Peruvian Miners: Resistance Amid the Legal-Illegal Divide

Brief

Deadly clashes between thousands of Peruvian miners and state security forces are intensifying across the country, sparked by the collapsing REINFO formalization registry---a bureaucratic maze with an impending deadline threatening to criminalize tens of thousands of workers overnight. While President Dina Boluarte’s administration blames “illegal mining,” the conflict is actually fueled by a “comprador” state using the flawed law as a political tool to divide the working class and protect a corrupt status quo. This struggle, however, goes far beyond local disputes, rooted in a neocolonial economic model where international corporations extract billions in profits while bypassing national sovereignty through legal tools like ISDS. This system of resource plunder helped fuel the political instability that led to President Castillo’s overthrow, leaving the trapped miners with a desperate choice: a debilitating and unsustainable general strike, or a violent confrontation with the powerful criminal gangs that thrive in the chaos.

The tensions and conflicts surrounding legal and illegal mining of Peruvian miners.

In July, fierce confrontations erupted between Peruvian riot police and artisanal and informal miners concerning the impending expiration of the Integral Registry of Mining Formalization (REINFO) on December 31, 2025. However, such conflicts within Peru’s mining sector are not limited to this year. Peru’s mining industry has long been a fierce battleground for the nation’s lower-class laborers. Conflicts between formal and informal miners, as well as among these workers, mining conglomerates, and the local government, have been escalating.

On July 4, 2025, the Peruvian government revoked the temporary mining permits of 50,565 informal miners, leaving only 31,560 miners in the formalization process. This action became the catalyst for the subsequent conflicts.

Subsequently, in the Nazca province of southern Peru, riot police units used force to suppress miners who were blockading the Pan-American Highway. The clashes resulted in at least one death and multiple injuries. In Lima, after a week of protesting outside Congress, artisanal and informal miners were dispersed with tear gas by police on Abancay Avenue, which was subsequently blocked off by the police. The miners have since relocated to University Park, about half a mile away, where they continue their protest with banners.

Interprovincial transportation companies in Lima suspended their services to the affected regions, and the price of some food items rose by 30% to 60% due to supply uncertainty. The most intense clashes between police and civilians occurred in Chala, Arequipa, where miners initially repelled the police with rocks and sticks. After regrouping, the police cleared the Pan-American Southern Highway using tear gas and rubber bullets. Tragically, a 27-year-old civilian, Alexander Checa, was shot and killed by police.

The government subsequently announced a 60-day period of dialogue in the hope of ending the roadblocks. However, according to the newspaper La República, despite claims of goodwill from both sides, the negotiations broke down as of August 1st, and it is possible that the informal miners will resume their protest blockades.

The savage growth of primitive capitalism in Peru’s mining veins and the cunning tactics of the Boluarte government.

Artisanal mining, which involves manual labor using rudimentary tools, usually takes place in poor regions. Informal labor operates by evading certain legal requirements but is not strictly illegal, while illegal labor functions entirely outside the legal framework.

Gold mining alone is of paramount importance to the Peruvian economy, accounting for 32% of the country’s mineral exports. In 2024, the export value of gold from formal mining operations was $8.5 billion (60%), while informal, artisanal, and illegal mining collectively contributed $6.8 billion (40%), the majority of which came from illegal operations. Nearly 300,000 people across the country are directly or indirectly involved in illegal, artisanal, and informal gold mining. Large-scale illegal mining operations often involve criminal networks that evade government regulation and use violence to protect their interests.

This is especially true in Madre de Dios, a remote province in the southeastern Amazon basin of Peru with vast gold-rich rivers. The region has transformed into a lawless zone where unregulated mining has caused severe ecological devastation, contaminating rivers with mercury and other toxic substances. Indigenous leaders report that criminal gangs kidnap children for labor and exploit girls for sexual prostitution.

Just this past May, 13 miners were discovered by their families after being kidnapped and executed by a local mining gang in Pataz province. This act was intended to establish a reign of terror, forcing out competitors.

Intriguingly, following this violent incident, Peru’s current president, Dina Boluarte, announced a series of measures that were either impractical or merely superficial. Her response began with the absurd declaration of a ban on all mining and armed activities in Pataz province, only to abruptly clarify hours later that the ban applied solely to unregistered mining.

It all ended perfunctorily with the imposition of a 30-day curfew. It is clear that the Boluarte government has failed, from start to finish, to offer even the slightest reform to address the survival crisis and criminalization confronting lower-class workers. Nor has it addressed the deeper causes that force some miners to eke out a living in a legal gray area. From this event, it is evident that these local criminal organizations operate with near-total impunity. This incident makes one thing clear: local criminal organizations are operating with near-total impunity.

Within the vast community of miners working beyond the reach of government and corporate oversight, many have been pushed to sell their labor outside the “clean” formal market that excludes them. As a result, a significant share of illegally extracted minerals has flowed into the hands of criminal networks, becoming a stable link in the chain of human trafficking and drug trade.

