Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, has suspended gold mining and announced a 12-hour curfew in Pataz, in the northern region, after criminals kidnapped and killed 13 gold mine workers.
A Peruvian gold mining company La Poderosa said on Sunday that the bodies of 13 contract workers from a local firm had been found by police inside one of the mine’s tunnels.
Boluarte told journalists on Monday that the “armed forces will take control of the area where La Poderosa operates”, but did not give further details about how the 30-day mining pause would be enforced.
The government response, which critics have called tardy and ineffective, comes amid outrage over the murder of the 13 men who had been held captive for more than a week by criminals believed linked to illegal mining. Police said the hostages were tortured and that video footage – allegedly recorded by the captors themselves – showed the miners were shot dead at point-blank range.
Illegal gold mining has surged in Peru, Latin America’s biggest producer of the precious metal, just as the international price peaked once more at around $3,500 per ounce. Meanwhile a crime wave has swept the country with unprecedented rises in racketeering and killing-for-hire. 2024 saw a record increase murder rates – a 35.9% increase in homicides compared with 2023.
“Illegal mining is the most lucrative criminal activity in the country,” said César Ipenza, an environmental lawyer. Illegal gold mining accounted for $9bn , or 60% of Peru’s total laundered assets between January 2014 and October 2024, according to the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit, dwarfing the next biggest sources of laundered assets.
Once confined to certain zones illegal gold mining has spread throughout the country since the Covid-19 pandemic. The gold-rich area where the mine is located in La Libertad region has been under a state of emergency for more than two years due to ongoing violence and unrest.
This massacre brings to 39 the number of artisanal miners and workers killed by criminal gangs in Pataz, the company La Poderosa Mining confirmed in a statement.
“The spiral of uncontrolled violence in Pataz is occurring despite the declaration of a state of emergency and the presence of a large police contingent which, unfortunately, has not been able to halt the deterioration of security conditions in the area,” the statement added.
In December, thousands of gold miners camped out in the downtown Lima and blocked the main highway to insist that the government maintain a registry of informal and illegal miners known as REINFO which protects them from prosecution.
