The interviews acquire meaning within a "context", depending on the place and time of the interview (Beaud, 2018). For this reason, it is important to highlight that the interviews took place in a general scenario of social mobilization in Colombia. The organizations and social movements that promoted protests in different parts of the country, pointed out that they had to do with the failure of agreements to peasant and indigenous organizations by the government (Rodríguez, 2019) and the murder of social leaders and human rights defenders in the rural territories of the country. It can be said that the claim for the right to life and remain in the territories is one of the main drivers of demonstrations connected to rural areas in Colombia, in which some traditional gold mining communities are involved.
The first contact with artisanal miners took place in the city of Bogotá during a political initiative named “Refugio Humanitario” or humanitarian refuge. In this humanitarian camp, persecuted social leaders from different parts of the country met in order to claim for guaranties for their lives. Participation in the humanitarian camp is based on a participant observation exercise because as mentioned in the literature review, mining regions face high levels of violence. For these reasons, social leaders from artisanal gold mining communities came to the humanitarian camp because they are persecuted, threatened or displaced due to their role as the environment and land defenders. In addition, it was through the participation in the humanitarian camp that contacts were established to facilitate a field visit.
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Fieldwork in which the participant observation method is used is key to the success of ethnographic analyzes (Beaud, 2018). This allows higher levels of interaction with the research subjects and the environment in which they operate (Beaud, 2018). In this way, the data obtained through the interviews are enriched with the possibility of participating in the daily life of the researched medium. Due to the time allocated for the fieldwork in this research, and the security contingencies that were presented, it was necessary to propose a field visit instead of ethnographic fieldwork that would take a long time.
3.3.1 Security issues and place selection
During the research, it was necessary to establish a protocol to reduce the risk levels in the visits that were initially planned. This decision was made due to several events: First, the visit that was scheduled several months in advance to Cauca Department by invitation of contacts in the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca had to be canceled days before due to the outbreak of a strike known as "Minga Indigena" (Rodríguez, 2019). During this protest, the access roads to the region were blocked and confrontations and violent acts took place in which several people were injured and died (PACIFISTA, 2019). The second scheduled visit to this same region through the invitation by a contact in the Process of Black Communities, also had to be canceled because the contact in this community, who was also interviewed for this work, along with social leaders of the region, was victim of an attack with firearms and grenades during a meeting, a few days before the scheduled visit. These events led to the establishment of some security measures to reduce the risks.
The difficulty of carrying out field visits in the Cauca region led to the prioritization of two visits in the department of Antioquia, establishing this department as the study region. The first visit aimed to carry out participant observation in a community of artisanal miners or
"barequeros" in the municipality of Peque, and the second visit to a community of traditional
miners with medium-scale mining presence, in the municipality of Remedios. The second visit was canceled due to security conditions and high risks at the moment of developing it, so it was decided to interview a member of a social organization from this community that was in the city of Medellín, the capital of the Antioquia department at that time.
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Finally, the field visit to the municipality of Peque took four days, in which the participant observation method was carried out with a family of artisanal miners or "barequeros" located in the rural area of this municipality, specifically in a community called "la Nueva Llanada". It is important to point out that artisanal gold mining, which has been a fundamental part of this community, cannot be developed any more in this territory due to the construction of a dam known as the "Hidroituango Project". The construction of this hydroelectric plant cut the flow of the river and restricted the access of the “barequeros” to it. Thus, over the past year, the communities that inhabit this area had to face the loss of part of their territory, as well as economic incomes. Although in the past year they could not do artisanal mining (barequear), during the participant observation, the gold extraction process, the strategies for the management of natural resources and the meanings over these resources were established. In addition to this, it was possible to realize the coping strategies of this family for facing the "loss of the river", and the importance of being recognized as "barequeros" by the state and the company that runs the hydroelectric project.
The information during this field visit was collected through field notes, voice recordings, open interviews, photographs, and videos.
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