In Muzo, Colombia, hundreds of artisanal miners known as "guaqueros" set out every day in search of an emerald that will lift them out of poverty. In the "voladora", a cage where the guaqueros jostle each other, they frantically dig through tons of "sterile" black earth rejected by the multinational Esmeraldas Mining Services (EMS), hoping to find a fragments of emerald. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES