Riches trump risk for Honduran gold miners

By Gustavo Palencia

EL CORPUS, Honduras (Reuters) - In the mountains of southern Honduras, hundreds of small-scale miners are scraping out tiny quantities of increasingly precious gold but their fervor could be threatening their lives and the environment.

Artisanal miners wielding pickaxes use diesel generators to illuminate narrow mine-shafts in one of Central America's poorest nations. Many then use dangerous amounts of toxic mercury to extract the metal from the rocks they chip out.

Government officials say the number of freelance miners looking for gold in Honduras has increased from around 200 several years ago to more than 1,000 now.

More and more people have taken up prospecting as the price of gold has nearly tripled over five years.

"I started mining eight months ago because I saw that the price was going up," said Geovani Zepeda, 26, in the tiny town of El Corpus.

Zepeda, who was introduced to the trade by his father, said the price paid for the tiny bits of gold he recovers has nearly doubled since he started.

"At first they paid me 170 lempiras ($9) a gram, now they pay me 320 lempiras ($17)," he said.

The small-scale miners are only paid around half the going market rate for their gold by the buyers they hawk to, but nonetheless their earnings are substantial in a region where the only other employment is poorly paid agricultural work.

Some families in El Corpus have spent generations extracting gold from dozens of small holes carved into the isolated mountain range.

Many scavenge in long-abandoned mines that were first exploited in the 1500s during the Spanish conquest, when indigenous people were used as slaves.

A small U.S. company, Mayan Gold, has an operational mine near the town, but most small-scale miners avoid that area since a standoff between El Corpus residents and the firm three years ago.

Now, the new gold rush is luring fresh faces.

"I see a ton of new people that have come to the mountains to work in the mines, but we have no way of knowing exactly how many there are because there are no official controls," said Enrique Bellino, the mayor of El Corpus.

Unlike Chile, Peru and Bolivia, Honduras is a hugely underdeveloped mining country and is best known for exporting coffee and bananas, despite talk of mountains said to be full of rich gold veins.

DEADLY MERCURY