The 13 miners’ bodies were found on a basement on a location operating by the largest gold mining company in Peru, President Dina Boluarte said on Monday, in an area that has seen a growing conflict over ores in recent years.
As the price of gold has climbed to record high levels, small -scale extraction has expanded to Peru, while the extraction concessions of the Peruvian company La Poderosa in the Pataz province in the northern part of the country have become an outbreak of gold mining and the place of death.
The bodies were found on Sunday, according to Ms Boluarte. The men had worked for a craft or informal mining operation that had a contract with La Poderosa, the company said in a statement on Sunday.
A video circulating on social media seemed to show to the miners, with eyes and bare on an mining axis, shot on the neck with one by one rifles. A person sounds begged, “please.” A national police spokesman told the New York Times that officials had not verified the authenticity of the video.
It was not immediately clear why the 13 men were killed. La Poderosa said in its statement that armed criminals had attacked the mining operation and kidnapped workers on April 26.
Ms Boluarte said that two people suspected of being linked to the murders had been arrested in Pataz with weapons, magazines and ammunition.
The owner of the traditional mining company hired by employees, Segundo Nicolás Cueva Rojas, did not immediately respond to requests for comments by phone and email.
Before the bodies were found, some of the relatives of the workers had complained to the local media that the authorities did not do enough to find their loved ones.
“We ask for justice, “said Abraham Domínguez, the father of a victim, Deyter Domínguez, 29, in the local radio program” Exitosa “.” This cannot go unpunished. This is not an animal 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 the will to move on. Now he’s gone.”
He also said that it was not the police who found the bodies, but the self -defense patrols known as “Ronderos” operating in Highland areas.
Peru is the second largest gold producer in Latin America after Mexico and the 10th largest world producer alongside Indonesia, according to 2024 figures in the United States Geological Survey. Peru has struggled a lot to reduce the illegal gold mining, especially in remote areas of the Amazon where Wildcat mines have destroyed tens of thousands of acres of rainforest and rejection of mercury in rivers.
During the pandemic wines, criminals seized control of empty mining axes operated by authorized traditional miners in La Poderosa, causing deadly battles for access to the tunnels and gold produced.
Part of the problem, the experts say, is that Peru allows traditional miners enrolled in the government to be exempt from police expulsion, as well as employment laws, environmental and tax laws, providing legal coverage for illegal miners.
In his statement, La Poderosa accused Peru’s Congress in part of spiral violence, saying that he had expanded the deadline by which unofficial miners must fully legitimize their activities and accused the government of failing to fail.
“Pataz has become a flawless territory where violence runs ruthless, taking lives, sowing terrorism and subjugation wills,” the statement said. “It will be impossible to defeat the crime if, despite our repeated demands, the police continue to fail to enter and hinder the illegal entrances of the mines where criminal gangs resort and operate.”
In December 2023, nine people were killed in extraction ambush by criminals and last October, authorities found 16 bodies in a mass grave on an mining axis.
On Saturday, as the authorities were looking for the missing, the police rescued 50 employees from another Peruvian mining company, Caravelí, who had been hostage to the company’s gold processing plant in a different part of the PATAZ province, according to the state agency. Eight people were injured in a shot between police and armed men.
Responding to the last massacre, Ms Boluarte inhibits mining in the Pataz area for 30 days and prompted the army to restore order. On Monday, it announced a ban on traffic from 6 pm until 6am in the Pataz area and said the authorities would install a military base there.
The mayor of Pataz province, Aldo Carlos Mariño, said that an emergency in the province for the past year was “useless” and urged the government to improve information companies to stop criminals behind violence.
“We give everything to the country, we give all our gold,” Mr Mariño told a local television station on Sunday. “Pataz province is covered with blood.”
