Please, watch this documentary made in 2008.
I have been to a couple of those places myself several years ago and it was bad. It breaks my heart to hear from my friends things are getting much worse, specially on the Venezuelan side.
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Somehow it strongly reminds me of some parts about the Amazonia on Vargas Llosa's book The Dream of the Celt. But while the exploiters of natural rubber killed mostly people, the gold miners with their mercury and other substances are killing people and destroying on a more permanent basis the environment, which brings more death to humans and the rest of nature on a very long run.