Photo Essay by Andy Isaacson

Ancient Egyptians called it the “flesh of the gods.” To the Incas, it was “sweat of the sun.” No object in the world has driven humanity to lust quite like gold has. Explorers and conquerors, pharaohs and bankers—all have coveted the shiny metal known by the chemical symbol Au. Gold fever has funded wars and empires. It even built the state of California. Now, it’s destroying the Amazon.

Over currency fears, the price of gold has roughly tripled in the past decade. Rushing to get in on the action are some 15 million artisanal gold miners worldwide, who generate more than 20 percent of the world’s gold production—using rudimentary methods that are a leading cause of the planet’s mercury pollution.

The nation of Suriname occupies a tiny slice of the Amazon River Basin north of Brazil, between Guyana and French Guiana. Its population of less than 500,000 people is settled largely on the Atlantic coast, around the capital city of Paramaribo. Vast tropical rainforest blankets about 80 percent of the country, which sits above a unique geological formation called the Guiana Shield. The jungle is home to indigenous peoples and Maroons, descendants of runaway African slaves—and abundant in minerals such as alumina, oil, and gold, exports of which exceed 50 percent of Suriname’s GDP.

Since the 1990s, when it became more difficult to find work in Brazil, dreams of riches have called thousands of wildcat miners, or garimpeiros, across the porous border into Suriname. Bar owners, shopkeepers and sex workers follow their footsteps. Suriname’s government has failed to control small-scale gold mining and largely looks the other way to this steady influx, yet in the interior—where the state is virtually nonexistent—their illegal presence creates an uneasy coexistence with local Maroons.

In 2007, I spent five days in Benzdorp, a remote mining settlement in southeastern Suriname, near the border with French Guiana. Benzdorp is inaccessible by road; reaching the town requires a trip of several days up the Lawa River, from Paramaribo, or an hour flight in an Antonov An-28, a Ukrainian light prop plane. On my flight were two lipsticked Brazilian women in tight shirts and pumps, three Surinamese Maroons, a garimpeiro, and a baby-faced New Zealand geologist working for a Canadian mining company—all in it for the gold.