Jorge Lopez, 64, and his wife Carmen, 59, peasant farmers on their palm plantation in Choco, Colombia. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian
To make money in Colombia's jungles it helps to have three things: guns, whisky and a river. Hardly conventional business tools, but this is not a conventional environment. There is armed conflict, abundant natural resources, extreme poverty, isolation – and fortunes to be made.
In Chocó, a vast province spanning the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a boom is under way. Mining, logging and palm oil companies are moving into humid forests packed with precious metals, tropical hardwood and fertile soil. Geologists are scouring mountains for minerals while barges laden with timber and palm chug down the Atrato river, a vital artery, as there are few roads.
The problem, locals say, is that many companies act like robber barons, pillaging rather than investing, and turning the Atrato into an open vein, bleeding wealth.
"It is a plunder. Everywhere you see people suffering," said Piedad Córdoba, an outspoken senator. Critics accuse companies of perpetuating conflict by making deals with leftwing rebels and rightwing militias who control swaths of territory.
"It would appear the war is a business," said Manuel Palacio, mayor of Bellavista, a riverside town.
Some companies pay armed groups to chase peasants from their land, while others trick their way into grabbing communal land titles, said Richard Moreno, a lawyer and civil association head. "They're buying many of the leaders – take them to a fancy hotel in Medellín, ply them with whisky and get them to sign away property deeds."
The original robber barons were medieval feudal lords who levied excessive tolls on Rhine river traffic. The term was later applied to thuggish 19th century US industrialists, and then to companies who extracted minerals and timber during Congo's ongoing war.
Chocó is in South America, but it looks like Congo. The impoverished population, largely descended from African slaves, lacks basic services. Since the 1990s it has been uprooted and terrorised by armed groups whose political aims mask a scramble for natural wealth.
"Our tragedy is to have the richest resources and the poorest people," said Moreno.
Logging used to be a small-scale affair by locals, but in the past decade outside merchants have moved in with modern machinery and bought up logging licences from communities which have collective title.
About 4,000 hectares can be legally felled each year. In theory the trade is regulated by an official agency, Codechcoco, and monitored by army and navy river checkpoints. "There is some illegal chopping, but not much," said Damian Mosquera, head of the agency.
But the agency is discredited. More than 800 transport permits went missing in 2006 and 2007, opening the floodgates, and officials have been caught taking bribes in more recent scandals.
Leaders of the Wounaan, an indigenous group whose land includes a forest reserve, said gunmen forced them to hand over licences to logging firms which cleared way above the permitted limit. "They do what they want," said one, who asked for his name not to be published because of death threats.
The Association of Communities of Lower Atrato estimates that 90% of logging is illegal. Unlike Brazil, Chocó has no satellites or aircraft to monitor deforestation. Environmentalists fear the worst.
Locals have even less love for palm oil companies. They swept in in the 1990s on the heels of rightwing paramilitaries who killed and evicted peasants from their fields of corn and yucca, claiming they were guerrilla sympathisers.
Thousands of farmers, displaced and desperate, sold their land to companies that planted thousands of hectares of palm, which is used to make margarine, crisps, chocolate, soap, cosmetics and biofuel.
Armed groups have seized around 5.5m hectares during the past two decades, with indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities bearing the brunt, the relief agency Cafod said. "Current policies promoting the exploitation of natural resources, most recently biofuels, increase the risk that land belonging to displaced communities will end up, by dubious or illegal means, in the hands of businesses."
State loans have funded the palm expansion, with some firms returning the favour by funding President Alvaro Uribe's election campaigns. He promotes the plantations as a way to bring the countryside into the 21st century.
"Palm as far as the eye could see. They even planted over the cemetery," said Enrique Petro, 61, a farmer in Curvarado, a hamlet which has seen numerous peasant leaders killed. "This crop is stained with blood."
Petro, one of the few who did not sell, has returned, cleared the palm and replanted maize and yucca. He has been threatened by gunmen who, he claims, work for the companies.
The army, officially neutral, appears to side with plantation owners. The Guardian accompanied one peasant, Jorge Lopez, 64, as he tried to reclaim his land after a 12-year absence. Soldiers first tried to block him, then summoned the palm company foreman.
The government, embarrassed by international scrutiny and criminal investigations into 23 palm companies, recently ordered some firms to return land to peasants.
Uribe's administration boasts progress in pushing back Farc rebels, attracting foreign investment and expanding social programmes to areas like Chocó, where poverty rates top 75%. It has promoted mining as a spur to jobs and development. Relaxed regulations helped annual gold production to more than double last year, to 34 tonnes, generating $891m. Colombia is recovering its reputation as home of the fabled El Dorado.
The problem for indigenous Embera communities in Chocó is that one of the new sites earmarked for exploration is a sacred mountain, Jaikatuma. The US Muriel Mining corporation dispatched geologists, with an army escort, to test for deposits of gold, silver, platinum, copper and coal. The company said it had approval from Embera leaders, but opponents held a mass meeting which rejected the proposed mine.
In January 700 Embera men, women and children trekked through the forest, surrounded the Muriel camp and forced the company to withdraw.
"We danced after they flew away," grinned José Majore, a community leader. It was a rare indigenous victory against corporations – but perhaps fleeting. Muriel, which accused rebels of fomenting the Embera protest, has pledged to return with state backing.
The province recently concluded its annual carnival, a passionate, uproarious affair of drums, costumes, dancing and alcohol. The most eye-catching float on parade, however, was not exactly festive: a pirate boat crewed by giant rats who hoarded money and used machetes to stop people trying to board. It had a simple title: "Chocó".