Afrocolombians displaced: with the backing of the United States, corporations kill and steal for Black land.(FEATURE)

ANA VALENCIA STILL TRIES to eke out a living as a miner in the hills near the headwaters of Colombia's Rio Salvajina. Her sisters are gone now to the nearest city of Cali, where they work as domestics. She's having a hard time hanging on.

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In this AfroColombian community, Palo Blanco, the men farm and take care of animals, while the women mine gold. "We do everything here, even a man's job," says Valencia. "My mother's a miner too. She's 77 years old, and she's been mining since she was 15. She's still out there."

As hard as mining and farming are, however, people like Valencia are fighting to stay. Today, though, the threat to Palo Blanco 's existence doesn't come only from poverty. The Anglo American Corporation plans to pulverize the mountain where Valencia and her community mine and extract the gold using industrial methods that will leave behind huge piles of tailings and pits filled with cyanide residue. If the project is allowed to proceed, Palo Blanco residents will lose their small diggings and the income they gain from them. Pollution will make it even harder to farm. The town might become just a memory.

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