Earlier this week, thousands of Peruvians took
to the streets of Cusco to protest illegal mining in their region. The
illegal miners in the area of the Ausangate Mountain operate with the
permission of the regional mining authority in the province of Quispicanchi.
The protestors called on the regional mining authority to cancel the mining
concessions used by the illegal miners because of the damage they are causing
to the locals’ sacred mountain.
Protestors came from all over the country, during their
annual pilgrimage to the sacred mountain. A leader of the protests told
the press that they had organized a similar demonstration in October, but
received no response from the mining authorities. The report noted that, before
Christmas, an operation by the Peruvian military destroyed 120 illegal mining
encampments in the area, but the miners had already escaped before the
authorities arrived.
The problem of illegal mining in Peru continues to grow.
Newly-released satellite
imagery shows that the environmental devastation wrought by illegal mining
has reached the Tambopata National Reserve in the Peruvian Amazon. Research
performed by the Carnegie Institution for Science using the satellite images
determined that that the illegal mining has destroyed almost 20,000 hectares of
rainforest.
In other mining-related news, Romulo Mucho, ex Deputy Mining
Minister, told
the press that thanks to the Las Bambas mining project, Peru would become the
second-largest copper producer in the world. On Monday, the first shipment of
copper from the Las Bambas mine left
for China. Romulo Mucho claimed that, “Las Bambas is aimed at producing over
400,000 tonnes of fine copper per year. Thus, Peru would be capable of
exceeding almost 2.0 million annual tonnes of copper and recovering the second
spot in the world.”
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