In the south-east of Peru, the Guardianes de la Trocha gang took over La Pampa, a gold-bearing area bordering the Tambopata national reserve, one of the richest regions in biodiversity on the continent. Forbidden Stories and its partner Mongabay Latam reveal how this criminal organization imposes a reign of terror, threatening journalists and silencing all opposition, aided by rampant corruption in the country.
Published on: 02/13/2026 - 2:22 p.m. Modified on: 02/13/2026 - 2:56 p.m.
An article written by Emmanuel Colombié with Mongabay Latam (Forbidden Stories)
The lush forest is nothing more than a landscape of desolation. For 15 years, illegal gold miners have set up camp in La Pampa, in the south-east of Peru, in the department of Madre de Dios.
Once covered in tropical jungles, the edges of the interoceanic route have been transformed into a veritable hell. Every day, men tear up the ground and pollute the waterways. “The birds have been gone for a long time,” laments Diego Torres*, a farmer at the forefront of the gold fever that has gripped his region. For two years, his own plot has now been covered in orange mud, littered with gasoline cans, wood and metal debris and oily stains in which his dogs wallow. Here and there, immense pipes abandoned by the miners lie between the dying palm trees.
On its land, we first hear the noise of dredges and gold mining machines. Then, hiding behind the leaves of a dead palm tree, we can see the looters at work. Near a washing ramp, intended to trap gold particles on a carpet, several men stand guard on his own plot.
As soon as they arrived, Diego Torres claimed to have denounced them to the public prosecutor's office in charge of the Environment (Fema). The police visited him in March 2024 but that day, the minors were not present, visibly alerted in advance. A few days later, they resumed their work with complete impunity, under the protection of armed men, all less than a kilometer from an active military base.
Determined to defend his territory, the farmer has already directly challenged illegal miners on his property, of whom he says he is not afraid. However, it is only half-heartedly that he agrees to mention the Guardianes de la Trocha, the criminal gang which controls gold mining activities in La Pampa. “Through intermediaries, I was asked not to oppose the minors, to say nothing or to leave, because otherwise they could eliminate me. (…) But where can I leave? I have no other place to go,” he confides.
Keep silent or be threatened with death: independent journalist Manuel Calloquispe faces the same dilemma. For more than a decade, he has been one of the only local reporters to document and denounce the activities of illegal gold miners in the region. He pays a high price for it. He was beaten up, his equipment was stolen and he no longer counts the threats and intimidation, even in front of his home. In 2022, his family had to leave Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the Madre de Dios department. Faced with growing threats, in January 2025, Manuel Calloquispe decided to join Forbidden Stories' SafeBox Network to protect sensitive documents, the fruit of his years of investigations.
At the start of 2025, Manuel Calloquispe was investigating Edison Fernandez Pérez, alias Chili, one of the two leaders of the gang. In an investigation, published on the Inforegion website, the journalist revealed the seizure of numerous weapons and lifted the veil on the internal struggles gnawing away at the Guardianes de la Trocha.
On August 28, 2025, a few days before publishing this article, he received a chilling call. On the other end of the line, the journalist recognizes Alver Carranza Fernandez, Chile's lieutenant. He sends him an unambiguous warning: “I will rip your head off. (…) Who will speak when you are no longer here? We will kill your son, your brother. You are already identified, we know where you are, we know where your family is.” Shaken by this call, he admits having had to stop his publications and leave the city to hide, for the fourth time since 2011. In October 2025, with his agreement, Forbidden Stories, in partnership with the media Mongabay Latam, went to the department of Madre de Dios to continue its work.
Manuel Calloquispe tirelessly documents and denounces the activities of this gang which has reigned terror on La Pampa for nearly 15 years. If Madre de Dios is the least populated department in the country, it is however full of gold. The Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute of Peru estimates that it represents 11% of Peruvian production today.
The main area of artisanal mining in Peru, illegal gold panning is widespread and, according to the Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (Cincia), has even exploded since the opening of the interoceanic road in 2011. Cincia specifies that deforestation is directly linked to gold panning and has increased by 425% since the opening up made possible by this new road.
