Life and Production in La Rinconada, Peru

La Rinconada Perú is the harshest place we´ve visited for 10x10. Right now, director Richard Robbins and field producer Gina Nemirofsky are there to film a story based on the life of a remarkable fifteen year old poet named Sina. Sina lives here in La Rinconada. The town sits at the base of an eighteen thousand foot mountain peak high in the Andes. When the global economy crashed in 2008 thousands of Peruvians migrated here in search of gold. About 50,000 people live on the peak and another 40,000 pack inside buses that navigate the single lane highway everyday. The idea of a child growing up here is unthinkable. It´s more of a hell than a place to call home. Miners die young, families are broken, domestic violence is the norm. There is no clean water, sewer system or even police to fight the violent crime. One resident told us that there were more girls held captive by sex traffickers than were enrolled in the local public high school. From what we could tell, the children of La Rinconada don´t benefit from the mountain´s riches. One girl sat across from us, embarrassed to speak because she was missing all her teeth. Another described how they drink ´moonshine´ before heading to the steep hill sides where they pick through rocks discarded by the mines hoping to go home with a few specks of gold. By some miracle, in the midst of this grip and dispair we discovered Sina. Her father was killed in a mining accident three years ago but before his death, he managed to instill within her the importance of education. “I will be triumphant”, she told us. I will make it off this mountain one way or another.