Muzo Emerald Concession
Muzo Emerald Concession
Muzo Emerald Concession, mines located in the Colombian department of Boyacá that produce some of the world's finest and best-known emeralds—famous for their deep green color. The concession itself originated with the Spanish conquest of the Muzo Indians in 1559 and the discovery of nearby emerald deposits that began to be mined eight years later in the name of the Spanish crown. With the defeat of the Spanish (1819) by forces fighting for Colombian independence, it passed into the hands of Colombia's republican government in 1821–1822. Over the next 122 years, the government leased the mines to various private companies, domestic and foreign. In 1945 the government sought to increase its control over emerald production by placing the concession under the sole administrative authority of Colombia's central bank, the Banco de la República.
See alsoGems and Gemstones .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Victor Oppenheim, "The Muzo Emerald Zone, Colombia, S.A.," in Economic Geology 43, no. 1 (1948):31-38.
Rafael Domínguez, Historia de las esmeraldas de Colombia (1961).
Additional Bibliography
Uribe, María Victoria. Limpiar la tierra: Guerra y poder entre esmeralderos. Bogotá, D.C., Colombia: CINEP, 1992.
Pamela Murray