It looks like the highest city on Earth. Photo

High in the Peruvian Andes there is the old camping for the extraction of gold, which over the years has grown to city status.

More than 30,000 people live here at the height of 5000 kilometers, but the settlement itself is the highest town in the world.

La Rinconada (elevation 5100 meters) is perched so high up that the weather conditions there resemble the West coast of Greenland. Summer in the city humid, while winters are dry, with chilly-cold. The average annual temperature in La Rinconada is only 1.2 °C.

In La Rinconada there are no roads, plumbing and Sewerage systems. Buildings made from tin sheets without any insulation. All the men work in the mines, while the women sell goods, engage in prostitution, or looking for gold among the rocks. Earth, air, water, and snow in La Rinconada heavily contaminated with toxic waste.

Almost all work here mine unofficial. There is no administration and no laws. Nothing ever invests in the development of the city, the economy is not regulated, and most of the gold mined goes straight to the black market.

Mining company, Corporacion Ananea does not pay salaries to their workers. Instead, they work for the city in the palm (Photo)under an archaic labor system “cachorro”. According to the rules, people will work for thirty days without pay, and on the thirty-first day they are allowed to take as much ore as you can carry weary shoulders. Reserves of gold in the local rocks has long been exhausted, but thousands of people still trying to catch the tail of luck and work in hellish conditions because of a single day. Then this gold is sold on the black market at a fraction of the price. Despite this non-traditional system of payment, miners continue to flock to the region. Since 2001, the population of La Rinconada has more than doubled.

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