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Mountains and valleys are dotted with metal shacks, with makeshift structures. The filth is everywhere. There is no water supply. Electricity is scarce.
Garbage even covers the humble graves of a local cemetery.
In the main square, heavy drinking is in progress. It is dangerous to photograph here. I hide; use zoom. Two plastered miners are lying on their stomachs, and someone is throwing food into their open mouths, as if it was feeding time in a zoo.
Prostitution is rampant. Children are doing odd jobs. At one of the garbage dumps, I ask two young girls about their age.
"25," comes the ready answer. I guess 15, at most. But their faces are covered.
"How dangerous is it here?" I ask one of the miners.
He replies readily: "Very dangerous, but we have no choice."
"Do people get injured on jobs? Do they get killed?"
"Of course. It happens very often. We are all taking risks. Some people get horrible injuries, others die. If they cannot treat them here, they take them to Ananeo, and if they are lucky, to a Juliaca hospital. Others are left here to die. It's life. Some get saved, some don't."
Do they blame capitalism, the extreme savage pro-market system, adopted by their country?
"It's life," I hear the same fatalistic reply.
Do they know about Bolivia; about the great changes just across the border? Do they know that some 30 kilometers away from here, 'as the condor flies', on the Bolivian side, there is the pristine Uila Uila National Fauna Reserve?
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