Amalgamated Histories: Tracing Quicksilver's Legacy Through Environmental and Political Bodies in Andean and Amazonian Gold Mining

Abstract

This article argues that the centuries-long history of mercury-gold amalgamation is crucial to contemporary debates surrounding global mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Drawing on historical findings that examine Spanish colonial and Indigenous metallurgical knowledge as well as ethnographic and scientific research, we resituate the history of mercury amalgamation in Latin America, focusing on the Colombian Andes and the Peruvian Amazon – two regions where mercury pollution from artisanal and small-scale gold mining provokes international concern. We identify the policy pitfalls caused by overlooking the untold histories of the amalgamation process along with the European contribution to global mercury emissions rooted in these histories. By critically examining the curation of presentist narratives in UNESCO's memorialisation of Almadén's mercury mines as a World Heritage Site, narratives that also underpin initiatives by the United Nations to bring about a “mercury-free world,” we demonstrate how such ahistorical framings contribute to the criminalisation of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, not only in Perú and Colombia but also worldwide. Our findings present an important first step in highlighting the histories of mercury and gold in the hands of artisanal and small-scale gold miners in Latin America.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to sincerely thank those individuals who shared their stories with us during fieldwork in Perú and Colombia. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Lorentz Center for Scientific Workshops (Leiden University) and the participants and organisers of the “Gold & Mercury: Metals in Transit” working group meeting held at the Center in June 2022. We are also indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which helped us refine the arguments, and Donna Bilak who envisioned this special issue from start to finish.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Agricola, De Re Metallica, trans. H. Hoover (New York: Kessinger Publishing, 1912).

2 Planet Gold, “ASGM 101: A Primer on Mercury Use in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining”: https://www.planetgold.org/asgm-101 (accessed 13 February 2023).

3 A Conference of the Parties or COP is the periodic meeting that signatories to an international treaty hold to review the treaty's implementation, discuss amendments, and address administrative matters like funding or financial assistance.

4 UNEP, “First Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-1),” Geneva, Switzerland (24–29 September 2017): https://www.mercuryconvention.org/en/meetings/cop1 (accessed 22 December 2022).

5 UNEP, “Historic Milestone Reached in Global Fight Against Mercury Pollution”: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/historic-milestone-reached-global-fight-against-mercury-pollution (accessed 3 January 2023).

6 Pablo Higueras et al., “A First Insight into Mercury Distribution and Speciation in Soils from the Almadén Mining District, Spain,” Journal of Geochemical Exploration 80 (2003): 95–104 and John E. Gray, Michael J. Pribil and Pablo L. Higueras, “Mercury Isotope Fractionation during Ore Retorting in the Almadén Mining District, Spain,” Chemical Geology 357 (2013): 150–57.

7 While the first Conference of Parties (COP-1) occurred in 2017, the agreement to create the treaty came in 2013.

8 UNESCO, “Heritage of Mercury”: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1313/ (accessed 22 December 2022).

9 Ruth Goldstein, “Life in Traffic: Riddling Field Notes on the Political Economy of ‘Sex’ and Nature,” Cultural Anthropology 37 (2022): 251–85.

10 See Ralph Bauer, The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019) and Allison Margaret Bigelow, Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

11 See for example Louisa J. Esdaile and Justin M. Chalker, “The Mercury Problem in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining,” Chemistry – A European Journal 24, no. 27 (2018): 6905–16; Herman Gibb and Keri Grace O’Leary, “Mercury Exposure and Health Impacts among Individuals in the Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining Community: A Comprehensive Review,” Environmental Health Perspectives 122, no. 7 (2014): 667–72.

12 Jennifer J. Hinton, Marcello M. Veiga, and A. Tadeu C. Veiga, “Clean Artisanal Gold Mining: A Utopian Approach?” Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (2003): 99–115.

13 Marieke Heemskerk, “Collecting Data in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Communities: Measuring Progress Towards More Sustainable Livelihoods,” Natural Resources Forum 29 (2005): 82–7.

14 Boris Verbrugge, “The Economic Logic of Persistent Informality: Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in the Southern Philippines. Development and Change,” Development and Change 46 (2015): 1023–46.

15 Jimena Diaz Leiva, “Ecologies of Gold: Understanding the Social, Political, and Ecological Impacts of Mercury Use in Informal, Small-Scale Gold Mining in Madre De Dios, Perú” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2021).

