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TODAY’S BIG TOPIC:

HOPE RISES IN THE WORLD’S HIGHEST SETTLEMENT

Monday, June 21, 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CÉDRIC GERBEHAYE

By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor

A sleepy settlement in the Peruvian Andes—the highest-altitude town in the world—has morphed into a sprawling, dangerous toxic center of gold mining over the past two decades.

If anything could change La Rinconada for the better, it may be an international effort to clean up the worst practices of gold mining for certification of its riches to sale.

The stakes are high. In the thin air and biting cold of snowcapped Mount Ananea sit metal shacks packed around jerry-built mine entrances and a refuse-choked lake. At 16,732 feet above sea level, 30,000 to 50,000 people jostle in a smelly space without garbage collection or a sewer system, Barbara Fraser and Hildegard Willer report in the July edition of National Geographic.

Toxic mercury gas poisons many, including the women who scavenge through piles of waste rock outside the mine entrances (pictured above), searching for gold-bearing chunks. Cyanide is used in mining the gold in the tunnels.

The hope is that, for major buyers to take this gold, it will have to meet higher mining standards and be able to be traced to the source. That might improve the life of miners like Antonio Yana Yana (below left), who is already suffering from lung problems, or Fidel Eliseo Mestas Mendoza, who chews on coca leaves to get him through the shift.

Anthropologist Victor Hugo Pachas notes that “fair-trade” gold is still a small portion of the gold being mined, but 18 mines in Peru already are certified and he believes the movement will spread, despite complex contracts at La Rinconada’s underground mines.

“It’s not impossible,” Pachas tells National Geographic . “It’s a matter of the miners having the will to do it. And a matter of trust.”

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded photographer Cédric Gerbehaye’s work covering COVID-19 in Belgium.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

The problem with pointy-toed shoes: Archaeologists have finally figured out something that fashion-conscious shoe wearers have known for years. Pointy-toed shoes cause bunions. Archaeologists studying 177 medieval skeletons in Cambridge, England, noted a jump in bunions as the shoes came into vogue among medieval men in the 14th and 15th centuries. The minor but uncomfortable deformity was mostly found in skeletons of men over 45, the BBC reports, “suggesting youthful fashion choices caused problems in middle age.”

Big diamond in Botswana: A 1,098.3 carat-diamond has been unearthed in a mine in this southern African nation—and it may be the third biggest ever “gem quality” diamond ever mined, the Associated Press reports. Just how big is that? Just shy of a half-pound. The mine is a joint venture between the nation and the De Beers Group. A 1,109-carat stone, found in Botswana in 2015, was sold for $53 million. The biggest known diamond, 3,106 carats, was discovered in South Africa in 1905—and part of it now is among the British monarchy’s crown jewels.

Sweet gig: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of National History is establishing a new position: the Winiarski Curator of Food and Wine History. Don’t ship off your resume just yet. The Smithsonian tells Food & Wine that it won’t have a job description or hiring timeline until it has the $4 million bequest from winemakers in hand.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES P. BLAIR, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Wind energy, whimsically: National Geographic’s December 1975 issue featured a story called "Can We Harness the Wind?" about the possibilities for wind energy in the U.S. Our popular Photo of the Day feature recently spotlighted this image from the story, of Emil Gehrke with just a few of the 300 decorative windmills he built for his yard in Grand Coulee, Washington.

SEE VINTAGE PHOTOS

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY GRAHAM DICKIE

Where Juneteenth began: In Galveston, Texas, descendants of enslaved people want to make one thing clear. Their ancestors knew long before Union soldiers showed up in June 1865 that President Lincoln had declared the emancipation of slaves two and a half years earlier. Those ancestors continued working in servitude only until the U.S. soldiers’ arrival because the Confederates had the guns, residents told Nat Geo’s Tucker C. Toole. Several of the Texas city’s African American residents said they didn’t really know until they grew up about the background of Juneteenth, which was declared a federal holiday on Thursday by President Biden. (Pictured above, Galveston native and political activist Roxy Williamson stands in the city’s Strand District, by the old port.)

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

I tried, as the song says, to wake the children sleeping. I'm supposed to be disturbing the peace.

James Baldwin

Writer, novelist: Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time

From a just-surfaced (never-aired) 1979 television interview

DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS TO YOU?

On Tuesday, Robert Kunzig covers the environment. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up here to also get Victoria Jaggard on science, Rachael Bale on animal news, George Stone on travel, and Whitney Johnson on photography.

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH VIA AFRO NEWSPAPER, GADO/GETTY IMAGES

Can’t we all swim together? On a hot summer day, a dip in a public pool can be refreshing—and healthy. Yet people of color have long faced barriers to American swimming pools, from white violence to the rise of segregated swim clubs. Erin Blakemore examines this sad legacy for Nat Geo, and lists a startling statistic from 2017—nearly 64 percent of Black children and 45 percent of Latino children can’t swim, compared to 40 percent of white children. (Pictured above, a summer day in 1955 in Baltimore’s Pool No. 2, then the only pool that accommodated the city’s Black residents.)

Today's newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams. Jen Tse and Heather Kim selected the photographs. Kristin Romey also contributed to this issue. Have an idea or link to a story you think is right down our alley? Let us know at [email protected]. Thanks for reading.

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