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.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but