Mining Is the Talk of the Town in Colombia

Mining continues to be the talk of the town in Colombia. News about the twelve trapped miners in the Antioquia province of Colombia dominated headlines, but authorities confirmed that all of the miners are almost certainly dead and at the bottom of the water-filled 800-meters-long mining shaft. Colombian authorities are doing all they can to rescue the miners’ corpses from their watery tomb, but the conditions at the mine are not helping the extraction effort. A large volume of water flooded the mine, the mine is quite narrow, and the infrastructure in the area has limited the strength and number of pumps used to drain the water from the mine.

The victims are all men between the ages of 23 and 55, from families with a long tradition of working in the Colombian mining industry. In one interview, an ex-miner who lost two of his sons in mining accidents explained the difficult choice that all families in the region must face:  after disasters like this, one never wants to go back to mining, but in these rural areas, people don’t have a choice. Mining is the only way to make a living.

Pulzo.com ran a feature on the damaging effects of illegal mining on Colombia. The report noted that 63% of all mining activity in the country is illegal; stressing that any conversation about mining in Colombia has to address the specter of illegal mining. Mining is already far more lucrative than agriculture, and has surpassed drug trafficking in the profit-making potential of illicit activities in Colombia. The mining boom started about six years ago and hasn’t slowed, forcing the government, including the Colombian armed forces, to turn its attention towards stamping out illegal mining.