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Living in the shadow of a gold rush

In Peru, a scramble for the yellow metal has quickly changed the small town of La Rinconada.

Pallaqueras - women who select stones from the mine dumps - attend an afternoon briefing with their colleagues and the engineers of Corporacion Minera Ananea in La Rinconada, Peru.
By Albert Gonzalez Farran
Published On 23 Oct 2013

La Rinconada, Peru – Twenty years ago La Rinconada – said to be the highest human settlement in the world – was a quiet rural village in Peru’s Andes mountains.

But the discovery of gold quickly changed La Rinconada during the 1990s. It is now a crowded place where thousands of poor people from all over South America come to look for opportunity.

It is now a chaotic, overcrowded town of nearly 50,000 inhabitants that lacks many basic social services. The increase in the price of gold, which has increased more than 300 percent in the past decade. Many of the miners are women, called pallaqueras, who select stones from the mine dumps.

Today, the landscape in La Rinconada is full of metallic shelters built without official permits. There is no pavement, sewers or running water. Many people who live there struggle with alcoholism, drugs and crime. The police presence is minimal and illegal prostitution is prevalent. The use of mercury to separate gold from rock has caused pollution and illness.

A pallaquera takes a rest outside her shelter in La Rinconada.
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A pallaquera inspects some stones, looking for gold kernels.
A miner guides a truck inside a gold mine.
An exhausted miner takes a rest inside a gold mine and cleans his dirty face, while chewing on a coca leaf.
Two miners drive wagons loaded with rock to the mine dumps in La Rinconada.
Former miner Filomeno Quispe, 35, working at his bakery, which is also his family(***)s bedroom. Like many of the miners in the area, Quispe does not have any formal education.
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Engineer Wilfredo shows a piece of gold in his office in the headquarters of Corporacion Minera Ananea, which owns all the gold mines in La Rinconada.