The miners spoke very well of their activity, but not all shared their opinion. The Inírida River was the favorite place to dig in its channel with the dredges, but Inírida's mayor decided to veto the place. The riverside indigenous communities were annoying with their drunkenness, their weapons, their fights and the prostitutes those came behind them.
As strange thing, the prostitutes are not the professional group more socially accepted; at least by the face. The "women of the life"e16 have their main headquarters in the bar "Firulais", distant three blocks of the Governor's office, it is normal in any town of the country. But their branches in the rural area are not. Near to the mine they can be seen carps made with plastics and sticks, where the ladies hang their hammocks and they shelter sun and rain. They get paid according to their experience, beauty and popularity, always in gold, in grams or in lines (0.8 of gram)9. The gold of the plungers is so attractive that there are always women willing to pursue them.
Most native communities are evangelical, very strict about the illicit sexuality and the alcohol consumption. In addition, the mining contaminates their sources of water and it generates dispersion among the youths. As one of them told me: «Work the earth is very tiring. You sweat a lot and you don't win anything. On the other hand, in the mine you won more than the triple and in less time.» The novelty and the possibility of entering the national society under economic superiority conditions, they are very strong incentives for them.
Among the colonists the contamination with mercury begins to be a concern, too. Populations in the Guaviare and the Inírida rivers already realized and they didn't like. They begin to appear illnesses in the skin, inflammations in the pleats of the body and they diminish size or are scare some species of fish. The origin of such things is not mystery at all. The plunger uses the quicksilver to purify the gold and, when he doesn't spill the resulting liquid in the river, he burns it. After all, the chemical will go down to sources of water that they are used for cooking and drinking. To the merchants, charmed with the consumption of beer and the lot the miners buy them, they didn't like the idea of stop seeing them.
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