The bodies of 13 gold miners were found in an underground axis in a site operated by the largest gold mining company in Peru, President Dina Boluarte said on Monday, in a region that has seen a growing conflict about access to the mineral in recent years.
As the price of gold has risen to the maximum records, small -scale mining has expanded in Peru, while the mining concessions of the Peruvian company, the powerful, in the province of Pataz, in the northern part of the country, have become a seedbed and the illegal Golde site.
The bodies were found on Sunday, according to Mrs. Boluarte. The men had worked for an artisanal or informal mining operation that has a contract with the powerful, the company said in a statement on Sunday.
A video that circulated on social networks seemed to show the miners, with bandaged and naked eyes on a mining axis, being filmed in the neck with rifles one by one. A person committed is heard: “Please.” A National Police representative told the New York Times that officials had not verified the authenticity of the video.
It was not clear immediately why the 13 men were killed. The powerful said in his statement that armed criminals had attacked the mining operation and kidnapped the workers on April 26.
Mrs. Boluarte said that two suspicious people were connected with the murders had arrested in Pataz with weapons, magazines and ammunition.
The owner of the artisanal mining operation that hired the workers, second Nicolás Cueva Rojas, did not immediately respond to the requests for comments by telephone and email.
Before finding the bodies, some of the workers of the workers had complained to the local media that the authorities were not doing enough to find their loved ones.
“We demand justice, “Abraham Domínguez, the father of a victim, Deyter Domínguez, 29, said the local radio program” successful. “” This cannot be unpunished. This is an animal that was killed. These are human beings. “
He told the New York Times that his son “wanted to prosper, be someone in life.” He added: “He had a strong desire and willingness to advance. Now he has left.”
He also said that it was the police that had found the bodies, but the personal defense patrols known as “ronderos” that operate in the areas of the highlands.
Peru is the second largest gold producer in Latin America after Mexico, and the tenth largest global producer together with Indonesia, according to the 2024 data of the United States Geological Service. Peru has looked for a long time to restrict illegal gold mining, especially in the remote Amazonian regions where wild cat mines have destroyed tens of thousands of tropical jungle acres and thrown into mercury to the rivers.
Location of the duration pandemic, the criminals confiscated the control of the empty mining axes operated by artisanal miners authorized in the powerful, which caused mortal battles about access to the tunnels and the gold produced inside.
Part of the problem, experts say, is that Peru allows the artisanal miners to register with the government exempt from police evictions, as well as labor, environmental and fiscal laws, providing legal coverage for illegal miners that operate or measure.
In his statement, the powerful blamed the Congress of Peru in part for spiral violence, saying that he had extended the deadline by which informal miners must legalize their operations, and blamed the government for not eliminating unauthorized.
“Pataz has become a territory without law where violence becomes unbridled, taking lives, sowing terror and subjugated wills,” the statement said. “It will be impossible to defeat Crime Ifhes, the police continue to enter and intercontize the illegal mine entries where criminal gangs take refuge and operate.”
In December 2023, nine people were killed in a mining ambush for criminals, and in October last year, the authorities found 16 bodies in a massive grave on a mining axis.
On Saturday, while the authorities were looking for missing men, the police rescued 50 workers from another Peruvian mining company, Caravelí, who had hostages in the tasks of the legs at the company’s gold processing plant in a different part of the province of Pataz. Eight people were injured in a shooting between the police and the armed men.
In response to the last massacre, Mrs. Boluarte suspended the mining activity in the Pataz area for 30 days and pushed the military to restore the order. On Monday, he announced a touch of 6 pm to 6 am in the Pataz district, and said the authorities would install a military base there.
The mayor of the province of Pataz, Aldo Carlos Mariño, said that an emergency state in force in the province had been “useless” and urged the government to improve intelligence operations to detain criminals to violence.
“We give everything to the country; we give all our gold,” Mariño said at a local television station on Sunday. “The province of Pataz is covered with blood.”
