Today While I'm waiting for the next bus...

I stop for a moment to read some headlines in the press here in Lima.. I almost never do it because it never brings quality information or information that strengthens my thinking.. but this one did seem different to me and it makes you reflect on life from another perspective... how the madness of power and the insatiable desire to become rich!! through Gold destroys people... children and entire towns!!

It is written By José Víctor Salcedo Ccama a columnist for the newspaper La República.

There have been many changes. After the pandemic, illegal and informal mining has spread in the districts of Colquemarca and Santo Tomás, in the province of Chumbivilcas, Cusco. (Peru) The gold and copper boom is transforming customs and ways of subsistence in these towns: families are abandoning agriculture and livestock to become entrepreneurs or mining workers.

"Ruben F. was standing, shivering from the cold, his eyes fixed on a small, rough, turquoise piece of rock. The stone fit in his hand. He caressed it. It was as if he loved it. Suddenly, he said to me, smiling: “Take it, I'll give it to you,” and he put it in my hands. I touched it; it was cold.

“Thanks for the gift, I hope it has a gold nugget,” I said and put it in my backpack.

Rubén F. smiled again. A moment later he said, “Let’s go!” and walked to a shaft in Choccoyo, high up in the Colquemarca district of Chumbivilcas. We found the foreman and walked about three hundred meters into the mine. He complained that the authorities were chasing them even though they had started the formalization process and paid taxes. He said that the workers received good wages and only dug from Monday to Friday. But it was Saturday and they were still working.

Rubén F. stopped and pointed to an auroral rock in the shaft. “It looks nice,” he said.

“It’s the gringa,” the foreman replied and burst out laughing.

The gringa is the vein in which the precious minerals are concentrated.

The gringa is the vein in which the precious minerals are concentrated. When the gringa is found, the youngest workers remove the ground to dig the tunnel. They build tunnels that turn the mine into a labyrinthine hole. The driller drills through the rock with drills; the workers remove the stones and the earth in carts.

From the top of a mountain, more than four thousand meters high, you can see the districts of Colquemarca and Santo Tomás. The land is dry; the landscape, a dirty painting. The two towns are located about six hours south of the department of Cusco. As I travel by car along the Southern Mining Corridor, on both sides of the road, huge brown spots grow.They look like wounds on a sick body. A disease that also exists in other places: gold fever. Covid-19 brought gold fever to Chumbivilcas. Young people who worked in the mines of Rinconada, in Puno; Caravelí and Secocha, in Arequipa; and La Pampa, in Madre de Dios, were fired and returned to their communities. They called them “returnees.” The “returnees” had money saved and knew how to search for gold. They wasted no time and got to work. And that is how it all began.

Ruben F. explains that a mine with eight or ten workers produces up to thirty tons of mineral per month, and if the mine is larger and has more employees, it gathers the same in a week. In alluvial mines, gold is washed in mercury and more is earned. One invests 50,000 soles to wash a kilo and earns 200,000. (A little more than 50,000 dollars) today.

"The miners" come down on weekends. In six blocks there are as many shops that distribute beer as there are shops that buy gold. The gram costs from 240 to 300 soles.

Mining also encourages other businesses, such as nightclubs, which did not exist before 2020. In the DHSF study, they claim that the Colquemarca clubs use the token system. The girls accompany the men to drink. For every jug of alcohol the man consumes, she receives a ticket. The little piece of paper has a value that the woman collects at the end of the night. Not to mention prostitution... child exploitation... Endless drugs and sexually transmitted diseases that have increased according to records since 2020" I undoubtedly think that one of the worst evils that has fallen on humanity is the love of money which leads you to lose everything!! From your dignity to your health due to the sole obsession of earning more and more at every moment and not feeling satisfied and that money quickly disappears from your hands.