Mother of Gold

View of Puerto Maldonado from my hostel

The character archetype of the OId Prospector holds a beloved position in the imaginations of U.S. film nerds and comedy fans: from Stinky Pete in Toy Story to Gus Chuggins on SNL to the authentic frontier gibberish of Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles. In each case, he’s an eccentric gold miner in the 19th century “Wild West” that spends his days living rough, panning streams in the mountains on a quest for those sacred shiny nuggets while spouting gibberish to disinterested marmots. This charmingly apt metaphor for the desperation of the classic American dream -- a comically bedraggled man in tattered rags being oddly obsessed with riches to the point of madness and misery --  is one I appreciate so much that I have a tattoo of one on my leg, complete with a banner extolling the obvious virtue of such “hornswoggle.” However, what this stereotype misses is the fact that gold mining had some very negative effects on human well-being as well as the environment.

For example, the famed 1848 California gold rush caused a huge wave of migration for fortune-seeking men, many of whom were presumably eager for a better life that would not come, and this influx tore apart the landscape and polluted rivers. The altered demographics that resulted from this overwhelmingly male migration diminished the political influence of the formerly majority Mexican population at that time, as well as set the stage for prostitution and sex trafficking.

Many of these same themes were apparent during my most recent trip to the Madre de Dios region of Peru, an area of Amazonia noted for a recent uptick in both population and artisanal gold mining. As recently as 2012, the population of the regional capital, Puerto Maldonado was less than half of what it is estimated currently, and during my Earth Expeditions field course held at CECCOT we were fortunate to hear firsthand local perspectives on these changes. 

For a little background, small-scale mining of gold along the Madre de Dios River and its many tributaries -- as in many other regions of the world where it is practiced -- is a physically perilous (and in most cases illegal) activity for the miners. It is also one which has many public health, environmental, and social problems associated with it. First, the process uses mercury amalgam to bind with the gold ore. Mercury is a toxic metal that pollutes the water and soil, as well as bioaccummulates up the food chain, reaching dangerous levels in the fish that people eat from anywhere downstream of mining operations. Furthermore, when it is burned off at the markets in town, the vapors are powerful neurological toxins.

It was interesting to me that during our discussions, it was stated by one local individual that people there were generally not very concerned about the elevated levels of mercury in their community above what is considered safe by the World Health Organization. It was then further suggested -- I think correctly -- that the issue was not a genuine apathy about the serious health risks, but more a case of not being informed adequately about this issue affecting their communities. In addition, I suspect also some level of mistrust of meddlesome outsiders (both national and international) is a factor in discounting these omnipresent hazards.

We also learned from the Peruvians, both local and non-local, who attended this discussion, that many regional politicians and people in general support the miners. To me, this made sense for several reasons. Previously I had learned something of the cultural gulf between the seat of government in coastal Lima and the much less urban Amazon regions. It seemed to me that heavy-handing militaristic raids and/or gasoline quotas to combat the problem might win more people to the side of the miners. In a region where so much of the economy is linked to this activity, even those who do not mine gold themselves know someone among the tens of thousands who do.

While our long discussion of the very complex problem hadn’t really touched on potential solutions, our course theme of community-based conservation suggested that topdown enforcement actions are not usually the most effective strategies. There was a sense, though, that some believed such drastic actions might be necessary in this case. However, the small-scale nature of these operations just means that they will pop up again somewhere else. The most serious crackdowns in the region previously had been followed the next year by increases in mining activity. This was seemingly out of defiance, but perhaps it was also due to the realization that such intense efforts by the national government were unlikely to be maintained.

I had traveled by boat several hours up the Madre de Dios River in 2014, 2016, and again in 2019. This year the sheer number of mining operations we passed was staggering. As miners move in, so do roads and settlements. Access is opened up to previously remote locations for all kinds of development, farming, logging, and hunting. Apart from the pollution of water and riparian soils, these are the activities that challenge wildlife and ecosystems, and they will not likely be reduced even with legalization and regulation. 

As I walked the streets of Puerto Maldonado on this trip, I also saw evidence of the social costs associated with this boom in gold mining. There was a march of demonstrators against child labor and sex trafficking, and I took a pamphlet from them that explained how to recognize these victims shrouded in the lurid corners of a boomtown economy.

These social ills were alluded to in our group discussion of gold mining as well. Someone had mentioned that the influx of people to the region had changed the town, making it less safe in some ways. Several of our hosts had lived in Puerto Maldonado all of their lives, as did their parents and their parent’s parents before them. They felt that some of the people arriving there were not as invested in the community, and had come from the mountains or other places where they did not learn to live sustainably within a rainforest ecosystem. 

Perhaps this region is experiencing another version of the Wild West, where people are drawn in great numbers to seek their glittery fortune, but in doing so they also drastically change the landscape and the culture wherever they stake their claims.

Hope for the future: Forest School at CECCOT

Boyd, S. (2013). Who's to blame for Peru's gold mining troubles? The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/whos-to-blame-for-perus-gold-mining-troubles

Catanoso, J. (2019). Gov't takedown of illegal gold mining in Peru shows promise, but at a cost. Mongabay. Retrieved from https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/govt-takedown-of-illegal-gold-mining-in-peru-shows-promise-but-at-a-cost/

Esdaile, L. J., & Chalker, J. M. (2018). The Mercury Problem in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining. Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany), 24(27), 6905–6916. doi:10.1002/chem.201704840