About 600 meters deep in the richest gold mine in Colombia, private security guards crouch behind sandbags, trapped in a failed battle with a drug-trafficking gang that excavated about 50 kilometers of tunnels worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The air below ground is hot, humid, sometimes toxic, and the work is dangerous – defending claustrophobic passageways from thrown explosives and Kalashnikov fire. Last year, two guards were killed and several others were injured. On the other hand, an estimated 2,000 illegal miners work, and face their own dangers.
The scale of the looting is amazing. The company that owns the mine, Zijin Mining Group, a Chinese company controlled by the government, estimated that it lost more than 3.2 tons of gold last year, worth about 200 million dollars and at a rate of about 38% of the mine’s total production. Illegal mining, a slow and arduous process that goes on largely unpoliced by the authorities, is a war “we are losing,” a Zijin security official said.
Delinquent miners at Zijin mines and elsewhere in Colombia receive access, protection and equipment from the criminal organization Gulf Clan, an armed militia of about 7,000 men that transports cocaine and migrants on routes leading to the US. The group takes over Zijin tunnels for illegal miners in exchange for a share of the loot.
$5,000 per month
Illegal gold mining in South America has expanded in recent years, government officials said. It is driven by high gold prices, which have risen by 30% this year to about $2,600 per ounce. Miners move bulldozers and dig into jungles, inflame conflicts with local indigenous groups, and use mercury to separate gold from rock, contaminating parts of the Amazon rainforest in several countries.
As history shows, the lure of gold can be irresistible. Some of Colombia’s illegal miners produce $5,000 or more in gold a month, an amount similar to what business executives earnM. Since 2019, about 18 illegal miners have been killed in accidents at the Zijin mine, company officials said.
“The pay is very good, but you risk everything,” said Eric Dubier, a 22-year-old illegal miner. “You can get trapped. There are rockfalls. There is fighting every day.”
Zijin Mining, which operates worldwide, filed a $430 million claim with the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, claiming that Colombian authorities are not doing their job. Zijin estimates that illegal miners control more than 60% of its mining tunnels in the mountains around Buritica, a two-hour drive from Medellin.
The company purchased the mine in 2020 from Continental Gold in Canada for $1 billion, as part of Beijing’s effort to mine minerals from around the world. Leizhong Li, the company’s chief executive, said that violent invasions have since become a daily threat – and with almost no help from the government.
“We tried to talk to the state throughout last year but we didn’t see much desire on their part,” Lee said. The company estimated that Colombia lost the equivalent of $100 million in taxes and royalties last year.
Daniela Gomez, the deputy minister of defense, said that Colombia does not have the ability to remove the clandestine miners from the “underground theater of activity.” The government, she said, wants to avoid violent clashes that could endanger civilians.
“The company’s demands are unrealistic,” Gomez said. Zijin bought the gold mine operations “knowing that the illegal extraction of minerals was going on,” she said.
Over the past four years, illegal miners have built an underground network so vast that Zijin engineers say the mountain has begun to resemble Swiss cheese, crisscrossed lengthwise and crosswise by makeshift passages and tunnels leading from 380 entrances above ground. The Gulf Clan provide beds, kitchens, bathrooms and security.
The gang also supplies the miners with sex workers, marijuana and other drugs during their shifts. “It’s all there,” Dubier said.
trench warfare
Illegal miners dig their way into the Zijin mine from a chain of small houses perched on a mountain that holds one of Latin America’s largest gold deposits.
The miners use explosive charges and rock drills to penetrate the bathroom floors and break through hundreds of meters of stone and clay. Inch by inch, the miners dig passages to reach Zijin’s tunnels.
Militia fighters force Zijin’s security forces to retreat using explosives and gunfire in “trench warfare,” as a company official described it. Zijin said it had no choice but to give up the tunnels, a retreat that jeopardizes the future of its gold mining concession.
“It happens every day,” Lee said of the underground clashes. The company estimated that it had to abandon about 40 tons of gold deposits in areas seized by the Gulf Clan and illegal miners.