This includes long-standing syndicates like the Sánchez-Paredes family, notorious for using legal mining companies as a front to launder drug money. Typically, these gangs will invade fragmented artisanal mining communities and seize control of the industry through the violent means described above. The extracted gold is then either introduced into the market through front companies and forged documents or used directly as currency within underground networks to trade for weapons and drugs. Countless other crimes, such as the trafficking of women for forced prostitution, naturally exist as a side business.

However, it must be made clear that today’s illegal mining and its associated black market are not the crux of the problem. Rather, they are a collusive path forged by all reactionary forces in the long-standing Latin American environment where left-wing revolutionary narratives and movements have been suppressed. Leftist revolutionary organizations that were once active in Peru, like the Shining Path and Colombia’s FARC, also engaged in illegal mining. The minerals produced were used to fund their revolutionary cause, a fact authorities used as a pretext for their counter-insurgency campaigns. Yet, after these organizations were gradually forced from the stage of history, illegal mining activities did not decrease.

Nearly every reactionary force---be it international capital, the local comprador government, or grassroots criminal organizations---has a hand in this industry. The revolutionary armed groups that once built their strength in these undeveloped mining regions have been replaced by various groups driven solely by self-interest, such as Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta, the Universal Metal Trading corporation, and E&M, a major exporter of gold to Switzerland.

While they may not directly employ workers in illegal mining zones, their suppliers are overwhelmingly the local miners. This, of course, allows them to reap enormous profits. So, what is the conflict happening now really about? For decades, the illicit mining industry has been a routine part of a corrupt system, channeling vast amounts of gold overseas while leaving only meager earnings for the informal miners. If that is the case, why is a formalization law, which seemingly offers a glimmer of hope, actually intensifying the conflict?

The Integral Registry of Mining Formalization (REINFO) and the Interest Groups Behind It

The Integral Registry of Mining Formalization (REINFO) was originally implemented in 2016. As its name suggests, the law’s primary focus is to differentiate between legal and illegal miners and, through a multi-step process, to formalize the large number of informal artisanal and small-scale mining operations. On the surface, this was intended to curb the rampant spread of illegal mining in Peru and to provide a legal channel for employment for workers not hired by formal mining companies. However, the process is not only lengthy and stringent, but the applications of workers who fail to meet the requirements---or, in the official jargon, those who are “non-compliant”---are immediately suspended. Typically, a suspension means there is little chance of ever obtaining a permit again.

To briefly summarize the application process, candidates must first strictly meet the following prerequisites: 1. A clean record, with no history of illegal mining in restricted areas or other serious felonies (a condition that filters out a large number of people from the outset). 2. A long-term history of paying taxes through their mining activities. After meeting these two conditions, the application process can be initiated: 1. The applicant must fill out a detailed proposal describing their current project and its environmental impact, and if necessary, must commit to remediation measures for any environmental damage. 2. The application must be endorsed with a guarantor’s signature from a certified environmental specialist. 3. After submitting an application fee, the government agency will notify the applicant of its decision within several weeks.

Under such demanding requirements, according to 2024 data, not only did more than half of all applications fail, but even among those who were successfully registered in REINFO, only 12% of the 88,000 registered miners had actually completed the entire formalization process. To make matters worse, the original deadline to apply for REINFO was the end of 2024. Only after intense and widespread protests from miners was the government forced to reluctantly extend it to the end of 2025.

However, with the standards and procedures remaining unchanged, this extension brings no substantive relief. With this final “judgment day” once again approaching, and with even less room for negotiation, the miners, driven by sheer desperation, have launched a series of violent protests.

Following the failure to extend the REINFO program and the rejection of the Law for Small-Scale and Artisanal Mining (MAPE)---a bill intended to benefit just 86,000 artisanal miners---President Dina Boluarte made a controversial statement. She claimed that “only illegal miners are in the streets” and falsely asserted that the protesters were not seeking legalization, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The government cites criminal gangs and environmental issues to justify its repression, yet the gold mining operations run by these very same criminal gangs are often protected by powerful officials and police. However, is it only these black market zones operating outside the law that have colluded with the Peruvian government? The answer is undoubtedly no. Rather, it is the so-called “legal” international mining capital that is the black hand tightening its grip on the throats of Peru’s countless proletarians.

To cite a few examples, Canada’s Hudbay Minerals controls a large share of Peru’s copper production and exploration. A total of eleven Canadian companies hold over $8.5 billion in assets in Peru. BHP, based in the UK and Australia, controls 20% of the country’s copper production. US and Japanese capital also accounts for nearly 20% of copper output. Large-scale mining projects, especially the open-pit mines located high in the Andes, are a source of massive profit outflow. In 2021 alone, transnational mining corporations extracted $8.02 billion in net profits for the United States from the Peruvian economy, out of a total of $15.7 billion. This single sector’s profit extraction for the U.S. surpassed the combined total of all other economic sectors.

