"The MUZO emerald mines in Colombia are for some the only opportunity to change their life in a second, through a enguacada."
Artist: Juan Manuel Garcia
Project: Muzo
"It can happen in 15 years or in a week.
The large mines carry out a search process through processes and washing of the land where the large emerald veins are and dump their waste into the river. When the river lowers its flow in the summer, it leaves its bed bare and thousands of people go there to seek their fortune by their own means, searching downriver to find something that is probably found in the waste that the large mines did not find. They always work very hard from sunrise to sunset for long periods until their resources are exhausted and they no longer have anything to eat and they return as best they can to seek their fortune in another activity elsewhere. In previous years it was very dangerous to live there, especially if you found something. Now there are visitors, buyers who acquire these little emerald stones at very low prices taking advantage of the need of these self-slaves, who are forced to sell cheaply to survive."
"The river is like a promise of fortune, anyone who walks there can find stones of multiple colors. Stoned similar to gold, similar to silver and also similar to emeralds that most of the time are not of the expected quality. The illusion rises and falls at every hour of the day, turning this activity into a kind of addiction. And from time to time you find out that someone out there got rich and left to start a new life.
Its the border between wealth and poverty."
© Juan Manuel Garcia