Gold mining leaves heart of Peruvian Amazon a wasteland

[Judi Lynn]

Sep 21, 2019 5:55 PM EDT

A decade of illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon has left thousands of acres of rainforest a wasteland. Unpermitted miners cleared vast sections of trees near Peru's border with Brazil and infused the land with mercury, causing an environmental disaster. But some miners have fled after Peruvian troops moved in. Special correspondent Leo Schwartz reports in the first of a two-part series.

Read the Full Transcript
Megan Thompson:

Destruction of the Amazon Rainforest is accelerating, with recent statistics showing 870 square miles was lost in July alone, nearly triple that of the same period last year.

And the fires currently burning in Brazil are only part of the story.

In Peru, where some 300 thousand square miles of the forest exist, illegal gold mining has caused devastation of its own.

But, as NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Leo Schwartz and New York University's Global Beat Program report, there is one region where Peru is having some success against the trend.

More:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gold-mining-leaves-heart-of-peruvian-amazon-a-wasteland

[keithbvadu2]

1. goldmining not just the lowlands, up in the mountains as well.

goldmining not just the lowlands, up in the mountains as well.



even higher than Machu Picchu

Amazing pictures show what it's like living in the highest habitable place on earth,
16,000 feet above sea level

This place is so awful that it is fascinating.

https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-la-rinconada-the-highest-habitable-place-on-earth-2015-12

Free labor for a month ‘hoping’ for a lucky payday.

Mercury poisoning.

Many good pictures.

At a height of over 16,000 feet, it's a place where only the hardest-skinned can carve a
living. More than 50,000 people live in the settlement, perched atop Mount Ananea in the
Peruvian Andes. It spends much of the year in sub-zero temperatures.


WOW! How did they get the materials up there?

Unless they have cable cars or helicopters, it all would have to be brought up on foot to
build the town and work the mines.

Food would be a continuous need.
-------------------------------------------------------
Found it.

“and the only way in and out of the town is via icy roads that are rarely accessible by
truck.”

La Rinconada
The highest and saddest town in the world.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/la-rinconada

They have electricity so fuel must be brought in as well.

===========================================


https://www.rt.com/op-ed/454486-la-rinconada-hell-mining-peru/

Welcome to hell: The Peruvian mining city of La Rinconada

A driver refused to take me to La Rinconada, alone. For me, the fewer people involved the
better. Even in Afghanistan, I work alone, only with my trusted Pashtun driver. But here
it is different: the reputation of La Rinconada is that “you can enter, but you will
never manage to leave.” I am told about the new mafia that operates there, and about the
totally deteriorating security situation. In the end, I had no choice but to accept a
crew of two men: a driver and a person “who is familiar with the situation related to
Peruvian mines.”

Then, we see it: enormous lakes, yellowish, brownish, with streams coming from their
surface. Long blue hoses. Everything is ruined and poisoned. Freddy says that there are
some new technologies that could be used to extract gold, but the miners here use
mercury, as it is cheaper.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Can't thank you enough for sharing a good foundation for learning about Rinconada.

I had only heard the name, knew nothing about it. In reading the information in your links, scouring the photos, I saw I was wildly underinformed, as this area has a huge negative impact on the people who live there, and all the environment, and now it is poisoning Lake Titicaca which Peru shares with Bolivia. That enormous lake has already been having trouble with global warming, and the water level falling. People have been living around the lake, and upon the lake in the artificial islands built up there by prehistoric people.

Now they've got mercury poisoning flowing in, too.

Started to look a little for more information, read that there are also a LOT of guns taken by miners to the area in case they feel they must protect themselves from other miners. One of your articles, I think the third, did mention there is a ferocious risk of being killed, and that some of the desperate, half-snapped miners do try, and succeed in taking away gold from other miners.

Found this article, which only happened in April of this year:

24 AVRIL 2019 / 17:17 / IL Y A 5 MOIS
Seven shot dead in tunnel in artisanal gold-mining region in Peru
Reuters Staff
3 MINUTES DE LECTURE

LIMA (Reuters) - Seven people were shot dead inside a gold-mining tunnel in a southern Peruvian region where thousands of so-called artisanal miners dig for ore high up in the Andes, the prosecutors’ office said on Wednesday.

Prosecutors are investigating the killings, which occurred on Monday, it added in a statement.

All seven victims were found with bullet wounds in their heads in a tunnel in La Rinconada, a sprawling gold-mining settlement at 5,100 meters (16,700 feet) above sea level known for its lawlessness and difficult working conditions.

Consecutive governments in Peru, Latin America’s biggest gold producer, have pushed artisanal or so-called “informal” miners at La Rinconada to turn their operations into tax-paying businesses that adhere to safety, labor and environmental laws.

But there is little oversight of mining in La Rinconada and scant policing in the area. Local media have reported on shoot-outs, robberies or murders that take place there, often believed to be over gold or access to rich deposits.

More:
https://fr.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1S02UB

Adding a page of google images of the area:
https://tinyurl.com/y2qkg25u

Now we know why so many people in the U.S. don't know about Rinconada, and also, in Peru, La Oroya, an area totally overwhelmed by lead poisoning due to an operation owned by a U.S. billionaire who lives in what has been the largest personal home in the country, a distinction it bore for years, in the Hamptons, Ira Rennert, who lives daily with the awareness he had destroyed human life to use people up and reap his vast fortune, stolen from their life's blood, tissue, hope, and that of their families.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-02-28/peru-one-worlds-worst-polluters-set-reopen

Now that I can remember "Rinconada" clearly, hoping to hear news as long as I live, that the people of Peru have found a way to shut Rinconada down forever.

Thank you.