Here in Chocó it is believed that gold has life and that people with a “bad chest”, a kind of intense greed to find it, make it run away. “Gold has been withdrawn because he can’t see people with bad chests,” Mazorca says. For this reason, it is not easy for the people who work in one mine to give work to another, unless they show that they do not have that luck.
“We know when the gold is withdrawn, when one does nothing there. You working with that person and that person is a garulla, that cannot see a grain of gold because right there that smoothness and the heart does not stop (…) He becomes desperate, those are the people who have bad chests (…) People who have a good heart are what one needs, gold flees from greed”, he points out.
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The truth is that gold is part of Mazorca’s life. In fact, he says that his only living son works in the underground mines, a much more risky job but one that can yield greater profits. However, he tells that his relationship with this precious metal is much deeper, to the point of seeing it in dreams.
“Gold seems very beautiful to me, when you dry it, wrap it up, you feel happy with that gold in your hand. You don’t want to change it because gold is very beautiful (…) My dreams are to work the mine, I dream of gold, I see it in my dreams,” he says, with a few words that end up defining the “yellow dream ” that thousands of Chocoanos pursue working the mine.