Meet the women, called 'pallaqueras,' making a living gleaning gold from rubble in Peru
. La Rinconada, PERU. Reuters/Nacho DoceChura came 12 years ago from her hometown of Chupa in the Puno region to La Rinconada, a settlement of around 50,000 which is believed to be the highest in the world. Five of her eight children live with her in her corrugated zinc home.Chura breastfeeds her three-month-old son Alizon.
The men of La Rinconada bar all women from the mines dug beneath the rock. The men say the female spirit of the mine, which is located below a glacier called La Bella Durmiente, or The Sleeping Beauty, would be jealous and angry if women were to try to steal her riches.A pallaquera searches for gold as she strikes rocks extracted from a mine.Teetering high above the ground, they stoop and flip over the rocks, their keen eyes scanning the lumps for a glimmer of gold.
No-one collects garbage in La Rinconada. Women and men alike risk their lives and subsist in squalor in the mountain's thin frigid air.Life is hard, Chura says, but she is better off gold-picking. "It is very sad to live with garbage and dirt, washing in the cold, with water from the mountain. But you tell yourself to get over it. The children give you strength and courage to work."Chura's son Luis Miguel plays inside their room.
Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, a vital source of drinking water and fish for the surrounding population. Waste from gold-processing adds to pollution by run-off from surrounding cities and untreated sewage. In 2012 a German non-profit, the Global Nature Fund, named it the world's most threatened lake of the year.A girl stands behind the counter of a shop which buys gold from miners.
When police or other authorities come to town to try to enforce the law or restrict mining, they have been threatened by miners with the dynamite used to blast open the tunnels. The women join the protests too - some say the men force them to.
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