Equipped with power tools, women are working in Colombia’s emerald mines, challenging the industry’s traditional male dominance.
- Lack of employment and hopes of getting rich quickly are driving women into mining despite harsh conditions.
- Colombian emeralds are highly valued around the world and can bring in huge profits, but most workers struggle to make ends meet.
Deep in a mountain tunnel in headache-inducing heat, women with power tools chip away at rock for gemstones. They carved out a difficult path for themselves in Colombia’s emerald industry, which had long been dominated by men.
A lack of employment opportunities and the hope of finding wealth drove women to work in the mines. Colombian emeralds are known around the world for their quality, and although most people in the industry are not wealthy, the best ones can fetch thousands of dollars.
“There are months and years when we don’t even make $250 from the emerald mines,” said Yanez Forero, one of the women who works in a small informal mine near the town of Coscues.
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“But here we are, still fighting for the dream of having a house with tile floors, a place that smells good and no one will kick us out,” she said. She lives in a precarious hillside house with unpainted walls and cement floors.
Emerald miners chat after work at an informal mine near the town of Cosques, Colombia, on February 29, 2024. A lack of jobs and hopes of getting rich quickly are driving women into Colombia’s mining industry. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Some of the world’s largest emeralds are mined in Colombia, including a 3-pound emerald that broke the world record in 1995. Rumor has it that a miner recently found an emerald in Cosques that sold for $177,000 and left the desolate town for good. .
According to the National Federation of Emerald Companies, Colombia’s emerald exports in 2022 were worth $122 million. This gemstone is one of the country’s most emblematic products and is sold in jewelry stores in cities such as Cartagena and Bogotá.
But most of the profits from emeralds go to merchants and large corporations who have invested millions of dollars in technology to help find the most valuable stones.
Workers in unregulated small-scale mines like Forero still use sticks of dynamite to dig tunnels, but they are unlikely to find the emeralds that will change someone’s fate.
Forero keeps the small, opaque emeralds he has collected over the past three months in his home outside Cosques. She thinks these are worth no more than $76 to her.
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Her income is not enough to support her four children or to help her father, who developed a respiratory disease after decades of working in the emerald mines and needs an oxygen tank to breathe.
Therefore, she also does random jobs to earn a living, such as washing uniforms, ironing, and cleaning the house.
The 52-year-old said she was struggling to break free from this lifestyle as Cosques’ economy revolved around mining and there were few other opportunities.
Working in the mines is even tougher for women. After digging deep tunnels and sifting through rock, they have to take care of children and do other household chores that men are reluctant to do.
Flor Marina Morales said she started working in the mines around Cosques because she needed to support her children.
She said she got home from the mines at 3 a.m. and woke up to make breakfast for her children and send them to school.
Morales’ children are currently attending university, studying psychology and law.
“I’m glad they have a different perspective,” she said. “Mining is physically demanding, and the work requires people to endure significant hunger, cold, and sleep deprivation.”
To enter the small mines around Coscues, women wear rubber boots, helmets, and carry drills just like men.
They enter in single file, then branch out in different directions and enter a tunnel with each person having a designated area to excavate. The stones that broke the wall are carted outside, washed and sifted.
This kind of involvement of women would have been unthinkable in Colombia a few decades ago. According to an elderly villager, the men previously forbade women to go near the mine because they believed that the emeralds would hide if they were nearby.
“It was pure machismo. They just didn’t want us to work,” said Carmen Alicia Avila, a 57-year-old miner who has been in the industry for almost 40 years.
She said from the 1960s to the 1990s, miners attacked each other for control of the area during a period known as the Green Wars, and women who tried to work in the mines were threatened and raped. There were also people there.
Avila said he started working in the mines when he was 19 years old, but was not allowed to enter the shafts. Instead, she sifted through the stones the men had picked up.
“It was only 20 years ago that women were allowed into the mine shafts,” she says.
After a series of peace agreements brokered by the Catholic Church, violence in the region has decreased. Many miners who were behind the violence were killed. As precious emeralds became harder to find and more money was needed, some sold their assets to international companies.
According to the local women miners’ association, 200 women currently work in the mines around Cosques. Some work alongside men, others in her five small mines owned by women. Only female miners are allowed there.
The tunnels are so small that the women take turns working inside them.
Like others working in small-scale mines, they are trying to get the government to formally recognize them as artisanal miners. This would give them the right to legally develop the mine. It also increases stability and makes it easier to obtain financing.
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The Colombian government has already granted more than 900 rights to companies and individuals to develop emerald mines. But the National Mining Authority said 576 applications, including those from small-scale miners, were still under review.
Luz Miriam Duarte Ramírez, president of the National Federation of Mines, said her organization supports efforts to register Cosquez miners as artisanal miners and the legalization of five mines owned by women. Ta.
Despite these efforts to improve conditions, Forero said he doesn’t want to stay in the industry for long. If she were lucky enough to find a precious gem, she said, she would buy a house and start a small business to move her away from the hot, dark tunnels she had worked in for years.
“Even though some people have found emeralds that were sold in Dubai, life in these mines is tough,” Forero said. “Sometimes I sit in the tunnel and talk to God. But unfortunately we don’t seem to have a good connection.”
