Diamonds are a miner's best friend

Diamond prospectors and smugglers are drawn to a remote jungle in Venezuela, in the hope of finding a stone that could transform their lives. Paying them a visit, the BBC's Will Grant got a glimpse of their dangerous lifestyle, and a society outside the law.

The idea of finding that single diamond or seam of gold which would change their lives for ever and make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams spurs them on

After several hours travelling in a 4X4 along treacherous mountain roads, we turned the final corner and suddenly the dense forest gave way to a wasteland.

Years of gold and diamond mining, using heavy machinery and powerful water hoses, have stripped the mountain of its tree cover and left a lamentable sight in its place.

Mounds of silt and sediment run-off have accumulated in thick islands in the Caroni River, as waterways of silvery, mercury-filled slurry snake their way down the face of the denuded hillside.

But in the ruins of the forest a community has settled.

A couple of kilometres further and we reach the tiny village of El Polaco - surely one of the most extraordinary places I have ever seen in Latin America.

Mining co-operative

There is something about the distant promise of unimaginable riches amid the poverty, which creates a sense of the surreal in El Polaco.

A dozen or so randomly arranged tin shacks around a nominal village square in which pigs, chickens and stray dogs root around for food.

Yet some of the shacks have satellite television dishes nailed to the roof.

Almost all of the miners' homes are painted with pro-government slogans or the logo of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

The mining co-operative members were clearly supporters of President Chavez, despite the illegality of what they are doing.

We are greeted by a slightly drunken group of men sitting in the shade drinking beer, who grunt their greetings in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese.

For these men, the idea of finding that single diamond or seam of gold which would change their lives for ever and make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams spurs them on to live in such a poor and isolated spot in the middle of jungle.

Diamond search

I am taken up to the mine by a barefoot young lad called Freddy, who takes time out from distributing the fruit he has picked with his friends to show me the way.

As we splash through the foul smelling water, I ask Freddy whether he has always lived in the village.

Miners hose down the sediment to look for gold and diamonds

"No," he says with a hint of defiance. "I'm on holiday. I study in Santa Elena," - a town several hours away where the more successful miners send their children to school.

The mine itself is little more than a clearing by the river, in which the miners are tearing into the soft sediment with a high powered hose.

The run-off is channelled into a series of muddy pools, in which men are sieving though the sediment for flecks of gold, or more importantly, diamonds.

The men are dressed in trainers or wellington boots. Most of the children are barefoot. Freddy's father, the foreman, is called Jon Jairo or "Guaco".

"In the mines we all know each other by our nicknames. These guys probably don't even know I'm called Jon Jairo. But if you ask 'Who's Guaco?' they'll say, 'He's the guy with the bad arm'."

Guaco does indeed have a bad arm. It is still in plaster, grubby and stained from the mine.

He tells me that it was crushed by a boulder, shattering all the bones and tendons, and almost leading the doctors to amputate it.

"I haven't worked for nine months," he says ruefully. "Fortunately, I'm part of a co-operative and I could do other jobs. But if I was an artisan miner and worked independently, I don't know how I would have been able to provide for my family."

Perilous conditions

Working alongside Guaco's team is one of the artisans he mentioned. "Payarito" is a tall, black man with a thick moustache and a welcoming smile.

Like many others, Payarito hopes to find a gem that will transform his life.

He is sporting no more than a yellow vest and a baseball cap to protect himself from the perilous conditions in which he works.

How does he differ from the others? I work separately, he says, and I go through the material they have already checked, looking for diamonds.

"Do you declare what you find to the authorities", I ask him. "No, no. Artisans don't declare their production," Payarito says.

"Maybe if the government discuss it and change the rules, we'll have to pay taxes on what little we find, but for now we don't bother."

Just then, as Payarito is explaining how he works on the margins of the law, a huge chunk of the mountain comes away in three or four boulders, weighing at least a tonne each.

The rubble crumbles just metres from where we'd been standing, an all too timely reminder of how Jon Jairo came to be in plaster.

As we pause to watch the men sift the sediment in the pools below and smoke their cigarettes, they begin to rub mercury into the silt with their fingers to attract the tiny gold nuggets held inside the slurry.

The water is poisoned here, and it is clear there is unlikely to be any regulation of this mine in terms of environmental or labour controls any time soon.

Ruffling his son's hair, Jon Jairo sums up the situation with the characteristic understatement of a miner.

"This life is very hostile," he says. "In the city, people think it's just a question of coming up here and you'll find diamonds. But we live almost like cavemen."

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