Semiotic distribution of responsibility: an ethnography of overburden in Colombia's emerald economy

This article analyzes recent changes in the distribution of the land left over from the extraction of emeralds in the Colombian province of Muzo to account for the relationship between current environmental policies and the growing monopoly of emeralds in the country. Recently, the distribution of tambre (emerald-filled slurry) -a practice established by local emerald barons in the 1980s- has been declared a source of pollution and has been banned. With the prohibition of this traditional mechanism of distribution of the emeralds, the guaqueros (villagers who made a living by sifting through the tambre) have seen their most basic sustenance disappear. In this article I propose that behind this change in the local distribution of the stones lies a change in the semiotic distribution of obligations and intentions between mining companies, the Colombian state and guaqueros. Through different ethnographic pieces I show how the displacement of responsibility, the invocation of "the environment" as an abstract obligation by a foreign mining company and the semiotic riposte by the guaqueros, constitute a permanent movement between patronage and corporate social responsibility models.