A view on Chaupamarca neighborhood and El Tajo. Mining began to intensify in the 20th century. The more El Tajo widened, the more the inhabited center was dismantled and new houses were built in the outskirts of the city. What used to be a small mining village is now the capital of Pasco province. Today distance between the houses and the extraction site is almost non-existent.

José Brian (9) shows clear symptoms of lead intoxication. The average concertation of lead in the hair of the
children of Cerro de Pasco is 36 times higher than the average of German children.

In Quechua Quilacocha means “the lake of seagulls”. In the last twenty years it has been transformed in a deposit
of mining wastes and seagulls, and any other form of life, has disappeared.

An illegal “recilator” make her life by dividing the plastic from the rest of the rubbish. Meanwhile she takes the op- portunity to feed her pigs that she will sell to the market in Lima.
In Cerro de Pasco the urban waste sys- tem is managed by the mining company that deposit all on top of an old mining waste deposit that has been built on top of the spring of the Tingo river. The water is used by all the inha he valley to irrigate their crops.

Lionel Olivares Daga died of leukemia at the age of 6. Doctors funded very high concent ation of heavy metals in his organism, including lead, arsenic
and mercury.

A stray dog in Paragsha.

Dayram (8) suffer from anemia and, as the majority of children in Cerro de Pasco, has learning difficul- ties; largely because of the interference of lead with the brain development. Children exposed to lead
in their first five years of life, have problems in their brain development that they will never recover from.

The “new spring” of the Tingo river where the heavy metal pollution caused by the mine connect together with the organic pollution caused by the urban wastes.

A children during the festivity of La Virgen de la Paz.

Maria Since Calzada (58) suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. The cold, the absence of hot water and heating and the interference with the normal calcifi- cation of bones and therefore ill esses like arthritis
and arthrosis are very common.

The Virgen de la Paz on an altar of one of the Mayordomos of the festivity that for three days colors the roads of the neighborhood of
José Carlos Mariategui.

The Quilacocha lake from the sky. The wastes of the mining process- es are thrown into the lake as a sort of mud that assumes this orange color for the presence of iron oxides. This water is 5,000 times more acid then the legal limit for the protection of the ecosystem.

Hermelinda (8) lives in the village of Quilacocha, a few meters far away from the lake. Her body is completely covered by spots; clear symptoms of arsenic
intoxication.

The lake of Yanamate it has also been used as a mining waste disposal.
Its waters are so polluted that in the last year the authorities have built a fence in order to avoid people and animals to get close to it.

Benjamin (8) lives in the community of Paragsha. When he was only six years old he was
diagnosed with eyes tumor and they had to remove his left eye. Hospitalized in Lima, the
doctors diagnosed metastases in all his organs. Analysis has shown the link between those
metastases and the presence of heavy metals in his body.

The Cruz del Sol that dominates the city from the mountain of Paragsha.

An overview of the city of Cerro de Pasco. Crumbling houses surround the site of mining extraction. The blue buildings on the right are the offices of the mining company.

A musician in the Alcides Carrion square, the “new” central square of Cerro de Pasco (the old one has been swallowed by the mine in the 80s). Every Sunday the population
of Chaupimarca gather here for defile and music.

A wedding among the roads of Cerro de Pasco.

Yan (13) is affected by a behavioral disease, caused by the presence of lead in his body. This disease make him violent and aggressive. Yan sit on a pipe of the
old treatment plant.