![]() "If you don't improve your technology, it becomes more and more difficult to find emeralds," Galvis says. Huge sums were needed because the gems were getting harder to find while open-pit mines, that contaminated rivers and caused deforestation, were being phased out for underground mining. With the industry sagging, Burgess agreed to help find foreign financing. While in Colombia, he had become friends with a Roman Catholic bishop who had helped arrange a cease-fire between warring gangs in the emerald zone. embassies in Colombia and several other Latin American nations before retiring in 2009. "They were begging me to find foreign investors."Ĭarlos Saavedra for NPR Colombian emeralds are considered the finest in the world and most are exported to the U.S.Įnter Burgess, a Florida native and Marine Corps veteran who served as a political officer at U.S. "All these guys knew they were depleting their resources and that they couldn't keep going," says Guillermo Galvis, president of the Colombian Emerald Exporters Association. In addition, the man known as Colombia's "emerald czar," Victor Carranza, who had survived two assassination attempts as well as efforts to prosecute him for alleged ties to paramilitary death squads, was dying of cancer and wanted to sell out. The violence scared away Colombian investors while several mine owners were imprisoned in the U.S. ![]() You could go for three months without earning a peso," Melo says. Ramiro Melo, a 58-year-old emerald miner from Muzo, says: "It was a scary time because these people would kill whoever they wanted."īack then, he said, miners worked as unpaid prospectors with their bosses giving them just a tiny sliver of the profits when they found emeralds. Carlos Saavedra for NPR Security workers are all over the mine to prevent theft of emeralds.
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