Dirty
Gold
Dirty gold from the Amazon in Swiss banks
Sandra Weiss
from
Gold prospectors have sold 25 tonnes of gold from the Amazon region in Switzerland in the past year.
Gold counts as one of the most secure investments for European investors in the current crisis. In the year 2006 the ounce cost 525 dollars, this year it is worth 1500. Yet hardly anyone who has an ingot lying in the safe-deposit boxes of the banks wonders where the precious metal comes from. Perhaps from the Peruvian jungle? Gold prospectors have sold 25 tonnes of gold from the Amazon region in Switzerland in the past year – investigations into money laundering and tax evasion are at present ongoing in Peru. A lucrative business.
But the consequences of the gold boom are devastating: thousands of hectares of cleared rain forest, poisoned rivers, exploitation, prostitution. Sandra Weiss has looked around on the spot.
Promise and damnation lie close together at Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon: the millionaire beach borders Laberinto (the Labyrinth), the paradise at the “little hell”. Names written by gold. For centuries the fine, glittering dust has accumulated in the sand of the rivers of the Amazon basin. Washed out from the bowels of the Andes by crystal-clear rivers, over perilous waterfalls and through deep ravines torn right down into the tropical lowlands where the wild, icy floods turn into lazy, muddy tropical rivers. These grind the gold into a fine powder that they deposit somewhere in the heavy, dark sand. Nowhere else is there such fine and pure gold as here. The gold price has never been as high as it is now. And that is the tragedy of Madre de Dios.
Here and there the species-rich rain forest has changed into a sandy desert, a lunar landscape perforated by craters and flanked by tree skeletons.
Here and there the species-rich rain forest has changed into a sandy desert, a lunar landscape perforated by craters and flanked by tree skeletons. And right in the centre are collections of shabby wooden huts sealed against the rain with blue plastic sheeting: gold-miner camp-sites. Nomadic settlements on demand. There is no drinking water, no electricity, no schools, no roads – but there are improvised supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations, bars and brothels. And for those who wish, the overpriced offer can be weighed against gold.