Illegal mining: 13 gold mine workers kidnapped and shot dead in Peru
Organized crime groups are behind the massacre and have already killed 39 miners.
BarcelonaThe mining company Poderosa confirmed this weekend that 13 of its workers, who had been kidnapped a week earlier by criminal gangs, were murdered. This Monday, relatives of the 13 deceased miners were finally able to identify the bodies, as protests against the Peruvian government for losing control of the Pataz region in the northwest of the country to organized crime continue to grow. Poderosa itself, for which the R&R company that hired the men worked, confirmed that its kidnapped workers had been "cruelly murdered by criminals allied with illegal mining."
According to police sources, the men were forced into a hole in the ground, bound, blindfolded, and naked, and there they were shot in the back of the head. The 13 men, aged between 24 and 39, had been kidnapped a week earlier, and in recent days there were reports that the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of 4 million Peruvian soles (about one million euros) from their families. Finally, this weekend, the bodies were found, while the criminals posted a video online showing alleged images of the execution. Some local media outlets claimed the men had been tortured and executed on the day of their kidnapping, but this detail was not confirmed. A video recorded by one of the victims moments before being ambushed had also been made public shortly beforehand. It shows the 13 miners walking in single file toward a mine where they were to perform security and support work, wearing vests and headlamps.
Emergency Situation
The province of Pataz has been declaring a state of emergency for over a year due to the actions of criminal gangs linked to illegal gold mining. The province is located in the heart of the La Libertad mountain range, in a geographically complex area that hampers police work and favors criminal gangs. According to the mining company Poderosa, 39 miners and company workers have now been killed by these armed groups who have taken control of Pataz, "turned into a lawless territory where violence runs rampant."
The same Peruvian employers' association has attacked the country's government for its "inability" to curb criminal gangs. This Saturday, another ambush against a mining camp in Aracoto, in the same province of Pataz, left eight people injured, including two police officers. "The barbarity displayed in the execution of these 13 miners, previously kidnapped, takes us back to the years when the Shining Path and the MRTA [Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement] were active in the country," the country's employers' association said in a statement, referring to the years of violence that occurred between 1900 and 2. The National Confederation of Private Business Institutions (Confiep) accused the government of "not being up to the circumstances and what the country demands," according to Efe.
The Peruvian government has been led by Dina Boluarte since Pedro Castillo's self-coup in 2022. Boluarte, cornered by accusations of corruption, assumed power after Castillo was arrested, as she was next in line as vice president. But she didn't call elections until a few months ago, and did so for April 2026.