The rise of artisanal copper mining - driven by high global metal prices and sustained by a messy government permitting system - is threatening billions in new investments by Southern Copper and others in Peru
planned $2.6 billion Los Chancas mine. One of the world's biggest copper miners, it also has a permit to dig in the same area.
"This used to happen with silver and gold, but now it's affecting copper," said Raul Jacob, Southern Copper's chief financial officer, bemoaning what the company sees as the government's poor handling of artisanal mining permits. "Informal mining is entering lands granted to formal companies and threatening the development of large-scale projects," a source close to MMG told Reuters.
"We are going to defend ourselves. At the end of the day we are at home, and from home there is nowhere to go," Retamozo, a mining engineer and president of the Tapairihua Mining Association, told Reuters. In Peru's Andes many feel the copper under the ground is a right, with mining dating back to the Incas and other cultures that existed before Spain's colonization. Tapairihua looks down onto the river Antabamba, meaning "copper plain" in the Andean Quechua language.
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