GOLD AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD
I was not completely unaware of Rinconada, I had my own expectations of the shanty-mining town. My mother worked for a health center in the community when it was not more than a gathering of metal homes perched on the face of a mountain glacier. She didn't talk about it much then, nobody did.
La Rinconada is one of the largest informal mines in Peru. Parcels of the mountainside are leased to individuals, small groups or even larger more organized 'companies'. Miners are bussed in for short periods of time; no pay, minimum protections, and no guarantees. Their labor and earnings are fully exploited for even the smallest amounts of gold. The brutality of the working conditions are merely a fact of life. Everyday miners arrive to try their luck in the bitterness of the glacier, to extract enough gold to change their lives. Neither articles nor references prepare you for this place. After leaving Putina (2 hours from La Rinconada) a van climbs to more than 5,000 meters above sea level to give way to a spectacle of incredible contrast. On one side of the bus laid out before me is the desolate towering mountains of Puno. On the otherside are smaller snow capped mountains with odd colors and shapes sitting heaped next to one another. Mountains of waste, of plastics, of refuse, of twisted metal and contaminated dirt.
The curious glances of the miners follow me, some smile and make jokes. Oscar guides me through his work area. If I ever complained about some drudgery, I no longer remember. There are few words that can describe how hard the miner's job is. How much they risk and the price they pay to get something. My visit ends by climbing the glacier, the intense white makes the eyes hurt, the height does the same with the lungs. But all that fades into the background when I reach the bottom of the mountain. So much beauty calms all this accumulation of emotions.
A few days have passed since I left La Rinconada, and I still haven't finished digesting everything I saw. I leave with this reality of my country, trying to understand it. But the indifference of a fully conscious State, like so many other times, hurts me too. Hopefully, one day, we too will stop being part of this indifference.