The tropical forest, victim of the gold rush
Primary forests, logging or agricultural operations, private properties... In the region, nothing resists the gold rush and its immense damage. According to the Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (Maap), by mid-2025, 97.5% of the 139,169 hectares of forests destroyed by illegal gold mining in Peru were in the Madre de Dios department.
La Pampa is located in the province of Tambopata, home to a national nature reserve popular with tourists and boasting some of the richest biodiversity in Latin America.
Since 2011, the criminal organization Guardianes de la Trocha has placed La Pampa under regulated control and controls the majority of illegal gold production there. Initially, the gang was made up of a handful of men providing security for artisanal mines. Their power was consolidated as activity expanded on both sides of the interoceanic route, until they were able to impose their own law there.
“From 2013, the Guardianes de la Trocha set up tolls, managed mine security and started killing. In 2015 there was a second wave of violence: no one could enter La Pampa without their authorization,” recalls Rodrigo*, a resident of the region. One of his relatives was assassinated by the Guardianes de la Trocha for opposing the invasion of the family forest concession. To meet him, you have to go through a heavy armored door which protects the entrance to the property. The farm has been transformed into a bunker and barbed wire surrounds each of the farm's houses.
Witness to the rise of the gang, he himself was threatened with death. “In 2017 a milestone was reached: extortion increased, they brought in their own machines to extract gold. During the pandemic, they took over all the extraction sites. Then from 2022, they began to refer to themselves as 'Seguridad' and to go out in full view,” recalls Rodrigo.
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Over the past 15 years, more than 20,000 hectares have been decimated by deforestation in La Pampa.
Rodrigo's family is unfortunately not the only one affected by this climate of violence. By combining official information, police sources and his own work, Manuel Calloquispe estimates that at least 400 people have been murdered or gone missing there since 2014. “There are students, transporters, taxi drivers who entered La Pampa and never came out,” he confides.
Gold, a crucial resource for Peru
In 2025, the mining sector was Peru's main source of foreign exchange, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. The High Commissioner for the fight against illegal mining, Rodolfo Garcia Esquerre, indicates that in 2024, "Peru exported approximately 180 tonnes of gold, but that, of this quantity, at least 80 were of unknown origin", citing the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE). This think tank considers that 44% of illegal gold mined in South America comes from Peru and that over the last two decades, "the volume of exports of illegal gold has increased eightfold and, by the end of 2025, will reach that of legal gold".
“In 2024, this amount was almost six times greater than what the illegal drug trafficking economy generated, which amounted to approximately $1.2 billion,” adds Rodolfo Garcia Esquerre.
A considerable windfall subject to predation by gangsters like the Guardianes de la Trocha. Boosted by soaring gold prices, over the years these organizations have been able to build up a veritable arsenal intended to protect this ever more lucrative activity.
With this war chest, the gang reigns terror in La Pampa. “Since June 2025, things have been going crazy. You have to have a tank here to be able to fight back, they have Kalashnikovs, grenades…” notes Rodrigo, before showing us his own equipment – a rifle, a pistol and even a drone –, determined to protect his people in the event of another invasion. Same story from the police: "Brayan (one of the current leaders of the gang, Editor's note) has war equipment, large calibers, UZI machine guns. (...) We are not numerous enough to fight against this", confides Commander Carazas, the imposing head of the criminal investigation division of Madre de Dios. He receives our team in his office, much too small for him, in Puerto Maldonado, cluttered with piles of files.
On video surveillance images obtained by Manuel Calloquispe, Chili and several dozen men circulate in La Pampa, heavily armed, equipped with bulletproof vests, night vision glasses and some dressed in police uniforms. On one of them, we can see the execution in broad daylight of Ana Denisse Garcia Solsol, on January 10, 2025. In the streets of the village Virgen de la Candelaria, this trade unionist, responsible in particular for the allocation of municipal land, was shot dead by armed men posted on pick-ups. The killers disappear with cries of “Viva el Chili”.
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This private army, heavily equipped and ready to kill, can thus protect gold panning activities: to guard the extraction sites, “they hire retired police officers as security agents,” says Commander Carazas.
