Amber scarcely buys bread in Mexico
In Mexico, amber has risen in price, yet miners see no improvement in income
For the Romans, a single piece of amber was reputedly worth more than a
slave, but in southern Mexico, amber miners working in medieval conditions earn
barely enough to survive. For thousands of years, cultures worldwide have prized amber, or fossilized
tree sap, as a magic gem believed to have healing powers. The resin is found
mainly in the Baltic Sea, the Dominican Republic and Chiapas state in southern
Mexico. After decades of mining in the mountains around Simojovel town in Chiapas,
home to some of the finest amber in the world, the resin has grown scarce and
its price risen. Yet the miners have seen no improvement in their income. "Some weeks you earn 40 to 100 pesos (US$3.70 to US$9.30) a week said
Manuel Diaz, 25, a Tzotzil Indian from the nearby hamlet of Pauchil Los Cocos. In a dusty cave too small to stand in, Diaz squints in the candlelight at a
barely visible gray vein in the rock. Sweating in the claustrophobic heat, he hammers a metal nail into the vein,
then another and another until a hail of rock falls to the floor. Optimistically he inspects the slivers but there is no amber. A typical day
for most amber miners here.
Amber is the lifeblood of Simojovel in the heartland of the National
Zapatista Liberation Army, which took up arms against the government in 1994 for
Mexico's Indians. The mines are made up of around 600 individual tunnels dug out of the crumbly
rock using spades. They are not held up with any supports and the miners are too
poor to afford hard hats, electricity or even basic mining equipment. Diaz began mining when he was 15. Many miners start as early as four,
foregoing school to help boost the family income. But Diaz and others are increasingly abandoning the mines in search of more
secure income. He now works his corn plot full time and only occasionally stops
by the amber mines.
"People don't have any patience because it doesn't pay well. They want something certain..." he said.
Magic qualities
Amber is most commonly a honey-orange color but it also comes in rarer tones of dark red, milky white, green and blue. For the Etruscans, amber was equal in value to gold. Legend has it Mexico's Aztec emperor Montezuma stirred his cocoa drink with a long amber ladle. Even toady, Chiapas Indians adorn the necks and wrists of their children with amber amulets to ward off "the evil eye." The amber on sale in Chiapas was created over 40 million years, having collected as tree sap and been washed by rain and streams into the ocean where it was compressed and left embedded in layers of rock when the seas subsided. In the process, leaves, grasses, mosquitoes, scorpions and occasionally small vertebrates were trapped in the resin.
"Sometimes you find species that are now extinct and fragments of their DNA are in the amber," said Philippe Chatillon, an amber merchant and collector in the colonial tourist capital of Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas.
"If you have a centipede or a tarantula in the middle of clear resin it will be much more expensive than if you have a fly in the corner that can hardly be seen," said Chatillon.
A piece of amber containing a lizard can cost between US$10,000 and US$20,000. "It's almost a legend," he said.
Chatillon's collection exhibits amber sculpted into ornate Buddha, skulls, an amber chess board, engraved vases and pieces containing scorpions, butterflies and even shells and shrimp dating back to when the area was covered by the sea. He also has a cabinet full of fake amber, widely hawked on the streets of San Cristobal, to demonstrate the differences between imitation and the real thing. Chatillon points to a centipede the size of a hand, perfectly intact, encased in clear yellow glass. "A lot of glass and plastic is sold as amber in the street. Glass is cold, while amber is warm. Plastic is harder to distinguish but I can tell immediately because it's dead. Amber is alive," he said. Chatillon buys his amber from salesmen who come down from Simojovel. It is too dangerous to make the winding two-hour drive there on a highway famed for assaults, he said. "Everyone is armed around Simojovel. The situation is very politicized as the Zapatistas are there." In Chatillon's shop, an array of silver-worked amber is displayed in illuminated cabinets- a sharp contrast to the no-frills shops of Simojovel artisans.
Francisco Trejo sells his amber jewelry from his concrete back yard below his family's grocery. The amber merchants in San Cristobal buy crafted gems from Simojovel and sell them in town for 10 times the price, he says. But then he is much better off financially than the miners. "The miners are the ones who work themselves to the bone and who earn the least," he said. Diaz said he used to sell the amber he found for 1,000 pesos (US$92) a kilo, tiny fraction of the going rate for yellow amber these days. But the price rise has not meant a better life for the miners, who work for themselves at their peril. While Simojovel's artisans have formed collectives to protect their business, attempts to set up unions among the miners have failed. A few years ago the treasurer of a fledgling co-op ran away with the group's funds. Miners treat strangers with suspicion, ever afraid they will be exploited. "There are a lot of political interests here," said Trejo. In Simojovel, as in much of Chiapas, political and religious differences divide the inhabitants. On the dirt track to the mines from Simojovel, where the Zapatistas have a strong presence, a sign painted on corrugated iron read: "We don't want armies here, we don't want neo-liberalism and the U.S. multinationals." A scramble through thick foliage up a steep, slippery mud path leads to a nearly five foot-high (1.5 meter high) cave entrance. There two bare-chested, barefoot miners were taking a break from their toils in the sweltering heat.
Iraquio Sanchez, 32, and Martin Hernandez, 40, in grimy, threadbare trousers, have mined amber for the past 20 years. They start at 7 a.m. and finish at 4 p.m. year round, even during the rainy season when the mines at times cave in. "Three people died here last year, crushed," said Sanchez, emitting a racking cough from years of inhaling dust.
"We don't expect to take anything home today. There's nothing here."