Episode 2. Occidente: Fura, Tena and the Minero river

A love story told by mountains

Field notes: what we saw in the region

This story has love, infidelity, death and emeralds. The strange part is that the protagonists are two mountains, Fura and Tena, and they are real. To understand why, you have to go down the cordillera first.

Down from Chiquinquirá

Field notes: what we saw in the region

Chiquinquirá and its basilica were familiar; the road down into this part of Boyacá was not. At dawn, Boca de Monte gave the first clue: fog, colors, and mountains as far as you could see. Boyacá suddenly looked enormous.

Then a sign: Muzo. That name everyone knows. Emeralds, mines, the world’s emerald capital. We drove straight past it.

Occidente is not only Muzo

The western belt has five mining districts: Muzo, Coscuez, La Pita, Peñas Blancas and La Glorieta–Yacopí.^[3] Thinking Occidente means Muzo was our first mistake.

Maripí takes its name from the Muzo language, where it means “red flower”.^[4] San Pablo de Borbur calls itself “the emerald municipality of Colombia” for the number of deposits in its territory.^[2] On the road the list keeps growing: Maripí with La Pita and Cunas, Coper, Pauna, Borbur. Our mental map of Occidente was much smaller than Occidente.

The dark river

Field notes: what we saw in the region

Past Pauna the forest changes, the air warms and the Minero appears: dark, heavy with sediment. The obvious explanation is mining, and it is only part of it.

The western emeralds sit in black shales and dolomitic limestones 130 to 116 million years old.^[3] The river carries that black rock downstream, and mining can add more solids in some stretches. Even the water had more than one story.

Fura and Tena exist

Fura rises in San Pablo de Borbur and Tena in Pauna, facing each other across the Minero river.^[2]

Their heights depend on the source. Spanish Wikipedia’s article on the hills gives about 840 meters for Tena and 500 for Fura^[1], while its article on Borbur gives Fura 800 meters.^[2]

The hills were a place of worship for the Muzo people, the seat of their gods, and the forest around them is known for its butterflies, the blue Morpho among them.^[1]

The legend, as it is told here

Oral tradition: told locally, not confirmed by documents

Fura and Tena swore to love each other. Zarbi appeared. Fura broke the promise. Tena discovered the betrayal and died. Fura wept: her tears became emeralds and her cries became butterflies. Are turned the two of them into mountains, and in one version Zarbi became a torrent, the Minero river.

Look at the valley again with that in mind: Fura on one side, Tena on the other, and Zarbi running between them. The written legend is credited to Julio Roberto Garavito.^[1]

Trapiche, an emerald of the west

In Colombia, trapiche emeralds, with six dark arms running out from a core like the spokes of a sugar-mill wheel, are only found in the western deposits of Muzo, Coscuez and Peñas Blancas.^[3]

The French mineralogist Émile Bertrand first described them in 1879, presenting “curious crystals of emerald… from Muso, New Granada.”^[3]

Still missing: the culture at work

Field notes: what we saw in the region

So far we had seen the landscape, the mines and the legend. We had not yet seen how this culture feels when it is alive: when it works, trades, eats and gathers around an emerald. For that, one more place: Coscuez.