On the trail of nuggets
In Peru, illegal mining is a crime, but the purchase of gold in small quantities is poorly controlled and impunity reigns, fueling the informal economy. Once extracted from the mines, clandestine gold is easily resold in acopiadoras, these authorized shops where anyone can sell their nuggets in exchange for a simple receipt. To open one of these businesses, you must go through a series of procedures imposed by the administration. The law determines that individual gold purchases exceeding $10,000 and cumulative purchases reaching $50,000 per month must be reported. Below these amounts, gold is almost untraceable.
This difficulty in following the gold trail was confirmed by all the people we contacted during our report. In a lawless area like La Pampa, the subject is indeed ultra sensitive and dangerous. Manuel Calloquispe has over the years attempted to investigate the collection and destination of gold from clandestine mines. According to him, before the Covid-19 pandemic, "the Guardianes de la Trocha extorted the shops already established in the area in exchange for their security services. Then from 2024, they gradually took control of existing shops and created their own collection centers."
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Rodrigo confirms this takeover of the collection: "The 'Seguridad' sees everything, no store can open without them in La Pampa. They even have surveillance cameras in front of each gold sales point." What then happens to the precious nuggets? The gang would have, again according to the observations and information of Manuel Calloquispe, entered into agreements with gold exporting companies. These would finance these shops to the tune of one Peruvian sol (around 0.25 euro cents) per gram of gold collected. The accumulated gold would then be transferred by land, in convoys protected by the staff of these companies, gang members and sometimes even the local police, to the regions of Puno, Arequipa or even to neighboring countries to be melted down and reincorporated into the legal circuit.
According to César Ipenza, an environmental lawyer, illegal gold mined in La Pampa takes several routes. The main one leads to neighboring Bolivia, from where the metal is exported as Bolivian gold. Other sectors pass through the Peruvian department of Cusco before reaching the capital Lima. “It would not be surprising if the gold went through Brazil,” he says. “I took this route and the controls are almost non-existent.”
Manuel Calloquispe estimates that the quantity of gold extracted in La Pampa "could exceed 40 tonnes per year", or the equivalent of 6.55 billion dollars at the rate of January 26, 2026.
Faced with such volumes, a sector extremely difficult to penetrate and rampant corruption, the State seems powerless. The meteoric rise of illegal gold mines also benefits from failing regulation, despite the establishment in 2016 of the full register of the formalization of mining activities (Reinfo) by the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Originally, this system was to allow artisanal operations to legalize their activities, by committing to comply with environmental standards, within a limited period and without ceasing to operate.
But the system turned out to be largely flawed: the deadline for meeting environmental criteria, initially scheduled for 2020, was extended until December 2026. The register can also offer cover to gangs, who are content to appropriate the forms of minors already duly registered.
“In practice, there is no control mechanism,” says César Ipenza. “And often, Reinfo is simply praised.” According to him, people who illegally rent or buy the Reinfo forms transport and sell the gold as if it were their own concession.
As of January 26, 2026, of the 31,628 minors registered with Reinfo throughout Peru, 23,809 would be valid. In other words, almost a quarter of them, or 7,819 minors, operate without the slightest control. Across the department of Madre de Dios, there are almost three quarters of them. In the province of Tambopata, where La Pampa is located, 1,021 concessions, out of a total of 1,489 registered, take advantage of this legal vagueness and operate with free rein, facing authorities that seem to have neither the resources nor the capacity necessary to stem the phenomenon.
Lima unable to fight illegal gold panning
However, the Peruvian government launched the resounding Operation Mercurio in 2019, intended to “totally eradicate illegal mines” in La Pampa, according to statements by the Minister of Defense at the time. Some 25,000 miners were expelled from the territory and, according to the Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (Maap), in the same year, deforestation fell by 92%.
Shortly after these expulsions, the executive wanted, through a “restoration plan”, to stimulate new activities on site and above all to extend the fight against illegal gold panning to the entire department of Madre de Dios and the regions of Cusco and Puno.
But due to a lack of resources and political will, it did not bear fruit and the miners who had been expelled not only retained control of new operating areas, but they also returned en masse to La Pampa. Still according to Maap, in 2023, the number of mining infrastructures had jumped by 400% since 2021.
