Bernardino Mosquera, a river guardian, maneuvers his boat on the Quito River, near Paimado, Colombia, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
Sediment and pebbles are all that’s left on the earth around much of Bernardino Mosquera’s small riverside community in northwest Colombia’s Choco region.
Just a year ago, healthy shrubs and trees filled this important biodiversity spot teeming with species native to the land. But then illegal miners arrived, using their heavy machinery to dredge the riverbeds for gold.
“It’s just desert here,” said Mosquera. “Illegal mining affects the ecosystem in every way … it leads to degraded land. There are no trees. The water sources are drying up, it’s polluted by mercury.”
Mosquera is a river guardian, a title bestowed upon him and 13 others. The unpaid guardians serve as the eyes and ears of the Atrato River: They liaise with government institutions on environmental and social issues in the face of aggression from armed groups and hope to reverse the devastation they see along the river. But after eight years, they are increasingly disenchanted by the lack of support from institutions and growing threats from armed groups that control the region.
Colombia’s constitutional court declared in 2016 that the Atrato River running alongside this 2,500-person town was so important to life, it would have rights equivalent to a human. The region is home to thousands of species, with 25% of its plant and bird species endemic, according to the United Nations Development Programme. The river’s legal status was a first for Latin America, and when the guardians were established.
“It’s an unbreakable marriage between its inhabitants and the rivers,” Mosquera, 62, said. That’s why we have to defend the Atrato.”
Illegal gold mining has become the fastest-growing criminal economy over the past decade in South America. The boom began in Colombia and Peru and expanded to Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil.
Paimado, like many towns in the Choco region, is an illegal mining hub firmly in the control of the largest criminal organization in the country, known as Gulf Clan. Early each morning, small wooden boats carry plastic gasoline containers to feed the mining machinery dotted along the Atrato, a river that snakes some 750 kilometers (470 miles) through northern Colombian jungles.
Dozens of illegal mines pepper the river between Mosquera’s home in Paimado, which lies on Rio Quito, the Atrato River’s main tributary, and the state capital Quibdo.
Large wooden rafts propped on stilts reach deep into the riverbed to extract material that is sifted through the machine for gold. Deep inside the banks of the river, another type of mining takes place with heavier machinery. It is here that deforestation is glaringly evident.
Drone footage taken by The Associated Press shows large patches of empty land which stretch long behind the riverbanks.
“Many people think that because it looks very green there is no deforestation,” said river guardian and agronomist Maryuri Mosquera, 42.
High rates of poverty have pushed many into gold mining, work that destroys land and contaminates their river. That destruction then destroys the local economy, making communities even more dependent on mining.
Colombia’s human rights ombudsman’s office said in April the government is failing to protect the river, saying “there is no evidence of any progress” since the river gained personhood. It called on the environment ministry to comply with the 2016 ruling
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