Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of rock must move, a toxic pound of mercury will spill into the environment, and countless
lives—biological andbotanical—will strugglewiththeconsequences.Itdoesn'ttakeasocial
scientist or a chemist to walk through that wasteland and reckon the costs.
For a girl like Senna, there is a further danger, very different from the toxins, vectors, and
violence that plague her town. La Rinconada is a humming beehive of brothels, looking for
girls precisely her age. A lawyer and social worker, Leon Quispe, who has dedicated himself
to the welfare of the community, estimates that anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 girls, some as
young as 14, move through La Rinconada's cantinas in any given year. They are held captive
as sexual slaves. Some come from as far away as the slums of Lima, but most hail from little
villages around Puno and Cuzco—a sad cavalcade of gullible girls who arrive in La Rincon-
ada believing they will wait on tables, sell food, and earn good tips; that they'll be able to
send their destitute families some measure of stable income. In their enthusiasm, they hand
over their identity cards to a sweet-talking recruiter. What they learn when they arrive is that
it isn't food they will be selling. Their bodies will be the commodities, and the prices have
been long established: sex with a bargirl costs a man a few drinks and a few extra
soles;
a
young girl's hymen is worth a seed of gold.
La República
, one of Peru's major newspapers, explained the racket via a single story:
Two 16-year-old girls from a tiny village outside Cuzco were approached in a public park
by a woman they knew, a former neighbor. She offered them $500 a month to work at a res-
taurant in the airport city of Juliaca—all benefits included. Since they were virtually penni-
less, they readily agreed. But the only time the girls spent in Juliaca was the time it took to
change buses. Four hours later, they were in a dilapidated bar in La Rinconada, in time for
the miners' change of shifts. It was then that they learned they were obliged to consort with
men, offerthem sex.They were told the rules: Ifaman touched their breasts orgenitals, they
werenottorebuffhim.Theywouldbegivenaticketforeverysixbottlesofbeertheirclients
consumed. One ticket was worth 4 Peruvian
soles
, or $1.25. Whatever sex they might nego-
tiate would be traded at a more favorable rate: the proprietor would only take half. The girls
quickly found that they had no way to exit that nightmare: they had no papers, no means to
travel; and a surly guard with a knife was at the door.
The cantinas in La Rinconada are 24-hour-a-day operations. They do business out of slip-
shodedificesthatclimbuptheroadwilly-nilly,alongsidethegold-burningshops.Duringthe
day, miners come for a beer or to have their mercury-laden nuggets fired down to pure gold.
The crude furnaces sit out where everyone can see them, spewing mercury into the open air;
the fumes snake through the cantinas and float out onto the glacial snow, La Rinconada's
primary water source. Mercury levels in those public spaces are 5,000 percent higher than
what is permissible in regulated factories. But here, no one is measuring. Women and chil-
dren hurry through the murky haze, hawking their food and water. The sick struggle in and
outofdoorways,breathingthedeadlyair.Atnight,whenthedrinkingestablishmentsturnin-
