(7 Jun 2014) Peru's mining boom may have doubled its economy and transformed the country into one of Latin America's growth leaders, but those closest to the mineral wealth say they have seen no benefits and remain impoverished.
Quechua-speaking highlanders in San Antonio de Juprog live on a mountain which happens to sit on top of the world's largest known copper-and-zinc deposit.
Lidia Zorrilla, who lives close to the open-pit Antamina mine, said residue from controlled explosions at the mine have laced the village's pastures and fields with heavy metals, contaminating people, crops and livestock.
She said the residue burns the skin and feels like "ashes from a wood fire".
The cloud paints the sky ochre and mingles with billows of cumulous that drift toward the glacier-strewn Cordillera Blanca range, a favourite of mountaineers.
Antamina's land and resettlement director has said the dust cloud is not toxic.
Requested by villagers, the tests by government health agencies found elevated levels of lead and cadmium in people's blood and urine and heavy metals exceeding international standards on their kitchen floors and shelves, and in the livers of their sheep.
Cadmium is a known human carcinogen while lead is toxic to almost every organ in the human body, according to the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Lead levels measured in 2006 exceeded concentrations deemed acceptable by the US Centres for Disease Control in 20 of 74 villagers, including nine children.
More than half of the 82 adults and children tested had cadmium levels exceeding acceptable CDC limits.
Antamina acknowledged the dust complaints in its 2010 Sustainability Report but said it complied "100 percent" with air quality standards.
Health Ministry officials, meanwhile, did not respond to repeated requests to discuss the results, which the AP obtained through a freedom-of-information request and from lawyers for Juprog residents.
Peruvian public officials rarely discuss problems at major mines.
The Antamina mine is owned by a consortium comprised of BHP Billiton, Glencore/Xstrata, Mitsubishi and Teck Resources Ltd and netted 1.4 (b) billion US dollars in profits in the year ending June 2013.
But despite the company's mass profits, residents said they are yet to see any real benefits.
"They (Antamina) promised the mine would improve our quality of life, but then when we didn't want to sell our land (near the mine) they stripped us of it. They never relocated us as it should have been," said Maria Marzano, San Antonio de Juprog resident.
They plan to fight the mining company over what they claim to be unfulfilled promises.
However, most villagers have little faith that regulators or authorities will enforce laws against mining multinationals.
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