2025-01-03
20 分钟Last summer, our colleague Juan Ferrero left his home base in Bogota, Colombia, to visit a small town in the Andes mountains.
You know, you're on a highway, and then you turn off and you're very soon on a very narrow road that is a winding road that starts to drop, you know, toward a valley.
Beautiful scenery.
You know, you see this tapestry of different shades of green where farmers are producing their crops.
And down below, several miles down, is the town of Buritica.
Buritica sits nestled within the mountains.
And in those mountains is a resource that people have been fighting over since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors.
Shining, glimmering, valuable gold.
Nowadays, it's not the Spanish who are looking for gold.
Instead, it's a multinational giant out of China, the Zijin Mining group.
Zijin's mine in Buritika is the richest gold mine in Colombia.
When Juan visited, he found a mine under siege.
When we got deep into the mine, you know, there's a point where Xijin is just not in control anymore.
And so what you see are sandbags everywhere.
And behind those sandbags are guards, and they're outfitted, you know, in bulletproof vests and so forth, and they're toting shotguns.
On the other side of the sandbags is a rival group of miners who are invading Xijin's tunnels to steal the company's gold.
In 2023, the miners stole tons of it, worth about $200 million, according to the company's estimates.
And they're stealing it with the help of a powerful militia group, meaning the conflict often turns violent.
The way they put it is this is underground trench warfare.
I mean, it is 600, 700 yards underground.