https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/05/life-peril-unearth-truth
“The trust of the people who want the truth to be known, who want to give their testimony and want things to change in my region… They are the ones who have given me strength to do this job,” said Manuel Calloquispe Flores.
Calloquispe Flores has worked as a journalist for the past 15 years and for more than 10 years has investigated illegal gold mining in La Pampa, in the southeastern Amazonian region of Madre de Dios, Peru.
La Pampa is located in the buffer zone of the National Reserve, a region Calloquispe Flores describes as a lush jungle rich in biodiversity and wildlife, the place where he was born and grew up taking long walks, running through the forest and bathing in its streams. Today, criminal gangs have overrun the region, illegally mining, moving and trading gold in an otherwise well regulated industry.
Mining is not allowed in the area because of its adverse impact on conservation. Since 2011, between five and 15 hectares of land are deforested daily, he said, and more than 600 tonnes of mercury have been dumped in the soil to extract gold.
Manuel Calloquispe Flores photographed on the Peruvian Air Forces base in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, July 2014. © Manuel Calloquispe Flores
Calloquispe Flores regularly reports on the environmental damage and organized crime in La Pampa. He was the first journalist to publicly expose cases of disappearances related to illegal mining in Madre de Dios. He never planned on becoming a journalist, as he studied business administration. However, when he returned home from the capital Lima where he went to university, he saw the magnitude that mining had taken. Enticed by the rise in the price of gold, people and criminal groups started migrating to La Pampa. “An invasion,” he said.
“The panorama was changing and nobody cared about the impact of mining, so I started to write for a local newspaper,” Calloquispe Flores recalled. “Then I hosted a programme on local television and I dedicated myself to denouncing what was happening.”
Calloquispe Flores began keeping records of people disappearing in the mines. “Nobody would report on this,” he added. “So I dedicated myself to defending the lives of the disappeared, of the families who were searching for their loved-ones, the mothers and their children who were looking for their fathers. I had to.”
As a result of his investigative work, Calloquispe Flores has suffered various incidents throughout his career. In April 2013, he was assaulted inside his home and in front of his children while covering protests related to illegal mining in Madre de Dios. Two years later, he was once again assaulted on the Madre de Dios River by illegal miners who stole his recording equipment.
One of the most serious threats he faced took place in January 2023, when he was physically assaulted by a group of protesters while livestreaming for Latina TV in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the region. Calloquispe Flores also received death threats via WhatsApp and Messenger and experienced harassment near his home. As a result, he was forced to flee the area.
“Where I work is not a place where criminal gangs or those I denounce will send a letter asking for a correction, file a complaint for defamation or slander, or attack me on social media. These people will hire a hitman and pay them to kill me,” he said.
Smoke and ashes seen in the Peruvian Amazon as thousands of plants and trees are burned for land dedicated to cultivation, livestock or illegal mining, Madre de Dios, Peru, 04 September 2022. © EPA-EFE/Paolo Aguilar.
Calloquispe Flores said that a few people working in the mines have come forward to provide him with information on the illegal activity in the mines to report on. Many fear reprisals from gangs and have lost their trust in law enforcement and the judicial system. Calloquispe Flores said that, in January 2025, a woman working in La Pampa handed him over sensitive information, asking him to report on it directly.
“I had to agree. I was a journalist, an ordinary citizen in my locality who was given sensitive information that could affect a person’s life and I couldn’t give it to the authorities. I had to put a story together,” he said.
Calloquispe Flores felt he had a sacred duty to fulfill and a debt owed to his source who had put her own life in danger to affect change. His story was about the discovery of four bodies in La Pampa and was picked up by one of the biggest media outlets in Peru. “That became my best work and at that stage, I could see very clearly, unlike in previous years, that I would get good things out of this. I felt much more confident.”
The same month, he was alerted of threats made against him by allegedly illicit actors. He also reported receiving intimidating calls from unknown numbers and, according to the victims’ families, he was being monitored by various criminal organizations in La Pampa.
From then, Calloquispe Flores also realised that he had reached an unprecedented level in his career and notoriety. He needed to put a system in place to store and protect the sensitive information he received, away from his home.