16 Colin A. Cooke et al., “Over Three Millennia of Mercury Pollution in the Perúvian Andes,” PNAS 106 (2009): 8830–34; Colin A. Cooke et al., “Use and Legacy of Mercury in the Andes,” Environmental Science & Technology 47 (2013): 4181–88.

17 Bigelow, Mining Language; William Brooks, “Industrial Use of Mercury in the Ancient World,” in Mercury in the Environment, ed. Michael Banks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 19–24; Robyn d’Avignon, A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022); Rafael Larco Hoyle, Los Mochicas, vol. 2 (Lima: Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera, 2001).

18 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 2007).

19 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7.

20 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

21 Ruth Goldstein (forthcoming), “Los Contaminados and the Contaminating: Mercury as a Long-Range Global Pollutant.”

22 Cooke et al., “Over Three Millennia of Mercury Pollution in the Perúvian Andes” and “Use and Legacy.”

23 Cooke et al., “Over Three Millennia of Mercury Pollution in the Perúvian Andes” and “Use and Legacy.”

24 Bigelow, Mining Language, 248.

25 Hoyle, Los Mochicas, 130.

26 Cooke et al., “Over Three Millennia of Mercury Pollution in the Perúvian Andes” and “Use and Legacy.” See also José de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590; repr., Madrid, Spain: Ramón Anglés Impresor, 1894).

27 Brooks, “Industrial Use of Mercury in the Ancient World,” 21.

28 Saul Guerrero, Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury: A Chemical History of Silver Refining in New Spain and Mexico, 16th to 19th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

29 Ángel Hernández et al., “The Almadén Mercury Mining District, Spain,” Mineralium Deposita 34 (1999): 539–48. For extensive histories of Almadén mines see Angél M. Hernádez, Los mineros del azogue (Madrid: Lozano Comunicación Gráfica, 2007) and Antonio Matilla Tascón, Historia de las minas de Almadén, vol.1 (Madrid: Minas de Almadén y Arrayanes, 1987).

30 Almadén is also where the commercial measurement for mercury export, “the flask,” was developed; see Delmar K. Meyers, “History of the Mercury Flask,” Journal of Chemical Education 28 (1951): 127. Brooks, “Industrial Use of Mercury in the Ancient World,” 20: “The flask itself is made of welded steel, has a screw cap, and is about the size of a 2-L container. When filled, the flask weighs 34.5 kg, and 29 flasks of mercury are contained in a metric ton.”

31 Nicholas Robins and Nicole Hagan, “Mercury Production and Use in Colonial Andean Silver Production: Emissions and Health Implications,” Environmental Health Perspectives 120 (2012): 627–33.

32 Carlos Contreras and Ali Diaz, “Los intentos de reflotamiento de la mina de azogue de Huancavelica en el siglo XIX,” América Latina, en la Historia Económica 29 (2008): 7–29.

33 Robins and Hagan, “Mercury Production and Use in Colonial Andean Silver Production: Emissions and Health Implications.”

34 See Goldstein (forthcoming), “Los Contaminados and the Contaminating.”

35 Jerome O. Nriagu, “Mercury Pollution from the Past Mining of Gold and Silver in the Americas,” Science of the Total Environment 149 (1994): 167–81.

36 Henrik Selin and Noelle E. Selin, Mercury Stories Understanding Sustainability through a Volatile Element (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2020), 44.

37 See Nriagu, “Mercury Pollution,” and Helen Amos et al., “Observational and Modeling Constraints on Global Anthropogenic Enrichment of Mercury,” Environmental Science and Technology 49 (2015): 4036–47.

38 Nicholas Robins, Mercury, Mining, and Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

39 See Guerrero, Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury; Bigelow, Mining Language; Contreras and Diaz, “Los intentos de reflotamiento de la mina de azogue de Huancavelica en el siglo XIX.”

40 Luis Muro, “Bartolome de Medina, introductor del beneficio de patio en Nueva España,” in Historia de la ciencia y la tecnología, ed. Germán Somolinos et al. (México: D. F. El Colegio de México, 1964), 203–17.

41 Bigelow, Mining Language, 239.

42 Orlando Paez Courreau, Tecnología minera y metalúrgica en la Nueva Granada del siglo XVI al XIX (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia – ICAHN, 2003).

43 Mikulas Teich, “Born's Amalgamation Process and the International Metallurgic Gathering at Skleno in 1786,” Annals of Science 32 (1975): 305–429.

