Mining in Guainía is the activity that reports more earnings, above the coca cultivation or trading. In any curve of the Inírida River it can be seen the "rafts", or metal frames mounted on drums of gasoline full with air that float on the dark waters. Each one has palm roof and it loads on the indispensable pumping motors for to impel air to their plungers. These guys descend until 25 meters under the water, in search of gold. Each one takes a hose to absorb the earth of the bottom and to look for the veins amid the darkness, the sand and the mud. Of his expertise it depends if he becomes rich or he dies flat. It is normal that from absorbing the bottom, a niche is made and the land comes over. It is also necessary that he be a strong and resistant man, because the hose pull hard for wherever it wants. In addition, he has to spend whole hours under the cold water, amid treacherous currents.
Spite the arduous work, people come from a distance because they can end up being won three million pesos in one month. As iron powder attracted by a magnet, miners, prostitutes and merchants have arrived from all parts of the country, behind the Guainian wealth. In Inírida there is a block where most are miners; their houses are firm, wide and well built.
The Brazilian plungers, well known in Brazil like garimpeiros, they end up coming from places so distant as Manaos, Brasilia and until Sao Paulo. They seem more experienced in the search and the extraction than the Colombians, because they have acquired experience working in their country that has ten times more forests and mineral wealth. Most of these men don't speak Spanish, they understand when you speak to them, but they answer in Portuguese. They don't come to learn, not even for tourism, they only come for the gold. When they get it, they spend it out almost immediately in beer and women.
However, the luck not always smiles them. They are many those that have arrived only to suffer, to get in debt and to know the mysteries of the Guainía. For the Brazilians the terror in Colombia is the DAS. Some times this security body organizes combing to capture them and deport them. They enter in hotels, in rent-room houses, usually at night, and they catch them unexpectedly. However, little or anything the operatives do, because they hide or they get some from the town each time they have to. In 4 or 5 days they are seen back by the streets of the town, as if nothing had passed. Most has been hired by gold merchants and the raft owners, they are who keep most of the earnings. With all their money, it is easy to influence the local politics.
Although most of the bosses are Colombians, there are some "mines" inhabited almost exclusively by Brazilians and there the Colombians are treated as foreigners. Little cares that the territory in the map has the «Colombia» sign, they are majority and in fact they are not distinguished for their honesty. Some Colombian miners spoke to me very well about them. They assured that they are very humanitarian and more cordial that the same countrymen. But very few of them have a medium level of instruction; their consumption habits make them live on the edge of the bankruptcy, in spite of all the money that they achieve to earn. Anyway, that it is a disease that attacks them all, without distinction of nationality. Moreover, the merchants move to the "mines" and they get paid according to the revenues of their clients, it means with inflated prices. Not very big breads can be seen by thousand pesos, beers by the triple of their commercial value. The plungers pay as well. The traders consider the surplus something natural, a retribution for put them the goods almost in the hand. "If it was not for us they would have to go until Inírida" some of them say.