Panning the sewers of Venezuela for gold

Luis cups the sludgy water with his hands and swirls the residues, staring intently into his palms. He takes what was once a common household broom, now without its handle, and uses the bristles to comb through the mud. He’s found treasure – the back of an earring.

Luis lives in La California, a Venezuelan hillside slum that is about as far away from the crystal clear streams of the California gold rush rivers as possibly imaginable.

Yet Luis and his friend Angel pan the sewer river of Caracas – searching through a stream which, for decades, has served as the capital’s drain, collecting runoff from the slums and filthy waste from factories that line its banks.

“It’s disgusting, and dangerous,”…

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