44 Robins, Mercury Mining and Empire, 58.

45 Lyman Caswell and Rebecca Stone-Daley, “The D’Elhuyar Brothers, Tungsten, and Spanish Silver,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 23 (1999): 11–19.

46 Juan Manuel López de Azcona, Minería iberoamericana: repertorio bibliográfico y biográfico. Biografías (1492–1892) (Madrid: Instituto Tecnológico Geominero de España, 1992), 113; Iago Gil Aguada. “La expedición minera del barón de Nordenflicht y las autoridades Peruanas,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 72 (2015): 263–88.

47 Teich, “Born's Amalgamation,” 311.

48 Caswell and Stone-Daley, “The D’Elhuyar Brothers.”

49 Nature, “Ignaz von Born,” Nature 150 (1942): 763.

50 Jakob Vogel, “Lost in Imperial Translation? Circulating Mining Knowledge between Europe and Latin America around 1800,” in Transnational Cultures of Expertise: Circulating State-Related Knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries, ed. L. Schilling and J. Vogel (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 129–46.

51 Bigelow, Mining Language. See also Carlos Contreras, “Transferencia de tecnologías e Imperio. El caso de la minería andina en el siglo XVIII,” Diálogo Andino - Revista de Historia, Geografía y Cultura Andina 33 (2009): 29–42.

52 Pratt, Imperial Eyes.

53 Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis, “Toxic Residues and Amalgamated Injustices: A Political Ecology of Mercury and Gold Extraction in Colombia” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2022).

54 J. R. C. Deustua, “Society, Science, and Technology: Mariano de Rivero, Mining and the Birth of Perú as a Republic, 1820-1850,” Apuntes-Revista De Ciencias Sociales 80 (2017): 51–77.

55 Cyanidation was invented in the 1890s and spread rapidly across mining areas in South Africa and the Americas. However, it required equipment and expertise accessible only to the largest mining operations, some of which continued using mercury amalgamation. See, among others: Edward Beatty, Cyanide and Silver: Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015); Armando Valenzuela and Kostas Fytas, “Mercury Management in Small-Scale Mining,” International Journal of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Environment 16 (2002): 2–23; and Boris Verbrugge, Cristiano Lanzano, and Matthew Libassi, “The Cyanide Revolution: Efficiency Gains and Exclusion in Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining,” Geoforum 126 (2021): 267–76.

56 See E. Vargas Pimiento, Huellas al futuro, 125 años de la Ingeniería de Minas en Colombia (Medellin: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2012); Gabriel Poveda Ramos, “Ingenieros, inmigrantes y mineria en la Antioquía del siglo XIX,” Ciencia Tecnología Desarrollo 11 (1987): 1–2; Gabriel Poveda Ramos, ed., Ingenieria e Historia de las Tecnicas – Tomo V. Historia Social de la Ciencia en Colombia (Bogotá: Colciencias, 1993).

57 Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies: Living with Impaired Landscapes (Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley's Institute for Othering and Belonging, 2019) and “Age of Disability: On Living Well with Impaired Landscapes,” Orion 2021: https://orionmagazine.org/article/age-of-disability/ (accessed 31 July 2022).

58 Taylor, “Age of Disability.”

59 El Espectador, “¡Bañados en mercurio!” 2015: https://www.elespectador.com/actualidad/banados-en-mercurio-article-578797/ (accessed 1 December 2022).

60 Leonardo Güiza and Juan Aristizábal, “Mercury and Gold mining in Colombia: A Failed State,” Universitas Scientiarum 18 (2013): 33–49.

61 Colombia Reports, “Mercury Poisoning Adds to Humanitarian Crisis in West Colombia: Govt,” 2014: https://colombiareports.com/amp/colombians-forced-homes-lack-water/ (accessed 1 December 2022).

62 Newton Fund, “Increasing Productivity and Removing Toxic Mercury from Colombia's Gold Mines,” 2019: https://www.newton-gcrf.org/impact/stories-of-change/increasing-productivity-and-removing-toxic-mercury-from-colombias-gold-mines/ (accessed 1 December 2022).

63 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015).

64 Goldstein “Life in Traffic”; Óscar Paredes Pando, Explotación del Caucho-Shiringa: Brasil, Perú, Bolivia. Economías extractivo-mercantiles en el Alto Acre - Madre de Dios (Cusco: JL Editores, 2013).

