Contested Legality and Meaning-Making of Gold

Written by Esmée Hubbard van den Driest

Gold has always fascinated me. Many of my family members wear gold, and they do so with pride. The last time I visited my Surinamese grandfather in Curaçao, he told me about a gold bar he had stored in a bank safe in Paramaribo. He had sold his property in Saramacca for four gold bars, used three of them, and kept one in a safe in a bank. He asked if I could retrieve it for him. Sadly, he passed away before I could tell him about my attempt to claim the gold, but that moment deepened my interest in gold even more. 

How can something so small, so seemingly arbitrary in weight and size, carry such immense value? How can one of the smallest objects I have ever held cause some of the greatest harm and suffering I have ever witnessed? And for what? So it can sit in safes in Swiss banks? What is gold’s value beyond what we have collectively assigned to it? 

The gold sector in Suriname is truly a story unlike any other.

In researching the Surinamese gold sector, I want to emphasise that my aim is not to criminalise individuals. My focus is not on labelling people as “legal” or “illegal”. I believe this binary view of legality distracts from the more urgent task of uncovering how gold is laundered, and what this process means for Suriname’s environment. My PhD research is primarily concerned with identifying the mechanisms and dynamics that allow all gold to enter the international market with the necessary documentation, despite stark discrepancies between national production figures and export data. In addition, I aim to map the environmental destruction caused by gold laundering. 

Adopting a green criminological and eco-justice perspective means looking beyond national and international legal frameworks. Regardless of whether an action is considered legal or illegal within a legal system, it can still cause harm to nature. 

The gold sector in Suriname is truly a story unlike any other. It is a powerful reminder that the modus operandi, mechanisms, and dynamics of gold mining and gold laundering cannot simply be applied one-to-one to other contexts. This distinctiveness stems from a range of factors: Suriname’s dual governance structures, the so-called tolerance policy around small-scale mining, the enormous role of the gold sector in the Surinamese economy, the country’s colonial legacy, cultural and religious influences, and the unique ecology of the Guiana Shield, among others. 

We must be cautious not to blindly adopt findings from similar research in other countries as universal truths. By resisting the urge to generalise and instead acknowledging the specific cultural, social, economic, colonial, political, and geographical context of Suriname, I hope we gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of crime and harm within the Surinamese setting.