La Rinconada

La rinconada, sitting at the top of the Peruvian Andean Glacier, 5,100 meters above sea level, making it the highest inhabited place in the entire world. 70,000 people live in the freezing cold temperatures caused by the neighboring glacier. But it is not the skying paradise you may imagine, instead, the living conditions are hellish.

Because of the unsafe mines, the only water supply is contaminated with Sulphur and mercury. This makes it undrinkable and too toxic for us to clean. The streets are filled with a putrid smell caused by many elements of unhygienic behavior in the village. For instance, the streets are packed with garbage because there is a waste disposal system and raw sewage leaks down the streets because there is no sewage system. People live in shacks of corrugated metal with little to no electricity. The atmosphere is miserable, and all these terrible living conditions have brought the average life expectancy down to between 30 and 35 years, almost half the life expectancy in the rest of Peru.

Aside from the poor health of the people of La rinconada, it is also called “The Devil’s paradise”. It is illegally governed by criminal gangs which makes it a lawless village with an abundance of crime.

Now you may be wondering why anyone would ever want to live there, and the answer is “gold fever” The mines of la rinconada are gold mines which are what has sustained the village and its people for centuries. Low-income Peruvian people, especially indigenous people, come to la rinconada in the hope of finding gold, wealth and financial security. However, all they find is misery, disease and death. They are then trapped in a never-ending cycle as they cannot leave because they do not have enough money. The pay system is called “cachorreo” which involves 30 days of no pay working for and then on the 31st day the workers must dig for 3 hours straight to remove all the gold from the mining material, and this will determine their pay. Mining causes lung disease and other illnesses and one of the worst effects is that many people have no nails because of continuous scraping. The equipment used is not safe or well monitored, for example no one uses masks.

There is also some of the worst cases of sexism in this village because of the fact that many women came to la rinconada by force of Bolivian and Peruvian human traffickers who stole all their identity papers. This is not “valid” to the people of la rinconada who consider them not to be their equals. There are also myths such as how women cannot work in the mines because it is believed that if a woman enters the mine all the gold will disappear. Because of this, there are groups of women who look through the mining scraps all day everyday looking for bits of gold so they can make some form of money.

The western world and also the Peruvian government choose to turn a blind eye to these inhumane conditions. The lives of the miners do not stop countries such as Switzerland and US from buying the gold from la rinconada and pretending they are not the result of abysmal human rights when selling their golden rings