65 See Cesar Mosquera, Desafío de la formalización en la minería artesanal y de pequeña escala: análisis de las experiencias en Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador y Perú (Lima, CooperAcción: Acción Solidaria para el Desarrollo, 2006); Victor Hugo Pachas, Conflictos sociales en Madre de Dios: El caso de la minería en pequeña escala de oro y la ilegalidad (Lima, peru: CEAS, 2009); and Lenin Valencia Arroyo, Madre de Dios: Podemos Evitar la Tragedia? (Lima, Peru: Sociedad Peruana para Derechos Ambientales, 2014).

66 Lenin Valencia Arroyo, Madre de Dios: Podemos Evitar la Tragedia? (Lima, Peru: Sociedad Peruana para Derechos Ambientales, 2014).

67 Jimena Diaz Leiva, “Appropriate Technologies and the Geosocial Evolution of Informal, Small-Scale Gold Mining in Madre de Dios, Perú,” The Extractive Industries and Society (2022): 101165.

68 Andrew Gray, “Y después de la fiebre del oro: Derechos humanos y autodesarrollo entre los amarakaeri del sudeste de Perú,” International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (1986): 39. https://www.iwgia.org/images/publications/0373_5_Fiebre_Oro_Peru.pdf (accessed 3 January 2023).

69 Antonio Brack Egg et al., Minería Aurífera en Madre de Dios y contaminación con mercurio: Una bomba de tiempo, (Lima, Perú: Ministerio del Ambiente 2011); and Katy Ashe, “Elevated Mercury Concentrations in Humans of Madre de Dios, Perú,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 3 (2012): e33305.

70 http://dataonline.gacetajuridica.com.pe/gaceta/admin/elPerúano/1822019/18-02-2019.pdf (accessed 31 July 2022).

71 Ministerio del Interior, “Operación “Mercurio 2019” permitirá restituir el principio de autoridad en La Pampa,” February 19, 2019: https://www.gob.pe/institucion/mininter/noticias/25784-operacion-mercurio-2019-permitira-restituir-el-principio-de-autoridad-en-la-pampa (accessed 31 July 2022).

72 “Guillermo Reaño, “Minería ilegal en Madre de Dios: Operación Mercurio 2019, el baile de los que faltan,” March 19, 2019: https://www.actualidadambiental.pe/mineria-ilegal-en-madre-de-dios-operacion-mercurio-2019-el-baile-de-los-que-faltan/ (accessed 31 July 2022).

73 Petra Tschakert and Kamini Singha, “Contaminated Identities: Mercury and Marginalization in Ghana's Artisanal Mining Sector,” Geoforum 38 (2007): 1304–21; and Boris Verbrugge and Sara Geenen, eds., Global Gold Production Touching Ground: Expansion, Informalization, and Technological Innovation (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

74 Greg P. Asner and Raul Tupayachi, “Accelerated Losses of Protected Forests from Gold Mining in the Perúvian Amazon,” Environmental Research Letters 12 (2017): 094004; and Sarah E. Diringer et al., “River Transport of Mercury from Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining and Risks for Dietary Mercury Exposure in Madre de Dios, Perú,” Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts 17, no. 2 (2015): 478–87.

75 Brack Egg et al., “Minería Aurífera en Madre de Dios”; Ashe, “Elevated Mercury Concentrations in Humans of Madre de Dios, Perú”; and Barbara Fraser, “Perúvian Gold Rush Threatens Health and the Environment,” Environment, Science, and Technology 43 (2009): 7162–64.

76 Guillermo Lohmann Villena, “Las minas de Huancavelica en los siglos XVI y XVII,” Publicaciones de la Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos de Sevilla (1949): https://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/181809 (accessed 1 August 2022).

77 Ministerio de Minas, Unidad de Planeación Minero-Energética and Universidad de Córdoba, Estudio de la cadena del mercurio en Colombia (Bogotá: Ministerio de Minas y Energía, 2014); and Paul Cordy et al., “Mercury Contamination from Artisanal Gold Mining in Antioquia, Colombia: The World's Highest per capita Mercury Pollution,” Science of the Total Environment 410–411 (2011): 154–60.

78 Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, Silenciar la democracia: las masacres de Segovia y Remedios 1982–1997 (Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2013).

