Madre de Dios, Peru – In Peru, the gold rush devastates the Amazon rainforest. In the Department of Madre de Dios, the Guardians of the Trocha gang took control of La Pampa, an area of ​​gold deposits located next to the Tambopata national reserve, one of the regions with the greatest biodiversity on the continent. Forbidden Stories and its partner Mongabay Latam reveal how this criminal organization sows terror, threatens journalists and silences any opposition, under the cover of endemic corruption in the country.

First modification: 02/13/2026 - 21:16 Last modification: 02/13/2026 - 21:21

Article written by Emmanuel Colombié with Mongabay Latam (Forbidden Stories)

What was once a lush jungle is now a desolate landscape. For fifteen years, illegal miners have set up camps in La Pampa, in the southeast of Peru, in the Department of Madre de Dios.

The banks of the Interoceanic Highway, which were previously covered by jungle, have become a hell. Every day, men tear up the soil and pollute the rivers.

"The birds are impacted by mining. Now there are no more," deplores Diego Torres* (his name has been changed for security reasons), a farmer who has experienced first-hand the gold fever that infected his region.

For two years, an orange mud has covered his plot, where gasoline barrels, wood and metal waste, and oily stains lie in which his dogs roll.

In some parts you can see, among dying palm trees, immense pipes that the miners left lying around.

On his plot, the first thing you hear is the noise of dredging and the machines that extract the gold. By hiding behind the leaves of a dead palm tree, you can see the looters at work.

Some men stand guard on their own plot, near a washing chute, which is used to trap gold particles.

Diego Torres affirms that he reported the presence of the illegal miners to the Specialized Prosecutor for Environmental Matters (FEMA) since they settled.

The police visited it in March 2024, but the miners were not present that day, probably warned in advance about the operation. Days later, they resumed their activities, under the protection of armed men. And this, less than a kilometer from an active military base.

Determined to defend his territory, the farmer has already confronted the illegal miners present on his plot, of whom he says he is not afraid. However, he is very cautious when he agrees to talk about the Guardianes de la Trocha, the criminal group that controls gold extraction activities in La Pampa.

"Through third parties, they asked me not to oppose the miners, not to say anything or to leave, because otherwise they could eliminate me (...). But where can I go? I have nowhere else to go," he says.

Keep silent or receive death threats: independent journalist Manuel Calloquispe knows this dilemma.

For more than a decade, he has been one of the only local journalists documenting and denouncing the activities of illegal gold miners in the region.

And he has paid dearly: he has been beaten, his material was stolen and he lost count of the number of threats and acts of harassment he suffered, even in front of his home.

In 2022, his family had to leave Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the Department of Madre de Dios. Faced with increasingly insistent threats, in January 2025, Manuel Calloquispe decided to join the Forbidden Stories SafeBox Network to protect some of the sensitive documents he accumulated during years of investigation.

In early 2025, Manuel Calloquispe was conducting an investigation on Edison Fernández Pérez, alias Chili, one of the two leaders of the gang.

In a report, published on the Inforegión site, the journalist revealed the seizure of an arsenal during a police operation and shed light on the existence of an internal war that was eating away at the Guardians of the Trocha.

On August 28, 2025, a day before publishing the article, he received a call. The journalist identified his interlocutor as Alver Carranza Fernández, Chili's right arm. Carranza sent him a warning: "I'm going to take your head off (...) Who will speak when you leave? You are already identified. We are going to kill your son, your brother. We know your location and that of your entire family."

Astonished by the phone call, the journalist claims he stopped publishing and went into hiding. In October 2025, with your permission, Forbidden Stories and its partner Mongabay Latam decided to go to the Department of Madre de Dios to continue their work.

Manuel Calloquispe tirelessly documents and denounces the activities of this gang that has imposed terror in La Pampa for nearly 15 years. Madre de Dios is the least populated department in the country... but it is sitting on large gold deposits. The Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (INGEMMET) estimates that it currently accounts for 11% of the country's gold production.

Madre de Dios is the main region in terms of artisanal gold extraction and in parallel suffers from illegal mining activities, which have skyrocketed since the opening of the Interoceanic Highway (OIC) in 2011, according to the Amazon Scientific Innovation Center (CINCIA).

According to CINCIA, deforestation directly linked to illegal mining increased by 425% since the asphalt road improved the region's connectivity.

The rainforest, victim of the gold rush

Primary forests, forestry or agricultural operations and private properties: in the region, no space resists the gold rush and its ravages.

