Andean Scapes team · Updated
Muzo: the emerald capital
A town named after a people who fought the Spanish for decades, a set of black hills full of emeralds, the trapiche, the 11,000-carat Fura and the worst of the Green Wars.
Where is Muzo?
Muzo is a municipality in western Boyacá, 170 km from Tunja and 90 km from Chiquinquirá, known worldwide for its emerald deposits.[1]
English Wikipedia calls Muzo the most important emerald mine in the world.[2]
The name and the people
The town takes its name from the Muzo, the indigenous people of western Boyacá; the word means “person”.[1]
Before the conquest the Muzo, a warlike Carib people, mined emeralds in a rudimentary way and used them as ornaments and in trade between clans.[1]
A long conquest
The Spanish needed about twenty years of war to defeat the Muzo. After several failed campaigns from 1539, Luis Lanchero founded the Villa de la Santísima Trinidad de los Muzos on 20 February 1559.[1]
English Wikipedia speaks of five decades.[2] The veins themselves were found by accident, Semana wrote in 1992: in 1564 a large green stone stuck in the horseshoe of a conquistador’s horse.[4]
In the 16th century Muzo emeralds were favored by the Mughal nobility of India.[4]
The rocks
Muzo’s emeralds sit in black shales and dolomitic limestones of the Rosablanca and Paja formations, 130 to 116 million years old.[3]
Like the rest of the western belt, Muzo’s emeralds formed between 38 and 32 million years ago.[3]
Trapiche
The French mineralogist Émile Bertrand first described trapiche emeralds in 1879, presenting “curious crystals of emerald… from Muso, New Granada.”[3]
In Colombia trapiche emeralds come only from Muzo, Coscuez and Peñas Blancas.[3]
Muzo green
In the trade, “Muzo” also names a color: a warm, grassy green with hints of yellow.[2]
Semana wrote in 1992 that Muzo’s mines were the only ones producing the “gota de aceite”, the trade’s name for the finest stones.[4]
Fura
In 1999 a Muzo mine produced Fura, an uncut crystal of about 11,000 carats, 2.2 kilograms.[5]
It was named after the legend of Fura and Tena, the hills that rise about 30 km north of the Muzo mines.[2]
Muzo and the Green Wars
Muzo was at the center of the Green Wars, the conflicts over the emerald mines that ran from 1965 to 1990.[6]
The first Green War killed more than 1,200 people in Chiquinquirá, Muzo, Coscuez, Borbur and Somondoco, and by 1980 Muzo had as many as 35,000 guaqueros.[6]
Muzo today
Mining dominates the economy: about 75% of Muzo’s working population is in emerald mining and trade, alongside sugar cane, cacao, cassava and cattle.[1]
Guaquería, independent searching, is part of daily life, and many of the searchers are women.[7]
Frequently asked questions
- Why are Muzo emeralds famous?
- Muzo has produced emeralds since before the conquest and gives its name to a warm grassy green in the trade.[2] It is also one of only three Colombian sources of trapiche emeralds.[3]
- How do you get to Muzo?
- Muzo is 90 km from Chiquinquirá: head west on Ruta Nacional 60 toward Pauna and Maripí, or come from Ubaté through Simijaca. The town also has an airfield for small planes.[1]
Sources
- Muzo (Boyacá). Wikipedia en español.(in Spanish)
- Colombian emeralds. Wikipedia (English).
- Pignatelli, I., Giuliani, G., Ohnenstetter, D. et al. (2015). Colombian Trapiche Emeralds: Recent Advances in Understanding Their Formation. Gems & Gemology, 51(3), 222–259.
- Semana (10 May 1992). La reinserción de los esmeralderos.(in Spanish)
- Esmeralda Fura. Wikipedia en español.(in Spanish)
- Molano Bravo, A. (5 September 2017). Esmeraldas y violencia, dos caminos cruzados. Semana.(in Spanish)
- Navarrete, T. (2016). Mujeres, las víctimas silenciosas de la esmeralda en Boyacá. Verdad Abierta.(in Spanish)