Gomez, the deputy defense minister, described the legal obstacles facing searching homes and arresting miners. “I can go to Buritika tomorrow and catch 300 people,” she said. “And the judge will release them by evening.”
On a recent tour of the underground tunnels, a senior Zijin security official at the mine pointed to a wall of sandbags separating the company’s operations from trespassers operating less than 100 meters away. The voices of the miners carried in the darkness.
“All the mining from here to there is lost,” he said, pointing to the distant lights where illegal miners worked. “They are gradually advancing, taking ownership.”
Miners often take over Zijin tunnels by throwing explosives and shooting at guards, the security official said. The miners carry rock drills and cause up to 250 explosions a day to break through rock. Their progress cost Zijin two of the mine’s three sections.
The richest and deepest part of the gold mine remains in the hands of the company. Zijin has about 4,500 employees there and in processing centers. The company digs about 4,000 tons of rock per day, which yields an average of 24 kilos of gold.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Javier Sarmiento, a researcher who tracks the woes of Boriticá mines for Colombia’s Office of the Inspector General, a government agency.
“lack of control”
Zijin officials said the underground struggle intensified after the election of leftist President Gustavo Petro in 2022. Previous governments welcomed foreign mining companies, including Zijin. But Petro and his ministers have criticized large-scale mining, saying they want to shift the economy toward sustainable industries such as avocado farms and tourism.
The Colombian government says that the country needs to change the economy of Buritica, so that citizens have a choice of better jobs. Officials say they want to allow illegal miners to set up legal cooperatives instead to run small professional mines. Some officials have suggested that Zijin give up some of its mining holdings to trespassers in an attempt to make peace.
“There are areas in this concession area that are not being explored, there is no activity whatsoever,” said Luis Alvaro Pardo, president of the country’s National Mining Agency. “So we say, ‘Look Zijin, you can hand over some areas.'”
The previous government had a more aggressive policy against armed groups, said Lee, the company’s chief executive. In 2016, Colombia launched Operation Crete, which closed more than 250 illegal passages into the mine over four years.
Zijin said Colombia should once again close the routes used by criminals who steal the company’s gold. “From our point of view, the policy is not sympathetic towards mining and towards the multinational companies,” Lee said. “How is it possible that the authorities do not know this and do not act against it?”
The state inspector general’s office has asked the government to develop an action plan to stop the theft, Sarmiento said. Nothing came of the request. “It is closely related to politics,” he said. “The rise of this new government does not seem to have helped the situation.”
Brigadier General William Castaño, who oversees a police team assigned to the mine, said his forces regularly clash with delinquent miners. “There are clashes almost every day,” he said.
Sarmiento and executives at Zijin said the country should try to cut off the electricity used by illegal miners’ drills. They said the police and soldiers deployed in Buritica can check vehicles traveling on the only road leading to the mine. The vehicles transport equipment and supplies, and leave loaded with stolen gold ore, according to Zijin officials.
“This is a complete lack of control on the part of the authorities,” Sarmiento said.
Thousands of miners came from other parts of Colombia and neighboring Venezuela to try their luck there. Some moved away from the Zijin tunnels to mine gold deposits at La Santana, a mine a few kilometers away. Those miners deny Zijin’s claim that they are taking the company’s gold.
One day recently, Andres Reva, an elderly miner at La Santana, walked through the water and mud of a tunnel floor. He and a handful of other miners dug passages that go up to about 180 meters into the mountain.
As the light from his helmet shone on colored and jagged rocks, Reva ran his hand along a unique layer of minerals. “This vein that runs through here,” he said, “is the one that holds the gold.”
Dust particles floated in the air. Rocks fell from the walls and ceilings of the tunnel to the ground. Spokesman Antonio Quiros didn’t give it much thought. He and other miners worked on strengthening human-sized tunnels with wooden beams. Commercial miners use tunnel boring equipment to build passages supported by steel and concrete. Some are large enough for trucks to pass through.
“We small miners don’t have the technology that the big companies have,” Quiros said. “But it gets into your blood and becomes your passion.”