To make money in Colombia’s jungles it helps to have guns, whisky and a river. Hardly conventional business tools, but this is not a conventional environment. There is armed conflict, abundant natural resources, extreme poverty, isolation — and fortunes to be made.
In Choco, a vast province spanning the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a boom is under way. Mining, logging and palm oil companies are moving into forests packed with precious metals, tropical hardwood and fertile soil. Geologists are scouring mountains for minerals while barges laden with timber and palm chug down the Atrato river, as there are few roads.
The problem, locals say, is that many companies act like robber barons, pillaging rather than investing, and accuse firms of perpetuating conflict by making deals with rebels and militias who control swaths of territory.
Some companies pay armed groups to chase peasants from their land, while others trick their way into grabbing communal land titles, said Richard Moreno, a lawyer and civil association head.
“They’re buying many of the leaders — take them to a fancy hotel in Medellin, ply them with whisky and get them to sign away property deeds,” he said.
Choco’s population has been uprooted and terrorised by armed groups whose political aims mask a scramble for natural wealth.
Logging used to be a small-scale affair but in the past decade merchants have moved in and bought up logging licences from communities which have collective titles.
About 4,000 hectares can be legally felled each year. In theory the trade is regulated by an official agency, Codechcoco.
“There is some illegal chopping, but not much,” said Damian Mosquera, head of the agency.
But the agency is discredited. More than 800 transport permits went missing in 2006 and 2007 and officials have been caught taking bribes in more recent scandals.
Leaders of an indigenous group whose land includes a forest reserve, said gunmen forced them to hand over licences to logging firms which cleared way above the permitted limit.
The Association of Communities of Lower Atrato estimates that 90 percent of logging is illegal.
Meanwhile, palm oil companies swept in in the 1990s on the heels of paramilitaries who killed and evicted peasants from their fields.
Thousands of farmers, displaced and desperate, sold their land to companies that planted thousands of hectares of palm.
State loans have funded the palm expansion, with some firms returning the favour by funding Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s election campaigns.
The government, embarrassed by international scrutiny and criminal investigations into 23 palm companies, recently ordered some firms to return land to peasants.
Uribe’s administration has promoted mining as a spur to development with relaxed regulations helping annual gold production to more than double last year.
The problem for indigenous Embera communities in Choco is that one of the new sites earmarked for exploration is a sacred mountain, Jaikatuma.
The US Muriel Mining corporation dispatched geologists to test for gold, silver, platinum, copper and coal. The company said it had approval from Embera leaders but opponents held a mass meeting which rejected the proposed mine.
In January 700 Embera surrounded the Muriel camp and forced the company to withdraw. It was a rare indigenous victory against corporations — but perhaps fleeting. Muriel has pledged to return with state backing.
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