Lives for Gold / Opencast Gold Mining in Cajamarca · Perú
The Yanacocha company carries out opencast mining in Cajamarca, Peru. At a rate of 500,000 tons of dynamited material per day at the headwaters of the rivers Rejo, Llaucano, and Cajamarquino, for over 20 years, mountains, lakes, wetlands, and aquifers and rivers supplying the population with water have been destroyed.
The materials are spread out over large leaching heaps and are irrigated with cyanide to extract 1.5 grams of gold per ton, leaving millions of cubic meters of toxic water in large pools that will end up contaminating the waters forever more. The situation has already led the region’s inhabitants to suffer from grave health problems.
The mining here has devastated 26,000 hectares in Cajamarca, contaminating now and for centuries the waters of these basins. Today, with Government support, the same company aims to open another mine in the Conga which will devastate a further 25,000 hectares and destroy large lakes and wetlands, affecting the aquifers and contaminating additional watersheds providing drinking water for tens of thousands of families.
With the General Strike in Cajamarca at the end of 2011 and the Great National March for the Right to Water, culminating in Lima with more than 20,000 protesters from around Peru, an unprecedented citizens’ opposition movement, based on a strict strategy, of NON VIOLENCE, has taken hold to the cry of ‘CONGA NO VA!’
Texts by Marisancho Menjón, Marco Arana and Pedro Arrojo
Photography: Malú Cabellos, Jonas Lambrigger y Ruth Fremson/NY Times
