The FARC Diversifies, Again

For much of the last four decades the FARC has its generated revenue to fight the Colombian government by trafficking drugs. In the 1990s the group gained more infamy by diversifying their sources of revenue to include high-profile kidnappings. While this didn’t change in the “noughties” the FARC was badly whipped by the government, aided by US-financed coca eradication initiatives.

Yet the FARC is still around, still dangerous, and it has found a new source of revenue—gold.  Colombian gold is mythic, the source of El Dorado expeditions by European explorers.

Today, with gold closing at a record highs of $1,440 an ounce, an increase of more than 30% in the past year, Colombia is sitting pretty.

MNCs are tripping over each other to move in, and in January China publicly offered to build a “dry canal” to allow Colombia to speed its natural resources, coal and gold chief among them, to the Pacific.

Meanwhile, droves of Colombian farmers have trod out to the jungles to prospect for gold, using liquid mercury to separate river sediment from minerals. In so doing, their unregulated practices have made Colombia the world’s largest per capita mercury polluter. And they have opened up a new front for the FARC: a FARC cable intercepted by the Colombian government in January stated that gold was becoming a major new source of financing. A FARC commander with the nom de guerre ‘Mauricio’ is said to be running the group’s gold mining activities, including mine ownership and extortion from other illegal mining operations. According to the New York Times, the FARC approaches the enterprise with “an accountant’s precision,” charging $3,800 a month for each backhoe in operation and $141,000 a month for permission to mine a particular site.

Other groups are getting in on the action. The Urabeños and Rostrojos are spinoffs from paramilitaries of decades past, and now they are battling it out for control of the gold trade near the city of Caucasia. In 2010, more than 60 grenade attacks in city of 100,000 are attributed to the two groups, with the center of violence around Caucasia’s downtown where there are a slew of gold buying businesses.

It seems the FARC is drawn to gold not only because of its accelerating price but because selling gold is, unlike cocaine, legal.

Photo from Sptimes.com