Junin

Junín hosts one of the world's most extreme examples of trophic cascade from industrial pollution—a contamination so severe that the UN labeled La Oroya a "sacrifice zone." The metallurgical complex, established in 1922 by the American Cerro de Pasco Corporation and privatized to Doe Run Peru in 1997, processes "dirty concentrates" containing metallic impurities that most smelters cannot handle. La Oroya is one of the few facilities worldwide capable of extracting gold, silver, antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, indium, and selenium as byproducts. This rare capability came at an extraordinary human cost.

A 2005 Ministry of Health study found that 99.9% of children under six years old in La Oroya had elevated blood lead levels. The surrounding mountains appear white—not from snow, but from heavy metal deposition that has rendered the soil infertile. In March 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a landmark ruling finding Peru responsible for violating residents' right to a healthy environment, ordering comprehensive remediation, specialized medical care, and a relocation plan. At 85 years old, activist Victoria Trujillo continues fighting for justice alongside her daughter Yolanda Zurita.

Beyond La Oroya, Junín's economy balances extractive industry against the agricultural potential of the Mantaro Valley, one of Peru's most productive highland farming zones. The region sits at 3,745 meters elevation where the eastern Andes watershed begins—a geographic position that funneled mineral wealth through the smelter but also concentrated its toxic legacy. The court ruling establishes precedent, but remediation of a landscape poisoned for over a century will require decades more.