00:00Ojo, the images that you are seeing are the result of the devastating
00:03passage of the illegal mining in Colombia.
00:06These blue lakes, which look like an oasis in the desert,
00:09are actually mercury vertido,
00:11which encode the waters and the forests of the national north.
00:14They are thousands and thousands of hectares contaminated here in Córdoba.
00:18We did a sobrevuelo for the most devastated areas of the region,
00:21and the truth is that the images are catastrophic.
00:30We are in the municipality of Ayapel.
00:32Here is the lieutenant-coronel Fabián Peña Valderrama.
00:35He is the chief of the National Police Department.
00:38His team leads us to the First Núcleo,
00:40where the illegal mining devastates 219 km2.
00:45Here, the Clan del Golfo manages the business.
00:47In regions such as these, the settlers take the gold in an artisanal,
00:51and distinguish it from mercury.
00:53They take it to sell in the region, like in Caucasia,
00:56and from that they survive.
00:57But the Clan del Golfo cobra its cost in every part of the chain.
01:01They control the roads, and they take it to use of the machinery.
01:04Also, the armed groups take their own gold,
01:07and they sell it in a very profitable business as the narcotráfico.
01:11One that has benefits,
01:12such as that the final product is completely legal,
01:15and it is almost impossible to trace that it has an illicit origin.
01:18The second Núcleo, here in Nechi, no has a description.
01:21How much life is dead.
01:23How much water contaminated here in 530 km2.
01:28The extension is so much as the total surface of Cartagena.
01:32The most sad of all this is that this affects the community in general.
01:35Mercury is one of the elements most nocicals
01:38that we have for human health,
01:39that generates mutations and different processes,
01:43and that is already prohibited here in Colombia
01:45the use of the same.
01:46However, the criminal economies continue to use it
01:49to lucre and, through this, generate a series of income
01:53that allow the sustainability of these criminal groups
01:56in time and in time.
01:57According to the Office of the ONU Contra la Droga y el Delito,
02:01Córdoba is the fourth department
02:02with the largest hectare depreds in all of Colombia.
02:05In the last year, the National Police has made 892 captures
02:09and incautated 94 weapons, 194 machines
02:13and 19.000 gallons of liquid water in the region.
02:16However, the environmental damage is incalculable.
02:19The mercury breaks the ecosystem
02:21and damage the water of the entire population.
02:23The land is dead and the fauna is gone from its natural habitat.
02:27And what do you opinion of these images?
02:29Have you seen the magnitude of the illegal mineral?
02:32If you want to know more about this problem
02:33please please follow us on our social networks
02:36and subscribe to our website www.elespectador.com
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