Furthermore, nearly all non-Chinese foreign mining companies in Peru have utilized the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism to bypass national sovereignty, demanding that the Peruvian government compensate them for so-called “lost profits” caused by social protests. The amounts of these claims are almost never made public, making it difficult to calculate the immense economic pressure being placed on Peru’s already strained finances. We must not forget that under pressure from Western (especially US) mining giants, the progressive-leaning government of Pedro Castillo was fractured and ultimately overthrown in a joint action by Congress and the military in December 2022---a reactionary coup against the will of the people.

With each opportunity for improvement and reform extinguished, all that remains is the relentless advance of a comprador regime acting as an agent for neocolonialism. In response to the current conflict, at least 600 troops have already been deployed to the affected regions. Meanwhile, since the protests began on July 15th, negotiations between unions and the government have made no substantive progress.

Instead, the Boluarte administration has issued an almost impossible ultimatum: by August 17th, miners must transfer all explosives they possess into officially managed magazines. Failure to comply carries the threat that the approximately 20,000 miners still in the formalization process will be purged from the system altogether before the end of 2025.

Conclusion

The REINFO program has erected numerous obstacles for miners, including their inability to secure contracts from landowners, the lack of clear regulations for surface mining and environmental management, and the difficulty for miners in remote regions to obtain authorizations from the Ministry of Energy and Mines in Lima. Compounding this complexity is Peru’s high degree of inequality, especially in education. Many artisanal and informal miners are former farmers seeking better income from mining, and they lack the educational background required to navigate REINFO’s regulations.

The current situation benefits the large-scale investments of formal and multinational corporations. At the same time, it pushes artisanal and informal miners who cannot meet the eligibility requirements toward illegal mining.

Taking a step further, we can glimpse the comprador regime’s attempt to use this policy to deepen the division between formal and informal workers, making it even more difficult for an already fragile proletariat to struggle as a unified whole. Foreseeably, the displaced artisanal miners, cornered on all sides, will be forced to organize in more violent or gang-like forms in an attempt to offset the influence of international capital in their regions. However, this will not lead to liberation.

Rather, the contemporary Peruvian state maintains its very operation through a stable corruption that profits from both legal and illegal sectors. The dilemma faced by the Peruvian unions to take action is, on one hand, that its legal standing is subordinate to transnational mining corporations from the outset. On the other hand, beyond the frustrated formal mining sector, the bloody intensity of illegal mining far exceeds the level of violence that unions can currently mobilize or tolerate. This difficult dilemmatic situation is a universal one. Here, we must specify the economic predicament commonly faced by Latin American countries like Peru across all sectors, including mining. According to Peru’s national accounts, the country achieved a massive trade surplus (exports minus imports) of $14.8 billion in 2021. After subtracting a services deficit of $7.3 billion (mainly transportation costs), the combined balance for goods and services was still a surplus of $7.5 billion. However, once all income and payments are factored in, Peru’s current account balance was a deficit of $5.3 billion.

Although the “real economy” generated a trade surplus, the country’s international financial position worsened by the end of the year. The $15.7 billion in profits that flowed out of Peru in 2021 was a new record, surpassing the previous cyclical peaks of $12 billion recorded in 2011 and 2012. These massive outflows are the hallmark of underdevelopment---a transfer of value. The value of goods produced in Peru far exceeds the consumption of its residents, which at first glance should lead to a rapidly expanding capitalist economy. It is not the case; however, because the majority of the profits continuously flow abroad, leading to a balance of payments deficit.

This financial deficit is then covered by loans, which in turn require interest payments, creating further deficits that push the country into a deeper quagmire. The result is that the loss of wealth remains at home, while the majority of the financial gains are enjoyed abroad.

Returning to Peru’s mining struggle, there may be two viable paths for the unions and miners to fight for at least a minimum of bargaining power within the existing, broken framework.

One path is to call for a general strike of all formal and informal miners to the greatest extent possible, thereby forcing capital to make concessions. However, judging by the current trend, as resistance and repression from the middle class and the right-wing government continue to mount, the power and space for this option are weakening. It is difficult for informal miners to mobilize employees who are already integrated into formal mining enterprises, and a prolonged protest is fundamentally detrimental to laborers who lack the means of production---or even subsistence---and have no external support.

The other path is to confront the illegal mining zones. In the face of dysfunctional and corrupt local judicial institutions, unions or other forms of solidarity could try to suppress, or even eradicate, the out-of-control violent organizations. If they have no leverage in direct negotiations for their share, then the proletariat must at least unite to secure their lives and property, trying to use disciplined violence to counter out-of-control violence. This path is certainly no simpler than a union strike and may even come at a more tragic cost.

Between the union movement, which leans toward compromise and fighting to reclaim a portion of their surplus value, and the armed struggle born from intense contradictions, both paths will require resolute action and practical considerations from the Peruvian proletariat.