A landslide ripped through an illegal gold mine in southwestern Colombia on Monday, burying the people working it under mud and rock. By nightfall, local authorities confirmed 14 dead and seven injured — the country’s second fatal mining collapse in three months.
The mine sat in the rural Chambero sector of Santa Bárbara de Iscuandé, a municipality in the Pacific-coast department of Nariño, roughly 130 kilometres north of the Ecuador border. Around 8:30 in the morning local time, a torrent of mud and rock gave way above an open pit where more than 30 people were panning for gold.
“People were buried while working at the mine,” Álex González, the department’s peace and human rights secretary, told the Colombian broadcaster Noticias Caracol. He first reported nine deaths, then raised the figure to 14 killed and seven injured as bodies were recovered through the day.
Footage from the scene showed residents digging through the wreckage with shovels and bare hands, carrying the dead out by boat — the only way in or out of the remote jungle site. Officials said the terrain and the security situation slowed the official response. Armed groups control much of Nariño’s Pacific lowlands, and emergency crews needed safe passage before they could reach Chambero.
Late Monday, Nariño Governor Luis Alfonso Escobar said search and rescue operations had concluded. In a statement, he called on the national government, the National Mining Agency and the Ministry of Mines and Energy to “accelerate the formalization process” for illegal and small-scale miners — arguing that bringing these operations into the legal system is the only way to force safety standards onto them.
It is a familiar plea. In August, 13 people died in a similar collapse at a mine in Policarpa — also in Nariño. Informal, unregulated mining is widespread in rural Colombia, where pits are dug with little oversight, no engineering and no rescue plan. When the ground moves, the workers underneath have almost no chance.
Some reports put the toll higher. Unverified accounts cited at least 15 dead, and said nine of the victims may have belonged to the same family. Those figures could not be independently confirmed late Monday; the official count stands at 14 dead and seven injured, with rescue operations concluded.
Why this keeps happening
Nariño sits at the center of Colombia’s illegal gold economy. Much of the Pacific coast is contested by armed groups — dissident FARC factions, the ELN and cartel-linked gangs — which tax or directly run unlicensed mines. With gold prices at record highs through 2026, the incentive to dig has only grown, pulling more villagers into pits that no regulator has ever inspected.
Colombia’s government has tried formalization drives before: registering small miners, offering legal titles, sending the National Mining Agency into the field. But in places like Chambero, the state arrives late and leaves early, and the groups that run the territory do not answer to Bogotá. Governors like Escobar are left making the same argument after every disaster — bring the mines into the system, or the bodies will keep coming out of them.
For the rest of the world, the collapse is a reminder of how much of the gold in the global supply chain begins in places like this: a muddy pit in a jungle most people will never see, dug by hand, and priced in lives long before it reaches a refinery.
