Larimar, the great Dominican jewel

Larimar, the great Dominican jewel (wood watches)

A tourist picks some larimar jewelry in Santo Domingo in mid-March. Larimar garments can fluctuate from a couple of dollars on a Dominican shoreline to thousands of dollars in a prestigious jewelry

Without more protective equipment than their old and frayed clothes, hundreds of men infiltrate every day in precarious and asphyxiating tunnels to extricate a semiprecious stone, of blue tones, which is accepted to exist just in the mountains of the southwestern Dominican Republic and that The country aspires to turn into its flagship and extravagance items for fare.

The stone is known as Larimar, and its existence on these lush hillsides has turned into a blessing and a curse to men like Juan Pablo Feliz, who says there is no other method to procure a living in this impoverished locale. Maybe a couple have turned out to be rich, yet the jewel has given a modest source of pay to the families of around a thousand miners since their deposits were rediscovered four decades prior.

However at this point, the island's government is attempting to make its extraction safer and, especially, increasingly productive for the men who work in the around five dozen improvised tunnels of Barahona area and who make these mountains appear as though they have horrible scars.

To do this, the authorities assembled a passage 400 meters in length that makes the removal safer and opened another jewelry school so that miners and nearby individuals figure out how to cut and polish the larimar and transform it into jewelry. greater incentive so as to improve their small pay. A larimar diamond can cost from a couple of dollars on the off chance that it is a knick-knack sold on a Dominican shoreline, to thousands of dollars in the event that it truly is a jewel procured by an extravagance store.

"It's tied in with increasing the value of the stone and that esteem remains in the territory" of the mine, explains Brunildo Espinosa, artisan and specialized executive of the school that currently has 130 students and whose products will be sold in a store that The government plans to open in the acclaimed tourist resort of Bávaro-Punta Cana, as well as in a chain of shopping centers.

The two projects are a piece of the government's interest in advancing tourism in Barahona and its neighboring Pedernales, where some of the country's most stunning coastal landscapes and the paradisiacal virgin beaches. (larimar jewelry)

The existence of the blue pectolite was documented without precedent for 1916 by a priest and the inhabitants of the territory sold it harsh to the visitors, however the misuse and commercialization of the stone as a piece of jewelery started after 1974 , proprietor of a handicraft store in Santo Domingo, called Larimar, consolidating the name of his little girl Larissa with the thing sea.

"It was a scandal, everybody needed to have the stone; It was the main new thing in craftsmanship, "Mendez reviewed.

Following 30 years of being far from the jewelry industry, Méndez revived his workshop in Santo Domingo as of late with the expectation of creating sophisticated and exclusive designs, yet laments that "the best material is the one that goes outside" of the country to be cut, polished and assembled in different nations, such as China, India and Russia.

Thus, Méndez sees with great eyes the creation of the school of jewelry of Bahoruco, when recollecting that "in the country great jewelers are required, the school is a decent start".

The government was associated with the larimar because of the poor conditions of the mines that, in 2006, cost the lives of four individuals and another two out of 2013. All passed on from suffocation because of absence of oxygen.

Things start to change. What's more, to transform the stone into a tourist fascination and part of the formal economy, Congress announced larimar as a national stone .

The project, which includes the school, a 400-meter-long passage and street that is not yet operational but rather is required to be used in April, cost about $ 5 million with cash given by the European Union.

The passage will serve to do new flat excavations and "will boost the economy of the zone and elevate the expectations for everyday comforts of its inhabitants," said Alexander Medina, executive of mining, when the construction of the work was finished toward the beginning of March.

At present, the limited holes of up to 120 meters down and the tunnels are strengthened with logs to counteract landslides and have precarious lighting. The air is driven from the surface with fans through hoses.

Notwithstanding not wearing helmets, gloves or lenses to secure themselves, most of the miners scarcely wear plastic pants and shoes. Many work shoeless. "You walk like a pig there, a great deal of mud, a ton of earth,"  (παλετοφορο)

Some 1,000 miners, members of one of the two cooperatives that reserve the privileges to misuse the vein, enter the 50 or so holes day by day, yet many must search for different sources of pay, such as horticulture, to support their families.

"There is peril, however there is nothing else , you need to get that" Feliz while fixing the fan with which he pumps air into the restricted maze of holes around 60 meters somewhere down in which he and twelve men dive in search of the stone.

Felix has spent the greater part of his 39 years in the main known larimar vein on the planet, situated in Bahoruco, Although he recognizes the risks, he considers that now "he has changed a ton, it is almost sure".

Keep in mind that when you started filling in as a young person, the holes did not have any sort of support or ventilation. "We entered without anything, with life in a string".

The government also propelled a jewelry school in Bahoruco last October so that the inhabitants of the zone figure out how to cut, polish, shape the stone and assemble it in goldsmith's pieces.

As indicated by geologists and specialists, the fundamental vein of the stone is more profound than what has been come to, yet "we don't have the equipment, there is no air to proceed there", VP of one of the Cooperatives

Since in the eighties the government allowed the inhabitants of the zone misuse rights for 75 years, the miners have freely sought investors to back the extraction and the authorities are uninformed of the monetary effect of this developing industry and the measure of stone that is extricated and showcased.

Groups of 15 to 30 men are sorted out, get an investor to pay the costs of burrowing and nourishment and toward the finish of several months, when they start to extricate the stone, profits are distributed relatively once the investor sold the stone and acquired their benefits and paid 10 percent to the agreeable. https://beanandvanillaglobal.com/

"It resembles a lottery, you don't have a clue when you get it out; months pass by and you don't get anything out, yet there are millions of years , who following 23 years as a digger would now be able to invest about $ 40,000 to burrow two holes.

Since at that point, the jewelry exchange with blue gems has developed pair with the blasting Dominican tourism industry, however without modernizing and without technifying its artisanal methods of extraction and without connecting it straightforwardly with the country.

"We need advancement towards the world; the world should realize that the main spot where larimar is in the Dominican Republic, initially from the region and who as of late made another helpful to extricate the mineral.

The quality and price of the stones is characterized by their hardness and shading, which can go from light blue, turquoise or an intense sky blue. While in the streets you can get pieces for a couple of dollars, in the hotels and luxurious stores are sold sophisticated designs esteemed at several thousand dollars.

"We don't have the foggiest idea how much it can cost we just take it out and sell it in the unpleasant, we don't cut it", explains José Miguel Suárez, who after over three decades of work in the mine currently has the expectation of getting a small money to install their very own workshop and that their youngsters, who study at school, make the pieces.(made in Hawaii)