Pope's visit to Peru highlights devastation in rainforest region

Two decades ago, Swiss priest Xavier Arbex started sounding alarms about a looming environmental disaster in the remote Amazonian region of Peru where he had settled.

Wildcat miners who once sifted for gold alongside rivers using wheelbarrows and buckets had started tearing through pristine rainforest with heavy machinery.

"I knew this was going to be a big problem," Arbex said, describing his attempts to enlist heavyweight environmental groups to stop the pending disaster. "No-one listened."

Wildcat gold mining in Peru has since flourished into a black market trade estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year. In addition to the environmental devastation, it has spawned human trafficking and violent criminal networks in distant corners of the Amazon.

TRT World's Arabella Munro has this report.

Seeking to shine a light on the problem, Pope Francis will visit the jungle region of Madre de Dios (Mother of God) on Friday. It will be the pontiff's first stop outside the capital Lima on a three-day tour of Peru, which follows a trip to neighboring Chile.

While Francis has denounced environmental degradation before, he has yet to do so in a place as threatened as Madre de Dios, parts of which have still been trod only by reclusive tribes and the odd explorer.

Recognition

In recognition of Arbex's cause, Francis will visit a home for troubled youth that the aging priest founded in the regional capital Puerto Maldonado, a riverside town buzzing with motorcycles and the psychedelic sounds of cumbia dance music near Peru's border with Brazil and Bolivia.

"We'll finally be the center of attention," said Eduardo Farfan, a 30-year-old owner of a menswear shop in Puerto Maldonado, where posters welcoming the pope hung from wooden homes. "When I go to Lima to buy clothes, some people have no idea where Puerto Maldonado is."

Successive political leaders in Peru have failed to slow the illegal gold rush. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski's plan to "formalise" miners who comply with labour and environmental laws has been derailed by crises in his centre-right government.

As mining has become the motor of the local economy in Madre de Dios, helping elect a former wildcat miner as governor, it has turned increasingly violent.

Harassed

Park rangers are regularly harassed by miners near the Tambopata nature reserve. Last year, authorities announced the discovery of a pit near mining camps where a criminal gang incinerated at least 20 victims. In September, a police officer was killed in an ambush during an environmental patrol.

"It's out of control," said Freddy Vracko, a third-generation Yugoslav-Peruvian tree farmer.

Vracko's father was shot dead by masked men in his home in December 2015 after his family endured years of death threats from encroaching miners. That prompted Vracko to run for governor in this year's regional elections.

"I love that the Pope is coming. Just the fact that he'll be here ... it's going to be a tipping point," said Vracko. "No one has really wanted to solve this problem."