dBloody wars are fought over gold in the mountains of northern Peru. One ounce of consecutive highs with international prices exceeding $3,000 (£2,220), with criminal gangs, illegal miners and established mining companies fighting for metals.
The conflict is not open, but is fought in a maze of tunnels that stretch into the mountains of Pataz, an inland gold-rich Andean province about 130 miles (200 km) from Peru’s third city, Trujillo. In early May, the bodies of 13 security guards were shot dead, their hands tied and showed signs of torture.
After the horrifying discovery, the government imposed a month’s ban on Gold Mining for everyone except the company, sending hundreds of soldiers and police officers to enforce emergency situations and nightly curfews in the state.
But the massacre of security contractors employed to expel intruders was, as locals say, the most visible example of brutal violence.
Three men, 500 meters inside one mine shaft, armed with military-grade guns, emerge from the darkness and talk to the Guardian.
“We live in moments of terror,” says the group leader. “Many conflicts; many fellow (Comrades) have disappeared,” he admits when asked how many times he fought the gun battles he fought when violence has skyrocketed in recent years.
The job of an armed gang is to steal the mine from a small miner or retrieve the mine stolen from its employer and take back control, he says. Underground shootouts are inevitable, and attacks can come from all sides. hoodie Ore – rocks containing gold – tunnel from connecting shafts and intruding mines through other entrances. The gang burns the tires and puts smoke into the tunnel to drive the miners out. Or they attack the guards, like when 13 men are killed.
His face, covered in a green mining helmet, is pulled over his head, and his right hand is placed on top of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. “We’re a family,” he says. He nods to his companion wearing rubber boots and bulletproof vest as water drips from the rocky roof of the tunnel.
He doesn’t know much about international gold prices, but as a former soldier he knows he earns more as a gunman than as a miner. “We’re trained,” he says.
“I get scared,” he admits, but the monthly wage means he can support his five young children. “It’s all for money. Pataz has wealth and creates violence, so they hire us.”
“Y“Our life is more valuable than money,” reads one placard. “Without artisan mining, many families won’t eat,” reads another placard.
For more than 40 years, Poderosa has leased mining concessions from governments that encompass most of the state.
Geologically, Pataz is shot in veins rich in quartz and pyrite gold in sudden steep mountains scattered with hundreds of mine shafts.
“It’s a blessing,” shouts Jose Torealba, president of the Artisan Mining Association in Pataz, in a speech striking the fierce crowds to hundreds of families gathered on the town’s soccer pitch. “There’s gold where you scratch the earth!”
Trealba, who is investigating prosecutors as allegedly illegally mined, is the brand advocate for what he calls “craftsman” mining. “Who drives the economy in Pataz? We, the little miners, do,” he screams with cheers from the townspeople.
“They are stealing the basic rights of our workplace. They’re making laws to “disappear” artisan miners,” says Torealba, which owns a company that offers hundreds of tons of ore from Pataz, which offers explosives and trucks.
Only the register of informal miners, allegedly in the process of formalization – known by its acronym Reinfo – can sell gold to Poderosa.
Over the course of more than 10 years, only 2% of the more than 84,000 registered miners completed the formalization process.
Earlier this month, the government removed 1,425 Pataz miners from the Reinfo registry. This means they are no longer able to sell ore to Podelosa or act legally.
Still, mining is common without state permission. Many miners, such as 29-year-old Brandon Saldanya, have resented that despite employers paying for a miner’s team, they are not considered completely legal.
“Everyone says they’re criminalising us and we’re illegal, but that’s not the case. They put them in the same bag,” he says. “Informal miners sometimes have only one document to become formal.”
The bureaucratic process is slow and frustrating. Several of Saldaña’s friends are working more illegally for one of the many criminal gangs, from local gangsters La Gran Familia and Los Pulpos to Tren de Aragua in Venezuela, who took over the mine shaft.
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The invasion of criminals and outsiders began during the Covid-19 pandemic when poverty shaking.
80-year-old Delmatia Jaime hopes her hometown of Pataz returns to her former tranquility. “My life here has completely changed,” she says. “There’s no trust or security. So many people disappear. There’s death every day.”
Perching on the mountainside with a white colonial church in the Plaza, the narrow streets of a once-typical Andean village are now choked with a brand new 4×4.
Poderosa, a $8 billion mining company, says he had no affiliation with the 13 men who were killed in April. However, the victim worked for R&R, an unregistered company belonging to Libmar, a company owned by miner Nicholas Cueva. His company sold the ore to Poderosa. Poderosa purchases it from around 280 registered artisan miners in the province, processes gold on-site and sells it to Canada, Japan and Switzerland.
Cueva told the local media that Libmar spent between 80,000 and 100,000 soles (from £16,000 to £20,000) per month on security. He also said his company is providing support to the families of the victims.
Poderosa has hired 1,200 security guards since the incident, according to the company’s corporate affairs manager Pablo de La Flor. “It’s two security guards of all the miners,” he says. “Nevertheless, it was impossible to control the middle of this violence.”
Organized Crime Network Behind the Gang hoodiesteals ores and has impressive resources, says Della Fleur. This is a “dangerous investment” that requires heavy machinery, geologists, mining engineers, hitmen and inside information.
“In some cases, people are excavating tunnels that are 2km long and costing $2,000 to $2,800 per metre, so someone is funding their operations.”
Hundreds of miners who don’t sell to Podelosa are fuelled by billions of dollars of illegal trade in gold ore. In the past four years, they have left 33,708 trucks carrying 674,160 tons of ore, $3.5 billion worth of Pataz, and have passed police checkpoints on any of the four dozen crushed plants in Torgiro’s industrial lots, according to data from the mining company.
When crushed, Lorries transports it to a refinery near Lima. Ingots are shipped primarily to India and the United Arab Emirates. This is an importer with Lexer standard due diligence compared to Canada and Switzerland.
IIn a statement from the NA to its guardians, Poderosa said “he expressed his sincere sadness towards his family and “is in permanent communication with Livmer to ensure that affected families receive the necessary support.”
However, Patty Carranza, 23, the widow of Frank Monzon, one of the 13 murdered men, says she has not received anything from Poderosa. She has received anonymous, threatening calls and urges her to remain silent.
Her three-year-old daughter still doesn’t know that her father will never return home.
“I haven’t found the courage to tell her,” says Karanza. “She said, ‘Where is Dad? When is he taking us to the beach?”
Carranza is located on the second floor of the Half Build Breeze Block house in El Pawnil, a strict neighborhood in Trujillo. Monzon earned a little over $1,000 a month. He was paid more than he had dreamed of making in town, and the money paid to make the house was built. “‘Your husband has money. You don’t do anything,” he joked,” Caranza recalls.
In May, Miguel Antonio Rodriguez Diaz, the leader of the suspected attacker, was captured in Colombia with the alias “Cucillo.” Prosecutors prepared charges of organized crime, contract killing, worsening murder and money laundering, and were jailed for three years in pre-trial custody.
“You can’t think of how (the attacker) was so cruel,” says Caranza. Her partner’s body was unharmed except for the gunshot behind her neck, while the other bodies in the morgue showed signs of torture.
“A lot of people die in those mines. They go inside and never see them again,” she says. “What do they sacrifice people for? To get more money? It’s as if they need blood. That’s what they did with my husband.”