Peru, A Toxic State, Alessandro Cinque's photography

It all started in 2017, during a work trip to the Sacred Valley of the Incas in the Andes, when I met a fifty-three-year-old woman who told me she had fallen ill with stomach cancer because the water in her village was so contaminated. When I was ten, growing up in an Italian city with high levels of polluted water, I lost my mother to the same cancer. This gave me an immediate and deep connection with this woman’s story and, since that day, I have not stopped delving into it.
Quechua communities along Peru’s mining corridor have endured centuries of discrimination, pollution, and economic stagnation, despite the mineral wealth around them, buried within the beauty of the Andes. The country is the world’s second-biggest producer of copper, the third-biggest silver producer and a significant source of gold.
But under the scorching sun, metallic opulence coexists with abject poverty. Today, the Andes are still home to the country’s poorest indigenous communities, Quechua speakers, whose wealth was once ransacked by Spanish rulers and is now exploited by multinational corporations. The end of colonial control set the scene for a new problem: neoliberalism. Backed by the laissez-faire economic policies of the state, multinationals scouted the Andes for metals. The price has been paid in the health of indigenous Peruvians, whose water sources were either diverted for mining or polluted by it.

Many have heavy metals in their blood, causing anaemia, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, cancer, and congenital malformations. Mining has also wrecked their wealth by creating dead fields and killing livestock, the engine of the local economy.
More than this, mining has reconfigured the relationship of the people with the territory, leading to the gradual loss of Andean folklore and identity. Quechua people have a special connection with the land and devote themselves to agriculture with delicate care, demonstrated in their ritual dance to the goddess Pachamama — Madre Tierra, the Earth Mother — praying for rain and a good harvest. The presence of the mining companies not only devastates the land with toxic metals, it unbalances the relationship of the Andean peoples with Pachamama.
I have recently expanded my project to Ecuador and Bolivia, and in Peru I have started publishing a fanzine that I distribute to communities I visit. When companies start exploring new territories, indigenous people and their leaders do not know what they are up against. This fanzine aims to help restore a shared sense of belonging among people suffering the consequences of mining. It does this by raising awareness and encouraging dialogue about sustainable mining, while informing indigenous peasants about other rural communities that coexist with mining companies.