. 'I'm going to find a huge emerald one day,' she says. 'I'm going to buy a house for my mum and I'm going to go on holiday for the first time in my life.'
The jewels Rictiva is seeking are renowned around the globe for their quality, intense colour and purity.
Although discovered by the area's indigenous people, Colombia's emeralds were not traded internationally until after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Today, Muzo, a town just over six miles from Coscuez, is considered the world's emerald capital. Last year the Colombian government estimated that the mines in Coscuez have 60 million carats left to extract.
The country exports gems worth an average of $140 million every year — at least half of the world's emeralds by value — yet more than 15 per cent of people in what is known as Colombia's 'green heart' live in poverty.
Nelda Villamil, the president of a female miners guild and a former guaquera, said there were more female miners than ever in the region, especially in Muzo. 'Our guaqueras help each other. They're brave, they're leaders. They learn fast and they adapt. They lead our economy,' she said.
Women, she added, were at the forefront of efforts demanding better, safer working conditions for traditional miners, although they were distrustful of government officials who had failed to look after their interests in the past.
For decades women have fought to establish themselves in the mines. It was once believed that their beauty would drive away the emeralds, so they were not allowed in the mines at all.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, a period known as the 'green wars', when thousands of miners were killed as emerald bosses backed by criminal organisations vied for the land, women who tried to work in the mines were threatened and sometimes raped.
Villamil said one of her sisters was killed by her husband, an emerald miner, as a result of the violence and culture of machismo, lingering from the decades of conflict where women were seen as commodities.
'Our history has been very tragic. My sister was targeted because she was beautiful. So many of our women were hurt, raped, killed,' she told me earlier, on the bumpy six-hour drive from the capital, Bogotá. 'But I don't want to talk about it. It's an ugly past.'
In 1990 the government and the church helped broker a peace deal that quelled the violence in the region and the arrival of multinationals in the late 2000s improved the outlook for some women in the industry.
Fura Gems, a Dubai-based company with an outpost in Coscuez, spearheaded the creation of the region's first all-women wash plant. Emerald Mining Services (EMS), a multinational company in Muzo, claims to be a 'pioneer in the formal and legal inclusion of women' in mining.
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Today there are a few hundred women miners working in the Coscuez and Muzo area in both the formal and unregulated sectors. Overall, female miners make up 13 per cent of the country's total mining workforce, according to the Colombian Mining Association.
But while the multinational companies brought change for the better by offering safer working conditions they also cut access to many unregulated mining tunnels on their land that people had until then depended on for survival.
There are only so many jobs the companies can offer — fewer than 2,000. The combined population of Coscuez, Muzo, and other neighbouring towns that rely almost exclusively on mining is around 16,000.
That drives thousands into the remaining unregulated mines with their primitively designed shafts and greater safety risks. Now the government is trying to sell the land that they are on too. A designated police squad targets 'illegal' mining and seizes traditional miners' equipment. Guaqueras say they have historic rights to these lands and deny that their work is illegal.
'The work is extremely arduous, many people have died doing it but this is the only labour we know. It's ancestral,' said Maria del Pilar Ruge, a miner who moonlights as a hairstylist to help support her husband, who is having cancer treatment. 'We have earned the right to work this land, to harvest its wealth.'
Rictiva is only about 5ft 4in but in the passageway of this unregulated mine she seems taller. She can stand straight, while I have to crawl, at 5ft 11in, dirtying my jeans in the groundwater. Her chiseled face is illuminated by the beam of light coming from my construction helmet and tiny dots of perspiration and flecks of coal glisten on her tanned skin.
She hammers the ceiling with surprising strength.
Nearby, a cherub-faced 16-year-old girl plays hide and seek. She's too young to take on the gruelling labour, instead darting into the corners of rocky walls as the adults load dirt on minecarts to take outside and search for jewels.
It's at least 45C and the air is thick and humid. Gusts of fresh air through a cooling hose provides temporary relief before a small explosion erupts to our left. Rictiva peeks inside a pit tunnel, unfazed. 'It's been too long since it was ventilated, the toxic gases might make you pass out,' she says. It's not safe to give me a tour.
In 2021, the most recent year for which figures are available, 52 miners died in the state of Boyacá, which includes this region, the highest number nationwide.
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A day later, I make the trip to an open pit in Muzo with Claudia Rojas, a mother of four who knows the mines by heart. She says that it's the women who struggle the hardest.
'Not to undermine men — obviously they work really hard — but they rely on what they make day-to-day, which is not a lot, for survival,' Rojas said. 'We know it's on us if we're not able to feed our families. So, we are at the mines, we work odd jobs selling lottery tickets, food, doing nails, people's hair, and then we have to come home and do chores. We have to find a way to be everywhere and be everything. Men in Coscuez can be very sexist, but we refuse to let them walk over us.'
Roja's routine is brutal; she wakes at dawn and pays 24,000 Colombian pesos ($6) for a round trip to and from the mine by motorcycle. She sometimes skips lunch and often goes months without finding any emeralds worth selling.
'We try to help each other among women,' said Martha Fernandez Campos Lara, a guaquera since 1986. 'When we are up there in the mines and one of us doesn't have money for lunch, we share a piece of chicken, a coffee.'
At the edge of the pit, Mariela Medina runs water from a hose to search for speckles of precious green in the earth discarded by the big companies.
As agreed with the local government, under a new system called la voladora (the flyer), the companies allow local people to have the dirt that their own employees have discarded. But by the time it reaches informal miners, the odds of finding a decent-sized gem are extremely low.
Women have their own designated day to search these dumps without men. 'We're fighting like animals for it, people push and hit each other — it's degrading,' said Medina, her imitation emerald earrings twinkling. 'We just pray to God that by some crazy miracle, we are able to find something, anything.'
She added: 'Many years ago, traditional mining was a beautiful way to make a living, but the companies have cut access to a lot of the mines. People leave town because they're forced to find a way to make a living somewhere else.'
As the sun sets, the women wave goodbye from a corner of Muzo.
They smile warmly but they will only have a few hours of rest before resuming the hunt for a life-changing lump of green tomorrow. They look small and vulnerable as we drive away.
