Mining in Colombia: Tracing the Harm of Neoliberal Policies and Practices

Abstract

The mining business has long been known as a dirty one: from nineteenth-century coal mines—where black lung, collapsing roofs and gas explosions were among the standard occupational hazards—to twenty-first-century open-pit gold mines—where land poisoning and depletion of renewable and nonrenewable resources is inevitable. Despite the well-known risks of large-scale extraction of minerals to humans, nonhuman animals and ecosystems, over the last couple of decades, the Colombian government has introduced a series of policies to attract international capital to the national extractive business. The government has been successful in this and, as a consequence, a mining boom—aided by aggressive implementation of neoliberal policies—has taken place.