Apart from these mega operations, which are widely publicized, interventions coordinated by the police and the courts to confiscate or destroy minors' equipment prove most of the time ineffective. Often, well-informed miners hide the machines in waterways and desert the area before the police arrive. “They then just have to wait a few days and recover them from the bottom of the water. We do not have the means to bring them to the surface,” explains a representative of the public prosecutor’s office in charge of the Environment, responsible for these operations. To agree to meet our team in Puerto Maldonado, this source, fearing for his life, preferred to remain anonymous and took many precautions before making an appointment with us. “My family doesn’t live with me here, it’s too dangerous,” she explains before sharing with us a video document showing minors fleeing when her teams arrived.
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Worse, these operations are sometimes only simulacra of intervention to feed official statistics and corruption. On condition of anonymity, a local official well informed of the government's actions against illegal gold mining adds: "During an intervention, three out of ten engines will be destroyed. They only destroy those for which they do not receive their share. Then, they give false figures on the operations."
Questioned, the representative of Fema supports: "There are very few convictions (for illegal gold panning, Editor's note). Less than 5% of those detained are ultimately punished. We need new legal measures. We must economically weaken these miners with bans on their activity, preventive prison and sanctions. The problem is that there are populist speeches and so much money at stake that it benefits everyone."
“Gold is more money than drug trafficking here” A senior official from the Madre de Dios prosecutor’s office on condition of anonymity
Asked by our teams, the prosecutor in charge of national coordination of Fema, Frank Almanza Altamirano, affirms that in 2025, in Madre de Dios, six people were placed in preventive prison and 84 convictions were handed down for various offenses linked to illegal gold panning. He added that 193 interdiction operations against clandestine mines had been coordinated in the department. But these figures cannot hide the rampant corruption in La Pampa and the inertia of the authorities, constantly shifting responsibility from one service to another.
“It’s like a giant pizza, everyone takes 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, admits his helplessness and openly denounces the endemic corruption within his department. "I don't work with the local police, because they are contaminated; I try to work with Lima. We need people who work hidden, fresh and focused." Because according to him, all the administrations responsible for fighting against illegal gold panning are flawed. “It’s like a giant pizza, everyone takes their share: the police, the justice system, the navy, the army, Sunat (Peruvian customs and tax administration, Editor’s note), (…) and there is a lot to share: gold is more money than drug trafficking here,” he denounces. The senior Peruvian official also deplores the lack of coordination between administrations: "cases linked to the Guardianes de la Trocha, there are two or three here, but you have to see with the anti-organized crime prosecutor. His office is next to mine, but I don't know him, we've never spoken."
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Manuel Calloquispe is well aware of this, “you can’t trust anyone”. A few days after receiving threats from Alver Carranza Fernandez, he filed a complaint. According to him, the police who were supposed to patrol his home leaked photos of his house to the local press, putting him in serious danger.
Rodrigo goes further. "Illegal gold panning is run by the police. Everyone turns a blind eye. It's the prosecution and the police who make the most money. And as soon as someone speaks, they are eliminated." The army and police have four bases in the La Pampa area. On condition of anonymity, a former state official, specialist in forest conservation policies in the region, adds: "The military and police bases are corrupt. There are hundreds of people deployed, but we do not see them. The police patrol, but do not intervene."
“When I cross La Pampa, I drive at 100 miles an hour and I don’t stop because people recognize me…” regrets Commander Carazas. In the world of the gold lords, their rules prevail. And the Guardianes de la Trocha are increasing their activities. Now, “to launder their money, they build hotels, synthetic football fields, private colleges,” he adds.
Manuel Calloquispe recently discovered that a price had been placed on his head at 30,000 soles (a little over 7,500 euros) by their leader Chili – himself a fugitive and sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to him, his editors no longer want to publish his information, for fear of also suffering heavy reprisals. And he no longer travels around Puerto Maldonado without his bulletproof vest.
When contacted, the Ministry of the Interior, the Army and the Ministry of Energy and Mines did not respond to our requests.
*All first names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of the individuals.
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