La Rinconada: what the 50,000 inhabitants of the highest mountain settlement in the world are doing

In Peru, near the border with Bolivia, is the city of La Rinconada. This is the highest mountain settlement in the world. Despite the fact that the city is located at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters, and living conditions here are far from comfortable, about 50,000 people live in La Rinconada. What are all these people doing, and what makes them live in such difficult conditions?

The city of La Rinconada is located in the Andes at an altitude of 5130 meters above sea level. According to this indicator, the base camp at the foot of Mount Everest can only be compared with him, but people live there only a small part of the year. The climate at this altitude is very different from the climate on the plain: here, even in summer at night, negative temperatures are observed. In the warmest months, the daily temperature in La Rinconada rarely exceeds +10 degrees, and in winter it drops to minus 10-15 degrees below zero. At this altitude, there is a lack of oxygen, so new visitors do not feel very comfortable here.

A narrow path leads into the city, and the journey from the nearest village to La Rinconada can take several days. There is no water supply and sewage system, therefore the sanitary situation in the city is far from normal. There is also no post office and police station, and of all the attributes of civilization in the city there is only electricity. Despite such unsuitable living conditions, the population of the city is growing rapidly. Between 2001 and 2009, the population grew to 30,000, and by 2015 it was already 50,000.

Gold beckons people here. Since reserves of precious metal were discovered in the vicinity of the town, thousands of people are ready to put up with terrible living conditions for the sake of making good money. This mining town is somewhat reminiscent of a gold rush settlement in the United States or Australia. The ecological situation in the city is no better than the sanitary one. Due to gold mining, everything in the district is poisoned by highly toxic mercury and other industrial wastes.

But the stream of people wishing to earn their treasured piece of gold is increasing every year, and the amount of gold mined in the mines of La Rinconada ranges from 2 to 10 tons per year. As more than 200 companies are engaged in mining here, and production volumes are underestimated, it is difficult to judge the exact scale of gold mining in this city. I’m going to work as whole families. Someone works on a rotational basis, while others, on the contrary, prefer to settle in the city, and the number of one-story houses on the mountain slopes is growing every year.

In the mines, the original wage system prevails. For a month, the worker works for his master for free, and on the last day of the month the miner has the right to take all the gold with him, which he managed to find in a day. No one knows when luck smiles at him, but every resident of La Rinconada believes that one day on the coveted day he will come across the very piece of gold that will forever change his life.