“The price of gold started to rise and in 2008 it sky-rocketed. “About five years ago this was a place that was a couple of miners, a couple of tents,” said Luis Fernandez, an expert on the toxic fallout caused by mercury on the environment. Under Garay’s watch at least 20 people have received prison terms for illegal mining and more than 100 been convicted for smuggling diesel, while prosecutors have convicted at least 22 people for human trafficking, mostly involving child sex abuse. The government set up six military and police bases in La Pampa, a city now of 25,000 people and hub of sexual exploitation of women and girls in the bars popular with miners. To address a surge in criminal activity, Peru’s military launched the biggest-ever crackdown on illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios in February 2019, dubbed Operation Mercury.Īppointed chief environmental prosecutor when Operation Mercury began, Garay has become a fixture of the regular raids and the driving force behind a steady rise in prosecutions. The global financial crisis in 2008 - and the completion of the long-awaited, 1,600 miles (2,600 km) Interoceanic Highway cutting through Madre de Dios’s forest and connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic. Tens of thousands of miners have flocked to Madre de Dios, mainly from Peru’s poor Andean highlands, hoping to earn a living, while playing a cat-and-mouse game with authorities who have struggled to combat the illegal trade.Īcross the region, illegal mines became a magnet for criminal gangs as well as sex traffickers working in and around the town of La Pampa. Nearly one third of Peru’s gold exports are illegally sourced, according to a 2016 report by Swiss think-tank, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Peru is the world’s sixth largest gold producer, partly fuelled by the illegal gold mining in Madre de Dios.
“She’s an Andean Wonder Woman named Maria de Amazonas, who fought the mine looters in the time of the Inca Empire,” explained Garay. figure, she admired comic creator Stan Lee’s version of Peruvian Wonder Woman Maria Mendoza, who was given powers by the Inca Sun God. Rather than the stars-and-stripes wearing U.S. “It became no-man’s land,” Garay told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in her office where, next to a tome of Peru’s penal code, sits her collection of Wonder Woman dolls.Īsked about the doll collection, she said she drew inspiration from the character she saw as a local heroine. Wearing brightly-coloured trainers, gold jewellery and colourful dresses, Garay, 35, cuts a singular figure in the male-dominated world of law enforcement in the region dubbed Peru’s ‘Wild West’, home to about 150,000 people. It was just another day’s work for Garay on the frontline of government efforts to seize control of vast jungle areas of Madre de Dios - the scene of a modern-day gold rush after global prices spiked and a new road opened up this remote part of Peru. You don’t get to tell the tale,” he said, before moving the speedboat to the opposite riverbank and yelling: “Fire!” “Working with explosives, your first mistake is your last. On a floating raft was a rudimentary dredger used by illegal miners to suck up river silt to mix with mercury and extract gold grain while dumping toxic waste in the river.Ī navy captain jumped off the speedboat and cut the hand-made sluice while a marine in the group prepared dynamite. “Bingo!” exclaimed Garay from behind her designer, diamante sunglasses, an environmental prosecutor for the Amazon rainforest region at the centre of Peru’s gold rush. MADRE DE DIOS, Peru, Sept 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - S peeding over to a muddy bank of Peru’s Madre de Dios river in a motorboat, Karina Garay pointed to a small wooden structure.
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