- LAS NUEVAS CLARITAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Guarico is lounging in a hammock
near gigantic Amazonian gold deposits where he has spent 11 years searching
for his fortune. But he's not counting his riches. Instead, he's ticking
off the days before he quits this one-time boom town that's going bust.
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- "I'm not doing anything. I've been
defeated," says the 25-year-old gold hunter.
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- The Amazon rain forests of eastern Venezuela
used to be a place where a poor man with a pick and shovel could strike
it rich -- or at least dream of it.
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- But now the government is chasing illegal
miners off some of the best land to make way for international companies
that have concessions to mine for gold.
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- That has environmentalists worried that
miners are moving to untapped lands where they will leave more paths of
destruction.
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- The miners "may cause even worse
damage if they aren't located in areas where they can be controlled,"
said Jorge Padron, head of the National Ecological and Social Union.
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- Thousands of miners flooded into the
Imataca rain forest in the 1980s. They searched for gold that over the
centuries has attracted explorers like Sir Walter Raleigh, who sought the
legendary golden city of "El Dorado."
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- In Imataca they built a frontier town
called Las Claritas on top of what is believed to be the richest gold deposit
in Latin America. The town grew to 10,000 people, including entire families.
They came from as far as Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic and
built houses out of plastic sheets and wooden poles.
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- Each day they dug out rocks, put them
into sacks and trudged to a mill where gold was separated from dirt. Everyone
had good days and bad. Yet during the boom, miners earned as much as $5,000
a month at a time when the average worker in Venezuela made about $200.
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- At the center of Las Claritas they erected
a statue of a miner with a pick in his hand and a dog at his side. In their
minds they were pioneers, like the men and women who conquered the Wild
West in the United States.
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- But ecologists said the miners destroyed
the environment with mercury and high-pressure water hoses used to uproot
trees. Government officials complained it was impossible to collect taxes
or control the miners, whose village was rife with drugs, violence and
prostitution.
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- Several years ago, authorities forced
Las Claritas' residents to relocate a few miles away. The new town -- Las
Nuevas Claritas -- prospered at first. But then the government sold rights
to the prized mining site to Canada's Placer Dome and other mining companies.
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- Today, Las Nuevas Claritas is fading.
It used to boast a couple dozen ore mills. Now there are two.
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- One of them, where Guarico works, used
to operate 24 hours a day. Now it cranks up no more than six hours. The
amount of gold sacks processed is down from 600 a day to 50. The town's
population has dwindled to 3,000.
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- Falling international gold prices have
contributed to the hard times.
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- "Before it was a situation of bonanza.
There was lots of gold and it was easy," said miner Juan Tremeria.
"Now we have a situation where people are going hungry."
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- Few miners have fortunes stashed away
from gold's heyday.
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- Most blew their money on alcohol, prostitutes
and wild parties in the remote jungle village, where goods were expensive.
The gold diggers, like the rest of Venezuela that was experiencing an oil
boom, neglected to save for a rainy day.
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- Nowadays, a miner is lucky if he makes
$400-$500 a month.
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- Officials say bringing in dozens of companies
to the mining areas will provide thousands of jobs and decrease ecological
damage. The companies use sophisticated technology and will run programs
to teach illegal miners better techniques, they argue.
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- Environmentalists contend the companies
will overwhelm the forest. And they question the government's claims about
jobs and training programs.
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- Some miners are already heading to new
sites not sold to the mining companies, such as the fragile areas around
the river headwaters that feed the Guri Dam, one of the world's largest
hydroelectric plants.
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- Padron and other environmentalists charge
that National Guardsmen are collecting bribes from illegal miners to allow
them to operate in the new areas. Officials don't deny the allegation and
say they are working to curb corruption.
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- The invasion of new territories may leave
another "disaster in the middle of the pristine forest," said
Clemencia Rodner of the Audubon Society.
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