Diamonds

Week after week, month after month, three young Italian prospectors methodically paddled up & down the swift tributaries of the Caroni River. Their leader, a geologist, was convinced that diamonds were to be found where the streams cut through the jungle-swathed sandstone edges of the Gran Sabana plateaus along Venezuela's remote Brazilian frontier.

One day last January, the weary, ragged prospectors stopped where the Avequi River cuts over the mountain's edge. One of the men tossed a few shovels of river sand on his suruku (three-screened pan). He spun and twisted it, then turned over the screens and looked. The coarse screen held a 4-carat diamond, the middle screen 15 or 20 diamonds ranging from .8 to 3 carats, the fine screen 120 diamonds of about half-carat size. That first haul was worth about $4,000.

Good Night, Girls. The Italians knew that the Gran Sabana was full of miners, and that several had been trailing them. They had to work fast. They slept in the open, bolted what food Indians brought them, worked at night with flashlights. They would not even stop to build a shelter; that would have taken a whole day and they were making 10,000 bolivares ($3,000) a day.

Other miners soon arrived--a couple, then thirty, then hundreds. By last week 1,300 men and 200 women were placermining on the Avequi, or in the Uriman, as the surrounding area is called. Diving deep to scoop up the sparkling sand, miners--male & female--wore few clothes or none. Diamonds were the one & only concern during the daylight hours.

After dark, diamonds lost some of their charms. The women lived freely with the men, changing partners frequently. One girl of 20, called Penicilina, devoted herself exclusively to the oldest profession. Famed through the Gran Sabana, she wore five or six diamond rings, gold nugget necklaces and bracelets. Rum flowed over from Brazil at $30 a bottle. Men got drunk and gambled away $3,000 a night. But even the roughest observed the code: there were no robberies.

So Long, Fellows. Some comfort-loving miners built shacks, and a rickety boom town began to rise beside the river. Buyers flocked in laden with cash, arriving by plane in a grassy field near by. They also flew in food and yanqui beer at $1.50 a can. Eggs cost $1.20 apiece.

When six officers of the government's Seguridad Nacional dropped in, the Italians saw trouble ahead and pulled out--even though the cops immediately began mining for themselves. By last week the government had closed Uriman airport and prepared to force all miners to leave the area, a national mineral reserve. The Avequi rush, not nearly big enough to upset the international market, had almost run its course.

The Italians split about $40,000 between them. Two made plans for trips to Italy and the U.S. The third was already touring Central America in a light plane. In September, they plan to meet and go back to prospecting for diamonds along the Caroni's other tributaries, paying particular attention to the ledges over which the streams tumble on their way from the Gran Sabana to the Rio Orinoco.

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