According to the Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP), in mid-2025, 97.5% of the 139,169 hectares of jungle destroyed by illegal gold mining in Peru were located in the Department of Madre de Dios.

La Pampa is located in the province of Tambopata, whose national natural reserve, one of the most biodiverse in Latin America, attracts a lot of tourism.

Since 2011, the criminal organization of the Guardianes de la Trocha imposes its yoke on La Pampa, where it controls most of the illegal gold production. Initially, the gang was made up of a handful of men dedicated to the security of artisanal mines. His power grew as mining expanded on the shore of the interoceanic highway with new mining camps, until he managed to establish his own law.

"They started in 2013. At that time there was talk that you had to pay security, you had to pay the toll, that all the machines were supposedly registered. And they started killing people. Already in 2015 or 2016 everyone had to register to be able to work," remembers Rodrigo*, a resident of La Pampa whose name we have also modified as a precaution.

One of his friends was murdered by the Guardians of the Trail for opposing the invasion of his family's forest concession. To meet him, it is necessary to pass an armored door that protects the entrance to his property. He transformed his forestry into a bunker, and placed barbed wire on top of each of the houses on the farm.

Witnessing the growth of the gang, Rodrigo was also threatened with death.

"In the years 2013, 2014, 2015, the disappearances began. Since 2016 and 2017 they were in full swing; as they saw that the money was working (in mining), they began to install their own machines. Thus, more abuses began. During the pandemic they appropriated all the extraction sites and, starting in 2022, they came out into the light of day and began to show themselves openly," he recalls.

“After the murder we thought about leaving, but my parents didn't want to, so we decided to stay and confront them.”

Unfortunately, Rodrigo's family is not the only one who has suffered from the climate of violence. Crossing official information, police sources and his own investigations, Manuel Calloquispe estimates that at least 400 people have been murdered or disappeared since 2014.

“There are cases of students, transporters and taxi drivers who entered La Pampa and never left,” he says.

Gold, a key resource in Peru

In 2025, the mining sector represented the main source of foreign exchange generation in Peru, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

The High Commissioner for the fight against illegal mining, Rodolfo Garcia Esquerre, points out that in 2024, Peru exported around 180 tons of gold, but that of that amount, at least 80 tons “were of unknown origin,” citing the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE).

This same institute considers that 44% of the gold illegally extracted in South America comes from Peru and that "in the last two decades, the volume of illegal gold exports has multiplied by eight, and by the end of 2025, it will reach that of legal gold."

“In 2024 it was almost six times more than what the illegal economy of illicit drug trafficking moved, which was around 1.2 billion dollars,” adds Garcia Esquerre.

This considerable source of money is subject to predation by gangs such as the Guardianes de la Trocha. Encouraged by the increase in gold prices, these criminal groups constituted, year after year, a veritable arsenal to protect their increasingly lucrative activity.

Sitting on this spoils of war, the gang imposes terror on La Pampa.

"Since June 2025 it's been crazy. You have to have a tank here to be able to repel because there are like 40 to 60 people who have PKM rifles, submachine guns, grenades," deplores Rodrigo, who shows us his own weapons – a rifle, a pistol and even a drone – determined to defend his people in case of a new invasion.

On the police side, the diagnosis is identical: "Brayan (one of the current leaders of the gang) has war material, high caliber, UZI-type machine guns (...) We lack a lot of personnel to fight this," confesses Commander Carazas, the imposing head of the Criminal Investigation Division (DIVINCRI) of Madre de Dios, who receives reporters in his office in Puerto Maldonado, a tiny room compared to its size and crammed with files.

In surveillance camera images obtained by Manuel Calloquispe, “Chili” and dozens of men are seen walking around La Pampa, with heavy weapons, bulletproof vests, night vision devices, and some even wearing police uniforms. In one of the videos, you can see the murder, in broad daylight, of Ana Denisse García Solsol, perpetrated on January 10, 2025. This union leader, in charge of allocating municipal land, among others, was killed in the streets of the town Virgen de la Candelaria by armed men traveling in the bed of pick-up trucks. After committing their crime, the hitmen walked away shouting “Long live Chili!”

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This private army, equipped with heavy weapons and willing to kill, can protect illegal gold mining activities: to guard the extraction sites, “they hire security agents and retired police officers,” says Commander Carazas.

On the trail of the gold nuggets

In Peru, illegal gold extraction constitutes a crime, but the few controls that exist over the purchase of small quantities of the mineral, added to the impunity that prevails, fuel the informal economy.

