Who Owns Colombia's Gold?

Mining operations have pitted a Canadian company against locals who have worked the mountains for generations.

- Rémy Bourdillon

Day after day, in the mountains around Segovia, Colombia, men emerge from mine shafts bearing picks and hauling bags of ore. Here, gold mining is a way of life, predating the arrival of the Spanish in 1499. Fernando Gómez, Segovia’s municipal mining secretary, says that 80 percent of the city’s 42,500 residents are employed through the industry: in addition to the miners, there are the women — chatarreras — who sort through low-quality ore, as well as the mule drivers who carry rock to the city’s sixty-plus refineries, all of which are filled with labourers who extract the gold. These are the self-described “traditional miners”: members of a local, low-tech tradition that goes back generations.

Gran Colombia Gold (GCG), a Canadian company newly active in the region, has a different name for these workers: they are “illegal miners” stealing gold ore from inside the company’s mining title. The Toronto-based firm, which arrived in Colombia not long after the 2008 Canada– Colombia Free Trade Agreement opened up the country to development, is now involved in a lawsuit accusing the Colombian government of failing to protect the company’s investment and seeking at least $250 million (US) in damages.

The conflict dates back to 2010, when GCG acquired the mining title from Frontino Gold Mines for approximately $205 million (US). The former owner had tolerated traditional miners.

“Frontino worked on the motherlode while the traditional miners were exploiting secondary veins,” Eliober Castañeda recalls. Castañeda is the former leader of Mesa Minera, an organization created to defend Segovia’s small-scale miners. As he explains, when GCG took over, it made the locals an offer: become subcontractors of GCG and deliver all mined ore to the company, or stop mining entirely.