What follows is probably the most emotional, and highly charged, subsistence mining drama taking place in the
gold world. The drama is running in Colombia.
We have been tracking
Buriticá -- because I know the company, I know the project, I think I understand the shades of green and gold and gray in the mountainous region that contains some of the world's richest grades of gold.
What is happening this week in Antioquia, Colombia, might go down in history as a big step in the right direction for the fate of precious metals miners and late-stage mine developers in that democratic nation.
In these latest articles about the zones in and around
Continental Gold's (
TSX:T.CNL,
Stock Forum) Buritica high-grade gold and silver project, we see the military are starting to "shoo" the scrum: thousands of ordinary folks flocking to the many kilometers of underground gold and silver drift on Continental Gold's rich patch of
Antioquia.
Translate the Spanish-language articles if you want. The song remains the same: high grade assays draw illegal miners who have stalked these hills for generations.
-- These "informal" miners blow themselves to pieces using
povo loco dynamite powder. (In other nations, such as Ghana, they drown in makeshift tailings ponds; or suffocate in collapsed ashanti-style vertical shafts.)
-- The illegal miners, making twice to six times the amount of money they earn growing coffee or sugar cane or driving a
buseta, draw extortionists and other bad guys to these rich regions of minerals.
-- Local, provincial and national governments decline to butt heads with the artisanal miners, who represent a thousand years of gritty determination in Colombia (or Ghana, or Tanzania or ...).
-- Prospectors and miners grow gray hair and suffer ulcers and shattered stock portfolios as
their well-run projects are overrun with losinformales.
-- Cabinet ministers, police chiefs and presidents grow gray hairs and suffer ulcers trying to balance the needs of the artisanal lobby with the desire for fresh mining capital and stronger local currencies.
Here are the articles.
https://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/medellin/buritica-sitiado-por-el-auge-de-la-mineria-informal-de-oro_13145215-4
https://www.elcolombiano.com/BancoConocimiento/E/evacuaran_zonas_mineras_informales_de_buritica/evacuaran_zonas_mineras_informales_de_buritica.asp
Continental Gold is one of the highest-grade gold mines being developed in the world. Its Buriticá has replaced Gran Colombia Gold's (
TSX:T.GCM,
Stock Forum)
Segovia and
El Marmato as poster babe for Colombia's resources future.
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