Emeralds and Bullets

Diamonds may still be a girl's best friend, but women are also developing an insatiable fondness for emeralds. Demand for the soft, veined, green jewels has risen so appreciably that prices have more than doubled in the past five years; the finest quality stones now fetch as much as $3,000 per carat wholesale, on a par with diamonds. What buyers do not know is that they are almost certainly, if unwittingly, contributing to the prosperity of one of the world's most lucrative--and bloodiest--illegal businesses. Some 90% of all emeralds come from Colombia, where mining and sale of the gems are supposedly a government monopoly. In fact, reports TIME Correspondent David Lee, the business has been monopolized by outlaws called esmeralderos (emerald buccaneers), who pocketed about 90% of the $50 million that the world paid last year for Colombian gems.

Discovered by Pigs. The outlaw monopoly starts right at the mines, in the jagged Andes 60 miles northeast of Bogota. Many jewels are stolen by miners in the government's Muzo, Penas Blancas and Coscuez mines. The thieves pocket most of the emeralds that they dig out of the soil, paying off the inspectors who are supposed to guard the pits. Other stones are illegally mined to begin with. A miner with a few pesos to invest in dynamite and tools assembles a squad of men and goes off to dig. It is not a difficult job: the standard mining method is simply to dynamite the ground with a small charge, then rake emeralds out of the soil with crowbars. The stones lie so close to the surface that one rich mine was discovered in 1955 by pigs that turned up emeralds while rooting through a field.

The gems are brought out to civilization by about ten criminal families of ten or so members each. Unlike the Mafia variety, these are genuine families: brothers, uncles, cousins. Periodically, they journey into the mountains to buy up the miners' take.

The trading center is the town of Penas Blancas, a huddle of 50 rickety buildings. There a mining-squad leader spreads out his haul before a family boss who may carry a million pesos (about $50,000) in a shoulder-strap bag. The emeralds are hauled back to Bogota, where many are sold to foreign dealers in back rooms of the dim bars and cafes that line 14th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Jewels are smuggled out of the country by two international combines that finance the families' buying trips. Some emeralds leave in the pockets of couriers who take commercial jets. Big shipments go out by light plane from one of Colombia's 800 private airstrips.

The illegal traffic handsomely rewards participants at all levels. One miner who began a small illegal operation ten years ago now owns two ranches with 3,000 head of cattle, plus ten houses and other real estate in downtown Bogota. The esmeralderos, however, run a major risk--not of being apprehended by the government, but of being gunned down by one another. Any dispute between a squad chief and his miners over the division of the take is settled by what Colombians call "Smith & Wesson's Rules of Order" (a Smith & Wesson .38-cal. revolver is the esmeraldero's favorite weapon). The buying families regularly bushwhack one another's caravans, and the victimized family then exacts blood vengeance; one feud between the Gonzales and Aviia families has taken 13 lives since last September. The total number of murders in the emerald trade is unknown, since many bodies simply disappear down mountain gorges, but a minimum estimate is 200 a year.

Seeded by God. Officials of Ecominas, the state mining agency, talk vaguely of legalizing private mining operations by contracting with them to dig emeralds, and of sending their own agents into the mountains to buy emeralds for a central exchange to be set up in Bogota. It seems unlikely that such measures would stop the smuggling. Foreign buyers show little concern for the origin of their emeralds. The esmeralderos are confident that they can buy off or kill anyone who tries to interfere. Nor do they show any moral qualms about their operation. Says one: "The Muzo Indians had already found the gems when the Spaniards arrived. Thus we don't accept that they belong to the government. We believe that they were seeded by God for the benefit of all Colombians."

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