79 Frédéric Massé and Philippe Le Billon, “Gold Mining in Colombia, Post-war Crime and the Peace Agreement with the FARC,” Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal (2018): 1–19.

80 Anamaria Bedoya-Builes, De oro están hechos mis días (Medellin: Universilibros, 2011).

81 Unlike Perú and Mexico where mercury was used since the early colonial period, mercury amalgamation's adoption in New Granada (Colombia's name before its independence in 1819) only took place in the early nineteenth century when superficial alluvial deposits started to deplete and vein mining became attractive to colonial authorities. Before 1820, Indigenous and enslaved African peoples employed decomposed plant matter to wash sand extracted from alluvial deposits to obtain gold instead of using mercury; see Robert West, Colonial Placer Mining in Colombia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1952). Although gold was lost with this technique, the abundance of free gold in alluvial deposits made the method profitable. This would change in the mid-nineteenth century when underground (or vein) mining began to boom in Antioquia, where nearly half of Colombia's gold has been produced; see Poveda, Ingenieros, inmigrantes y mineria en la Antioquía del siglo XIX.

82 Sebastian Rubiano-Galvis, “Toxicity, Violence, and the Legacies of Mercury and Gold Mining in Colombia,” Platypus (2022): https://blog.castac.org/2022/11/toxicity-violence-and-the-legacies-of-mercury-and-gold-mining-in-colombia/ (accessed 30 December 2022).

83 Unidad de Planeacion Minero-Energetica, Censo Minero 2011 (Bogotá: Ministerio de Minas y Energia, 2019).

84 RCN Radio, “2.000 mineros marcharon contra multinacional en Segovia y Remedios” (19 April 2017): https://www.rcnradio.com/colombia/antioquia/2-000-mineros-marcharon-multinacional-segovia-remedios (accessed 30 December 2022).

85 Centro Nacional de Producción Más Limpia, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible & UNIDO, Preparación Temprana para el Convenio de Minamata sobre el Mercurio (MIA) en la República de Colombia (Bogotá: UNIDO, 2017): https://archivo.minambiente.gov.co/images/AsuntosambientalesySectorialyUrbana/pdf/mercurio/Evaluacion_Institucional_MINAMATA.pdf (accessed 3 January 2023).

86 Catalina Quiroga, “Hacia un territorio minero-campesino: propuestas territoriales desde el movimiento socioterritorial en el nordeste de Antioquia, Colombia,” in Extractivismo minero en Colombia y América Latina, ed. Barbara Gobel and Astrid Ulloa (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2015), 283–320.

87 Gran Colombia Gold Corp. v. Republic of Colombia (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, Case No. ARB/18/23). As of December 2022, the case is still pending.

88 Rubiano-Galvis, “Toxicity, Violence, and the Legacies of Mercury and Gold Mining in Colombia.”

Additional information

Funding

Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis received support from UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and Center for Latin American Studies and the University of San Francisco’s College of Arts and Sciences. Jimena Diaz Leiva was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fellowship. Ruth Goldstein was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Coupled Natural-Human Systems (CNHS) grant [1924148].

Notes on contributors

Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis

Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis (corresponding author) is a Gerardo Marin Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of San Francisco's International Studies Department and a Research Affiliate at UC Berkeley's Human Contexts and Ethics of Data Program. He has studied the social life of mercury in Colombian gold mining landscapes and the politics of knowledge and capacity-building in the small-scale gold mining sector in South America. Broadly, his research studies the politics of environmental knowledge, technology, and data in Latin America. Address: 222F Kalmanovitz Hall, 2130 Fulton St, San Francisco, CA 94117. Email: [email protected]

Jimena Diaz Leiva

Jimena Diaz Leiva is Science Director at the Center for Environmental Health based in Oakland, California. Her dissertation research at UC Berkeley examined the social, political, and ecological consequences of mercury use in gold mining in Madre de Dios, Peru. Her research interests widely encompass the politics of resource extraction, land use change, and development in Latin America. Address: 2201 Broadway, Suite 508, Oakland, CA 94612. Email: [email protected]

Ruth Goldstein

Ruth Goldstein is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests focus on the gendered concerns of human and nonhuman health, a quickly heating planet, and environmental racism. Her research on mercury as a global pollutant analyses the racialized weight of toxic body burdens and impacts on parent/child health over generations. Address: 3409 Sterling Hall, 475 North Charter Street, Madison, WI 53706. Email: [email protected]