The Price of Gold: Mechanized Mining in El Chocó, Colombia by Steve Cagan and Mary Kelsey (2020, 96 p.)

I loved to be in the Chocó. My work on a biodiversity conservation project allowed me to travel frequently to the seldom-visited northwest fringe of Colombia. The humid air, the calmness, and everything about this place made me feel at ease. To navigate the majestic Atrato River, which collects the waters of one of the rainiest zones on the planet and slowly carries them to the Caribbean, was a blessing. The jungle was always present and the inhabitants—with their lilting accents, their friendly treatment and disarming transparency—made the experience a real treat.  More than the poverty that is the image many have of Chocó, the energy and wisdom I was discovering amazed me and left me hungering to know and learn more.  These journeystook place two decades ago already, but the enchantment is not forgotten, nor is a certain sadness caused by the sensation that Chocó is condemned to bear the burden of its misfortunes.   

Steve Cagan and Mary Kelsey are regular visitors to this region, who also succumbed to its charms. With their book—The Price of Gold—I was able to return, relive memories and sensations, as well as to better understand the nature of mechanized mining that has caused so much havoc. The many images in the book are an excellent presentation of Chocó for those who do not know it and a source of reaffirmation and surprises for those familiar with the region.  In the last 15 years, the two U.S. artists have repeatedly visited several communities located for the most part in the middle basin of the Atrato River, and they have photographed and drawn what they have seen. Cagan’s color photos and Kelsey’s black-and-white drawings, along with the short text that accompanies them, allow the reader to travel with them and also feel anguish for the wounds left by the excavators and dredges that have extracted gold since 1990s. 

In those years, “retrero” miners from the lower Cauca River basin, in the state of Antioquia (of which Medellín is the capital), began to arrive; the name “retrero” comes from the Spanish word that designates their technology of choice, retroexcavadora—excavator. Before they entered in numbers to the Atrato, they ventured into San Juan, the Chocó’s great mining basin, and also into the south of the Colombian Pacific Coast.   They left their awful imprint: large spaces devoid of vegetation, pure gravel and dirt, with huge pools of stagnant water; landscapes of destruction previously teeming with life.  Cagan and Kelsey have witnessed the advance of this type of mining and describe it to us. Their visual testimony is clear and  shocking. The text is straightforward and an easy read. The price of gold is not only environmental, but social.  Through this book, I learned that this form of mining has transformed peasants, who were farmers who sometimes panned for gold, into full-time miners.  Moreover, this mining has sparked feuds among relatives and neighbors, and has generated anxiety about the future. “This is all fine,” a man named Ulises tells the authors. “But when the gold gives up, what will happen then?” 

The fleeting depiction of characters like Ulises provides warmth to the narrative and helps to transmit the passion, affection and respect that imbue this book, which is difficult to categorize. Although it is a large-format volume full of beautiful photography, it was not designed as a coffee-table book. Neither is it a travelogue and much less a book dominated by painstaking analysis. It is a testimony and a denunciation and, at the same time, a homage to the people of Chocó.

The photographs are quite varied: there are portraits of people attending meetings or working in mining, as well as in farming and fishing. They portray Black people, as well as the Indigenous population. There are many colors and diverse places, all shown in varying sizes within the layout of the book. Landscapes are few and far between and the majority of them are desolate. Cagan prefers that the camera get close to its subject, seeking a certain intimacy. 

The cover of the book is an indication of the type of image that predominates. It is not the prettiest photo and it isn’t colorful either. In it, we can see a woman curled up with her gold pan in the water, and although she seems taken by surprise, there’s a bit of artifice: she looks directly at the reader, thus establishing a connection between the viewer and this artisanal miner.  

The drawings reinforce the sensation transmitted by the photos: the authors want to be immersed in this reality, rather than observe it from a distance. It is not difficult to imagine Kelsey sitting and drawing scenes of daily life in the mine, in the river, in the jungle, in the plantain groves and in meeting rooms. These drawings manage to relay the calm movement that marks the rhythm of life in Chocó.  

But I missed having captions for the images. I would have liked to know where and when each photograph and drawing were made. Without this information, part of the documentary value is lost, at least for me, a historian accustomed to locate information in time and space. Luckily, a few of the drawings have handwritten notes on where they were made: “10.8.16 Napipí” can be read, for instance, below the waters of a river where three women are washing clothes. 

The photographs of mining techniques are particularly useful to understand the transformation suffered by the geographical heart of Chocó in the last decades. Machines, rather than people, take center stage. These photos illustrate, and this measure allow one to grasp, how these technologies work. The texts are an excellent complement to understand artisanal mining, which is carried out with pans, portable sluices (matracas) and pumps, as well as to decipher the functioning of small dredges, excavators, “dragons” (as local people call the dredges after the Spanish word “dragas”), and the elevadoras (huge sluices).

Although the texts have the virtue of being simple, they sometimes suffer from being simplistic. The authors evoke a traditional idyllic world shattered by capital interests (and under the constant shadow of the armed conflict that has caused so much pain in Chocó since the end of the 1990s). In the face of this panorama, only the alternative of resistance remains.  Although there is no doubt that mining has caused an environmental catastrophe, creating tensions in the communities and increasing their vulnerability, the past was not perfect.  The idea of a traditional world impedes seeing that changes have always happened, and this vision makes it difficult to understand the causes of what is happening. Ángela Castillo explains, in a book she co-authored with Sebastián Rubiano by the name of La minería de oro en la selva: Territorios, autonomías locales y conflictos en Amazonia y Pacífico, 1975- 2015 (published by Ediciones Uniandes in 2019), that, at least in the San Juan basin, the owners of the excavators negotiated with the local community, recognizing and respecting customary mining rights. The residents accepted the excavators because, contrary to what the authors assert, their benefits extended to the majority of the people, although these benefits were short-lived and vastly outweighed by the social and environmental costs that this type of mining generates. 

The limitations of this vision are observed in the insinuation that the “retreros” didn’t keep their part of the bargain in not restoring the vegetative cover.  However,  people knew this was impossible: they had seen what had happened in  neighboring communities, and even then, they were sold on the project. Cagan and Kelsey, like me, enjoy many of the advantages of consumerist capitalism (like being able to visit Chocó); people there also want their slice of the pie.  The problem is quite complicated and not to recognize this fact makes it difficult to begin any effective action to remedy the damage and to find a better path.  

The book bears witness to a tragedy. As the authors say, after the machines pass through, the sounds of the jungle disappear and a sense of loss, rather than well-being, hangs in the air. I would have liked to read more about the experiences of the authors, our guides on this journey. I also would have been glad to hear just a bit more of local voices, especially in the last part devoted to testimonies. In the end, it is this human wealth that gives a hopeful tone to the book.  The efforts of those who, like Father Remo Segalla, have tried, although unsuccessfully, to limit the the disaster, must be praised. The same is true of those who have supported processes to achieve sustainable mining or who have sparked hope by contributing to the court judgement handed down that the Atrato River is legally subject to rights. Cagan and Kelsey use the power of their images to remind us—and to make us feel—what has been happening in the Chocó. It is an achievement that should be applauded. Hopefully The Price of Gold will have the wide audience it deserves.