Diamonds may still be a girl's best friend, but women are also developing an insatiable fondness for emeralds. Demand for the soft, veined, green jewels has risen so appreciably that prices have more than doubled in the past five years; the finest quality stones now fetch as much as $3,000 per carat wholesale, on a par with diamonds. What buyers do not know is that they are almost certainly, if unwittingly, contributing to the prosperity of one of the world's most lucrative—and bloodiest—illegal businesses. Some 90% of all emeralds come from Colombia, where mining and sale of the gems are supposedly a government monopoly. In fact, reports TIME Correspondent David Lee, the business has been monopolized by outlaws called esmeralderos (emerald buccaneers), who pocketed about 90% of the $50 million that the world paid last year for Colombian gems.
Discovered by Pigs. The outlaw monopoly starts right at the mines, in the jagged Andes 60 miles northeast of Bogotá. Many jewels are stolen by miners in the government's Muzo, Peñas Blancas and Coscuez mines. The thieves pocket most of the emeralds that they dig out of the soil, paying off the inspectors who are supposed to guard the pits. Other stones are illegally mined to begin with. A miner with a few pesos to invest in dynamite and tools assembles a squad of men and goes off to dig. It is not a difficult job: the standard mining method is simply to dynamite the ground with a small charge, then rake emeralds out of the soil with crowbars. The stones lie so close to the surface that one rich mine was discovered in 1955 by pigs that turned up emeralds while rooting through a field.
The gems are brought out to civilization by about ten criminal families of ten or so members each. Unlike the Mafia variety, these are genuine families: brothers, uncles, cousins. Periodically, they journey into the mountains to buy up the miners' take.
The trading center is the town of Peñas Blancas, a huddle of 50 rickety buildings. There a mining-squad leader spreads out his haul before a family boss who may carry a million pesos (about $50,000) in a shoulder-strap bag. The emeralds are hauled back to Bogota, where many are sold to foreign dealers in back rooms of the dim bars and cafes that line 14th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Jewels are smuggled out of the country by two international combines that finance the families' buying trips. Some emeralds leave in the pockets of couriers who take commercial jets. Big shipments go out by light plane from one of Colombia's 800 private airstrips.