Once removed from the mines, illegal gold is easily sold in the acopiadoras, regulated stores where everyone can sell their nuggets in exchange for a simple receipt.

To open one of these stores, a series of administrative procedures must be followed, which includes the processing of a municipal commercial exploitation permit and registration with the National Superintendence of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT), in charge of issuing the receipt.

The law determines that stores must report to the authorities individual gold purchases that exceed $10,000 per month, and accumulated purchases greater than $50,000 per month. Below this amount, gold becomes practically untraceable.

The obstacles to tracking the gold have been pointed out by all the sources of this report. In a lawless area like La Pampa, this topic is ultra-sensitive and dangerous. Over the years, Manuel Calloquispe has investigated the collection and route of gold extracted from illegal mines. According to him, before the Covid 19 pandemic, "the Guardians of the Trail extorted the collectors already installed in the area, in exchange for security quotas. Since 2024, the gang has begun to control the gold collection business, placing collectors from their family and friends, creating their own collectors at kilometers 108 and 109 of the Interoceanic Highway."

Rodrigo confirms this appropriation of the collection. "Security sees everything. They even have surveillance cameras at the entrances and where they buy gold," he says. What happens next with the nuggets? According to the work of Manuel Calloquispe, the gang would have agreements with gold exporting companies, which would finance the collectors with one Peruvian sol (30 cents of a dollar) per gram of gold. Subsequently, the gold would be transported in land convoys – guarded by the personnel of these companies, by gang members or even by local police agents – to Puno, Arequipa or neighboring countries, where it would be melted and reintroduced into the legal circuit.

According to César Ipenza, a lawyer specialized in environmental issues, the gold extracted illegally in La Pampa follows several routes. The main one ends in Bolivia, the neighboring country, where the mineral is exported as if it were of Bolivian origin. Other routes cross the Peruvian department of Cusco to reach Lima. "It wouldn't be strange if it left through Brazil. I've taken that route and there is practically no control," he says.

Manuel Calloquispe estimates that the amount of gold extracted from La Pampa “could exceed 40 tons per year,” which would be equivalent to 6,055 million dollars (according to the value of the gold recorded on January 26).

The State seems unable to appease this million-dollar business, which is extremely difficult to infiltrate and fuels corruption. The unbridled expansion of illegal gold mines is also the product of defective regulation, which continued despite the establishment of the Comprehensive Registry of Mining Formalization (REINFO) by the Ministry of Energy and Mines in 2016. This device aims to legalize the activities of small-scale and artisanal mining, in exchange for its commitment to align with environmental standards, in a defined period and without stopping its operations.

However, the system was largely defective and the deadline to comply with environmental criteria was postponed from 2020 to December 2026. In addition, the gangs can operate in a hidden manner thanks to registration: to sell the gold, they simply rent or illegally purchase forms from miners duly registered in the mining formalization registry, including transport guides, which allow them to transport the mineral.

“In practice there is no control mechanism,” says César Ipenza. ”And what has been happening is that REINFO is often rented.” According to him, people who illegally rent or buy REINFO registration documents transport and market the gold as if it were a concession in which they work.

As of January 26, 2026, of the 31,628 miners registered in REINFO throughout Peru, 23,809 are in the validation process. In other words, about a quarter of them, that is, 7,819 miners, would operate without any control. In the Department of Madre de Dios, this rate reaches 72.2%. In the province of Tambopata, where La Pampa is located, 1,021 concessions, among the 1,489 registered, take advantage of this legal gap and operate without control, before authorities that do not seem to have the resources or capabilities to address the phenomenon.

Lima unable to fight illegal gold mining

However, in 2019, the Peruvian Government launched the spectacular Operation Mercurio, which sought to “completely eradicate illegal mines” in La Pampa, as stated at the time by the Ministry of Defense. Some 25,000 miners were expelled from the territory and, according to the MAAP, that same year deforestation plummeted by 92%.

Shortly after these expulsions, the Government launched a “restoration plan” whose objective was to promote new activities in La Pampa and extend the fight against illegal gold mining throughout the Department of Madre de Dios, as well as in the regions of Cusco and Puno.

Due to lack of resources and political will, the plan did not prosper and the expelled miners, who had taken over new exploitations, returned en masse to La Pampa. Still according to the MAAP, between 2021 and 2023, the number of mining infrastructures had skyrocketed by 400%.

