Andean Scapes team · Updated
Fuego Verde: four journeys into Colombia’s emerald country
A documentary series filmed in the emerald regions of Boyacá and Cundinamarca. Each episode has a written page here, with what we saw on the road and the documents behind every fact.
What is Fuego Verde?
Fuego Verde is a short documentary series that Andean Scapes filmed in Colombia’s emerald regions. The name is the Spanish title of Green Fire, the 1942 memoir of the engineer who ran the Chivor mine in the 1920s.
The videos are short. These pages are the long version: the same route, the places named on screen, the stories told in the towns, and the sources that confirm or contradict them.
Two regions, one emerald country
Colombia’s emeralds come from two belts on either side of the Eastern Cordillera basin, and they did not form at the same time: about 65 million years ago in the east, between 38 and 32 million years ago in the west.[1]
Oriente, the eastern belt, is Chivor, Gachalá and Macanal. Occidente, the western belt, is Muzo, Coscuez, La Pita, Peñas Blancas and La Glorieta–Yacopí.[1] Episode 1 travels the east. Episodes 2 and 3 cross to the west. Episode 4 follows the stones that left both.
How to read these pages
Sections marked Field notes are what we saw and heard on the road. Sections marked Oral tradition are stories told in the region that no document we found confirms. Everything else carries a numbered source.
Quotes in italics come from the narration. The Spanish original is on the Spanish page; the English and French pages translate it.