Ana Gabriela Juárez is on a mission to change how young people think about mining—one adventure at a time. Juárez, the president of CTA Environmental Consultants and founder of Women in Mining Central America, has authored the upcoming Ana’s Adventures at the Mine: Enigmas Buried in History, which is a follow-up to her first book that features the young protagonist Ana, The Secret of La Esperanza. In an interview with CIM Magazine, Juárez, who has worked as an environmental consultant for more than 20 years, described how she became hooked on the industry in 2002, when she received her first big project for a mining company in her birth country of Guatemala with CTA Environmental Consultants. 

“That was when I started working in the industry and really got to know it. I really liked it,” she said. “But I saw that in my country, we’ve had quite a lot of mining opposition.” 

When she moved to Canada seven years ago to manage CTA’s Canadian offices and settled in Toronto, Juárez was impressed by the industry’s efforts to promote mining, as well as the industry’s Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) practices and the active involvement of women in mining organizations.  

“I saw a lot of things I really liked in Canada, and I thought, this is part of [what] we need back home [in Guatemala] as well,” she explained. Inspired by the Canadian mining industry’s approach to promoting and diversifying mining, Juárez founded Women in Mining Central America in March 2021, a group that is part of the global Women in Mining (WIM) non-profit organization.  

In June 2021, while travelling back in Guatemala, Juárez also founded the Kids’ Mineralogist Club, a global initiative aimed at inspiring kids aged eight to 13 years old to learn about the fundamentals of mineralogy and mining through events and field trips.  

While working with these children, she identified a lack of educational materials in the school system related to mining and STEM that were not only engaging, but also accessible to younger minds. 

“The idea of the [first] book came from the work that we were already doing with the kids and seeing that we didn't really have much material that we could provide to the kids,” she explained. “A lot of the information that was written by other countries in Spanish was also very dry, very technical.”  

Later that year, she established a Toronto chapter of the Kids’ Mineralogist Club.  

Her first book, The Secret of La Esperanza, was published last year in English, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese, and told the story of Ana and her friends, who come across a magical map that leads them to a secret mining valley. Juárez described receiving supportive messages from readers all over the world, including from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Portugal and South Africa, showing her just how much children enjoyed the story. In addition to its popularity among global readers, it received support and endorsement from Rohitesh Dhawan, the chief executive officer of ICMM. Shortly after its publication, Juárez was invited by Dhawan to attend an ICMM event in London, England, to discuss the book. 

“That event gave us a great platform because so many companies were there, so the exposure that it provided was just magnificent,” she said. “People have bought it for schools. Companies have bought it to give to their employees. So, it has been great.” 

Encouraged by the positive reception of the first book, Juárez decided to write and publish a sequel that further explored the adventures of Ana, which has so far been published in English and Spanish. 

Ana’s Adventures at the Mine: Enigmas Buried in History also has an emphasis on earth sciences and mining. In this book, the main character, Ana, and her friends, Marianna, Beatrice (inspired by Beatrice Opoku-Asare, AngloGold Ashanti’s vice president of culture and capability), and Rohitesh (inspired by ICMM’s CEO), go back in time to different continents to collect six amulets buried in various historical periods. Several more notable real-life mining professionals pop up in the book, including Chafika Eddine, the chief sustainability officer for Orla Mining and last year’s winner of a Women in Mining Canada Trailblazer Award.  

As Ana explores different time periods and places, from the Mayan civilization in Central America to ancient Turkey, readers get to learn more about the fascinating history of mining all over the world, along with the importance of minerals, diversity in the industry, and how extractive practices have evolved. 

In one scene of the new book, Ana and her friends learn about how the Mayans extracted Guatemalan jadeite and other minerals, showcasing how valuable these minerals were to the early civilization. “The [big idea] with the second book is that we all realize that mining has long been part of our human history, and it's part of how we have grown as a society,” she said. 

A portion of the proceeds from the new book will go towards supporting the global Kids’ Mineralogist Club, which is important for Juárez, as she noted that “we need to create spaces where kids can think about STEM and mining, get curious about it and ask questions about it” in order to potentially pursue a career in these fields one day. 

Juárez added that she hopes her books will continue to play a role in educating not only young minds about mining and STEM, but anyone who may not be well versed with these fields. She also hopes these books will foster important conversations about diversity, since both books feature characters from different cultural backgrounds.  

"I wanted to show the multicultural diversity that we have in the industry with these different backgrounds,” she said, adding that each character contributes some form of knowledge about mining or STEM.  

Ana’s Adventures at the Mine: Enigmas Buried in History will be available for purchase on Oct. 1 on Amazon and select bookstores including Indigo, Chapters and Barnes and Noble.