Beyond the mega-operations and their strong media coverage, coordinated operations between the police and Justice to seize or destroy the machines used in illegal mining are, in general, ineffective.

Often, knowledgeable miners hide their machines in rivers and leave the area before agents arrive. “They just have to wait a few days and recover them at the bottom of the water,” explains a member of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office (FEMA), responsible for these operations.

Fearful for her life, our source agreed to meet with Forbidden Stories and Mongabay in Puerto Maldonado but preferred to maintain her anonymity and took extreme precautions to meet the reporters in a very discreet location. “My family does not live with me here, it is too dangerous,” he explains, and shows us a video where some miners can be seen fleeing before the arrival of their agents.

Worse still: sometimes, these operations are mere simulations, launched to feed official statistics and corruption. Under the condition of anonymity, a local official with good knowledge of the Government's actions against illegal gold mining comments: "A person I know informs me that there are more than ten engines, but they have only destroyed three. Why? What is the comment that always circulates? That they only destroy those engines for which they do not receive their share. Then they give false information about the operations."

Questioned about this, the FEMA representative maintains: "At the level of the entire universe of investigations, we have very few sentences. We could say that it does not even reach 5% of the cases. New legal measures are required. These miners must be economically affected with prohibitions from working, preventive detention and sanctions. The problem is that there are populist speeches and so much money at stake that it suits everyone. Those who report are seen as enemies of the people."

“Gold makes more money than drug trafficking here,” says a senior official from the Madre de Dios Prosecutor's Office, on condition of anonymity.

Asked by our teams, the prosecutor in charge of the national coordination of FEMA, Frank Almanza Altamirano, states that in 2025 six people were placed in preventive detention and 84 convictions were issued for various crimes related to clandestine mining in Madre de Dios. He added that 193 interdiction operations against clandestine mines were coordinated in the Department. But these figures cannot hide the corruption that prevails in La Pampa and that adds to the inertia of the authorities, who tend to shift blame between agencies.

“It's like a big pizza, everyone gets their share”

When he receives Forbidden Stories and Mongabay Latam in Puerto Maldonado, a senior official from the Madre de Dios prosecutor's office, who requested anonymity, recognizes his helplessness and openly denounces the endemic corruption in the Department. "I don't work with the local police because it is contaminated; I try to work with Lima; we need personnel who work undercover, fresh and focused." According to him, all agencies in charge of fighting illegal mining are corrupt. “It's like a big pizza, everyone gets their share: the police, the Justice, the Navy, the Army, the SUNAT (...) and there is a lot to share: gold makes more money than drug trafficking here,” he denounces. The senior official also deplores the lack of coordination between the agencies. "There are 2 or 3 cases related to the Guardians of the Trail here, but you have to see it with the Organized Crime Prosecutor. His office is next to mine, but I don't know him, we have never spoken."

Manuel Calloquispe is categorical: “You can't trust anyone,” he warns. Days after receiving threats from Alver Carranza Fernández, the journalist filed a complaint. According to him, the police, who were supposed to conduct patrols around his home, leaked photographs of his house to the local press, exposing him to serious danger.

Rodrigo goes further: "Mining is directed by the police themselves. Everyone closes their eyes. The Prosecutor's Office and the police are the ones who earn the most money. And when someone speaks, they eliminate them. It is difficult to live here." The Army and Police have four bases in the La Pampa area. On condition of anonymity, a former official, a specialist in forest preservation policies in the region, maintains: "The military and police bases are corrupt. There are hundreds of troops deployed, but they are not seen. They patrol, but they do not intervene."

"When I cross La Pampa I go at 100 km per hour and I don't stop; I don't stop for anything, because they recognize me...", deplores Commander Carazas. In the world of the gold lords, their rules prevail. And the Guardians of the Trail expanded their activities. Now "they build hotels, restaurants, synthetic soccer fields, private schools; that's how they launder money," he adds.

Manuel Calloquispe recently discovered that the boss, Chili – who was sentenced to 15 years in prison and is a fugitive – had offered a reward of 30,000 soles (just under $9,000) on his head. According to him, his editors no longer want to publish his information for fear of also suffering serious reprisals. And he no longer goes out on the street in Puerto Maldonado without his bulletproof vest.

*All names marked with an asterisk have been modified to preserve the anonymity of the individuals.

Contacted by our teams, the Ministry of the Interior, the Army and the Ministry of Energy and Mines did not respond to our requests.

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