© Sean Hawkey
British-based Sean Hawkey is a "documentary photographer and communications consultant who has worked in 40 countries, focusing mainly on development, humanitarian and rights-based issues." aCurator is proud to publish some images from this series he made in Nicaragua.
"Where do all those Olympic gold medals come from? Almost certainly some of the gold comes from mines like these. The gold is mined by people risking their lives, sometimes losing their lives; risking their health, normally losing their health. The gold is processed using the most toxic of substances that find their way into the water that people and animals drink, the air that people breath, and into the soil. These images are just a small example of a vast human and environmental disaster worldwide related to the mining of gold and other precious metals. The miners themselves rarely get much out of it, they mainly manage to get by for a few years, not a bad option in some developing countries. The enormous mining corporations like B2Gold and Gold Corp strike incredibly favourable deals, that many say can only be got with corruption, where they pay perhaps 5% in royalties - this is the case with B2Gold in Nicaragua - so they get great profits for their shareholders; but it is filthy lucre, shameful profit, they leave behind poisoned environments that may never recover, and that doesn't help the people living there. Protestors against this state of affairs are routinely murdered across Latin America... Gives another meaning to winning gold." - Sean Hawkey.
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