The Human Obsession with Gold
Individuals and Corporations Go to Great Lengths to Obtain the Metal
Jan 6, 2009
In this month's edition of National Geographic, readers are shown the dirty, exhausting and potentially lethal consequences of locating and excavating gold. It was the most coveted type of currency in many ancient societies, including Rome, Egypt and China. In the 16th century Spanish conquistadores led by Hernán Cortés plundered the New World in search of the metal. In 1896 gold was first discovered near Rabbit Creek in the Yukon Territory, and when this news reached the continental United States, thousands of ordinary people dropped what they were doing and travelled north to that distant part of Canada to stake their claims. Many of them perished from exhaustion and the cruel winters.
Today, not much has changed. People will go to extreme lengths to get their hands on gold, even if it means killing themselves and destroying the environment in the process.
The Peruvian Andes
At 17,000 feet (5,500 metres) where the air is thin and the temperatures are freezing, a festering shantytown named La Rinconada is home to 30,000 residents. There is no running water or heat, and the sanitation is deplorable. Why do people stay here? Quite simply, they are looking to strike it rich in the town's gold mines, which are covered with a glacier. Miners, who chew coca leavers to ward off fatigue and hunger, typically do a thirty day stretch without pay in the mines so that on the thirty-first day they can lug out and keep as much of the rock as they can carry. This lottery system called the cachorreo is what they get instead of a paycheck.
The problem however, is that often there is very little gold to be found or none whatsoever. In order to separate tiny fragments of gold from rock these small scale miners use mercury, an extremely toxic substance when released in liquid and gaseous forms. The mercury that is coming from La Rinconada is contaminating lakes and rivers all the way to the coast of Lake Titicaca, more than one hundred miles away.
Sumbawa, Indonesia
Denver, Colorado based Newmont Mining Corp. is at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to looking for gold. In this remote corner of Indonesia, Newmont has dug a mile wide pit in the ground which has been named Batu Hijau meaning "green rock." It was given that name because U.S. geologists found unusual mossy tinted rocks near a dormant volcano, and they surmised the material was copper, which is occasionally found with gold. The mine was dug and not a trace of that volcano remains.
Although the company employs thousands of Indonesians, and nearby villages now has access to electricity and health clinics, much of the rain forest has disappeared. Environmentalists are also worried about the survival of the yellow-crested cockatoo, which is on the brink of extinction.
A Symbol of Prosperity and Stability
No other nation in the world is leading the gold craze like India. The nation purchased twice as much of the yellow metal in 2007 as their two closest followers, China and the United States. Although dowries are officially banned in India, they dominate most weddings in the country and gold is the most preferred kind of gift. It's easy to liquidate and simple to pawn for an emergency loan.
But there's a dark side to India's thirst for gold. Poor families just can't get their hands on the gold they need for a dowry because the price is shockingly expensive. This has led to violence, specifically when a bride is beaten for bringing too little gold to her in-laws.
Whether they are trying to eke out a living in the Andes or the Indonesian rainforest, one thing is for sure. Miners everywhere are hoping they will get lucky and find a nice nest egg of gold. But, most of the world's biggest deposits have long since disappeared and officials at Newmont near the Batu Hijau mine think that the gold will be gone in less than twenty years.
Hope, it seems, just might be the only thing they will ever have.
