22 Die As Colombian Gold Mine Collapses

They were mostly women, often single mothers, the poorest of Colombia's poor, and they were at the bottom of a deep pit scrabbling for gold. For black shack dwellers in Suarez, a forgotten backwater in Cauca province of African slave descendants, artisanal mining is arduous but the only way to survive.

Last Saturday it became a way to die. The makeshift mine collapsed, sending an avalanche of mud and rock on top of the miners, killing 22 and injuring 26. At least 16 of the dead were women, of whom many were young mothers.

As the funerals took place yesterday it emerged that three extended close-knit families of sisters, aunts, nieces and cousins had borne the brunt of the tragedy. "They were always together. And together they died," said Colombia's leading daily, El Tiempo.

Recriminations were swift. The central government said it had banned mining in the area and suggested blame resided with local officials and the company which owned the site, Agromineros. Local officials say they had enforced the ban. The company said it had ceased operations and suggested the artisans were to blame. A security guard reportedly warned them of an avalanche risk on Saturday but he was scorned.

Survivors and relatives of the dead said the culprit was poverty. With little education, government support or jobs people were desperate.

"This is a region where there are a lot of single mothers and their only source of work is the mine," a Red Cross spokesman, Carlos Marquez, told Reuters. "It was that or die of hunger," one woman told the daily El Colombiano.

Which is why at 3am on a weekend, well before sunrise, dozens of them hiked to the site to gouge the earth with spades, picks and bare hands. An informal agreement with the site's owner allowed them to try their luck over the weekends when the company's earth-movers were inactive. A gram of gold, worth 35,000 pesos, or £8.70, could feed a family for a week.

Their fathers and grandfathers were also miners, according to local accounts, but Saturday's group was inexperienced. It had carved a pit about 8 meters (26ft) deep and 50 meters wide with a warren of tunnels lacking proper support.

The earth, softened by rain, gave way without warning and tonnes of mud and rock engulfed the workers. Most of the casualties hailed from the Solis, Nazarith and Ocoro families.

The loss was a reminder of the plight of rural Colombians whose daily struggle against poverty is another world from Bogotá, the capital 220 miles north which is the shiny face of what the government says is a new Colombia. A security crackdown has driven left wing guerrillas from the cities and stoked investment, optimism and a property boom.

The government has expanded some social programs in the countryside but critics say it is too little for a swath of the population, many of them subsistence farmers, which languishes in poverty and insecurity largely invisible to the paler-skinned elite.

Colombia boasts rich deposits of gold and emeralds. Decades of civil war between rebels, militias and government troops have left many areas isolated. Artisans often mine deposits with little or no state supervision. Accidents are frequent. A mine explosion in February killed 32 people. The same month another accident killed another eight.

Television pictures yesterday showed emergency response teams with heavy machinery wading through mud at the site near Suarez. By last night the site was reported quiet and the rescue teams were absent. There were thought to be no more survivors and rain had made the clear-up hazardous.