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La Pampa: the illegal mining city Peru wants wiped out
Source: The Guardian
La Pampa: the illegal mining city Peru wants wiped out
Government invades modern-day gold-rush town in Amazon in its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining
Dan Collyns in Madre de Dios
Mon 25 Mar 2019 07.00 GMT
Located along a jungle highway in the Amazon around 60 miles from the nearest city, La Pampa was a place you entered at your own risk. At night it was a riot of neon lights and pulsating cumbía music from “prostibar” brothels, frequented by roaming groups of men flush with cash. Neither authorities nor outsiders – and particularly not journalists – were welcome.
This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub for organised crime and people trafficking and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves.
Then, late last month, Peru launched Operation Mercurio 2019, its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining. By air, land and river, hundreds of army commandos and more than 1,200 police officers swooped on La Pampa.
Peruvians had grown rather used to seeing images of commandos helicoptered into the jungle, driving out miners and blowing up machines in what many suspected was a show for the cameras. But this time, the scale of the operation and the tone of the rhetoric was different.
“We’re not leaving until we see this place green, as it always was,” said Peru’s defence minister, José Huerta. Security forces say they expelled some 6,000 miners, captured dozens of suspected criminals and rescued more than 50 trafficked women in the raid, the result of months of meticulous planning and intelligence gathering.
-snip-
Government invades modern-day gold-rush town in Amazon in its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining
Dan Collyns in Madre de Dios
Mon 25 Mar 2019 07.00 GMT
Located along a jungle highway in the Amazon around 60 miles from the nearest city, La Pampa was a place you entered at your own risk. At night it was a riot of neon lights and pulsating cumbía music from “prostibar” brothels, frequented by roaming groups of men flush with cash. Neither authorities nor outsiders – and particularly not journalists – were welcome.
This modern-day gold-rush town, home to about 25,000 people, was both a hub for organised crime and people trafficking and a gateway into a treeless, lunar landscape pocked with toxic pools created by illegal gold mining, stretching far into one of the Amazon’s most treasured reserves.
Then, late last month, Peru launched Operation Mercurio 2019, its biggest ever raid on illegal gold mining. By air, land and river, hundreds of army commandos and more than 1,200 police officers swooped on La Pampa.
Peruvians had grown rather used to seeing images of commandos helicoptered into the jungle, driving out miners and blowing up machines in what many suspected was a show for the cameras. But this time, the scale of the operation and the tone of the rhetoric was different.
“We’re not leaving until we see this place green, as it always was,” said Peru’s defence minister, José Huerta. Security forces say they expelled some 6,000 miners, captured dozens of suspected criminals and rescued more than 50 trafficked women in the raid, the result of months of meticulous planning and intelligence gathering.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/25/la-pampa-the-illegal-mining-city-peru-wants-wiped-out
