Cajamarca

Cajamarca demonstrates source-sink dynamics across five centuries—a region where resources flow outward while poverty deepens. In 1532, the Inca emperor Atahualpa offered Francisco Pizarro's 168 soldiers a room filled with gold and silver in exchange for his freedom. The ransom was delivered; Atahualpa was killed anyway. The "Ransom Room" still stands as a monument to extraction without reciprocity. When Denver-based Newmont Mining opened Yanacocha in 1993, history began to repeat with different actors.

Yanacocha became South America's largest gold mine, producing 3.33 million ounces at its 2005 peak and generating an estimated $7 billion USD in gold to date. The operation sits between 3,500 and 4,100 meters elevation, spanning four drainage basins north of the city. At the time of Yanacocha's opening, Cajamarca was Peru's fourth-poorest department. Today, despite the extracted wealth, it has the highest extreme poverty rate in the country. The trophic cascade from mining is visible: activists document contaminated water sources, fish and frog disappearance, cattle illnesses, and loss of medicinal plants. In 2004, over 10,000 residents protested expansion onto Cerro Quilish, the mountain that supplies the city's water—Newmont suspended further exploration.

The region's economy now rests on two forms of resource extraction: gold from depleting deposits and coffee from terraced mountainsides. Cajamarca produces 22% of Peru's coffee, the highest of any region—an agricultural wealth that, unlike gold, regenerates annually. But the fundamental pattern persists: Cajamarca sits at the headwaters of resources that enrich distant shareholders while local populations organize resistance to protect what remains of their water, land, and futures.