“They screw us over, the police kick us out, they don't let us work in peace. They call us illegal miners. The truth is, we're just poor people washing a little dirt to earn our bread. And the big mining industries, nobody bothers them." Juan de Jesus tells me, while showing me how gold is extracted on a beach of the Putumayo River, under the strong sun of southern Colombia, along with his friend Pedro. Since pre-columbian times, this country was known for goldsmithing. The legend of El Dorado is set here, The yellow part of the flag is for the abundance of gold on its subsoil. "Managing to get a gram a day is already a success. If you're diligent, if you work every day, you can live well. You start by separating the larger stones, the smaller chunks of rock, you wash out the dirt and continue until you get to a fine black sand, made of iron, with small, shiny flakes of gold”. After some hours of "washing", we proceed to leave the bochorno (slang for oppressive humidity and heat) with half a cup of sand. While we're picking up our rudimental tools, a huge trucks of a local minery company comes with two men, that rapidly fill up the truck with dirt and rocks. For the final separation, at home, many use mercury. The element amalgamates the tiny flakes of gold, making a sort of liquid mixture of gold and mercury, separated from the iron sand. The mixture gets heated up in a fire, the mercury evaporates. The whole process is extremely toxic: it contaminates the air, the soil, the waters, the communities, the ecosystems, the miners themselves. Note that also "legal" minery uses mercury on the separation process.