Reports of “seven-foot-tall aliens” terrorizing villagers in Peru stunned the world this week. Local leaders described the “armoured” and “floating” threats as impervious to bullets.
Locals have also likened their attackers to “green goblins” and local Peruvian superstitions about “los Pelacaras” (“the face peelers”) – but now Peruvian law enforcement have suggested a new suspect.
Blame it on illegal gold mining crime syndicates, they said: offshoots of famous drug cartels like Brazil’s O Primeiro Comando da Capital, Colombia’s Clan del Golfo, FARC and others that have ravaged Latin America for decades.
The Peruvian prosecutor’s office, which is currently investigating the “alien attacks”, has pointed the finger at these gold mafia, who have been partially expelled from Brazil and Colombia by their military.
Now in Peru, these jet-packed gold cartels are hoping to foment fear with their bizarre “alien” terror campaign, prosecutors say, by keeping locals in their homes and away from the cartels’ illegal gold mines.
Prosecutors suspect that these illegal mining cartels first used their jetpacks to mine for gold deeper into the unforgiving jungle around Peru’s Nanay River.
Peru’s prosecutors, who are currently investigating the flying “alien” attacks, have pointed the finger at the illegal gold-mining “mafia” driven out of Brazil and Colombia. Above, armed Peruvian officers arrive in the rural Ikitu community in Alto Nanay to investigate
In 2023 alone, 110 illegal gold diggers and 10 criminal mining camps were destroyed, according to Peru’s environmental prosecutor’s office. In 2020, a NASA astronaut managed to capture images of the glittering (but illegal) gold mines of eastern Peru aboard the International Space Station
Peruvian government prosecutors investigating the case believe criminal gold cartels have begun using jetpacks to prospect for gold deeper in the Alto Nanay jungle. Above, a local teen shares a picture of the jetpacks she and others saw during the flying “alien attacks.”
Members of Peru’s small Ikitu population are surrounded by dense jungle in rural Alto Nanay, where gold has deposited like silt in the riverbeds along the Nanay River’s tributaries, which flow into the Amazon.
The Ikitu told reporters that this summer’s “alien” siege began on July 11, and locals have since faced brutal attacks from flying, 7-foot-tall, mysterious beings in dark hoods.
“These gentlemen are extraterrestrials,” an Ikitu leader, Jairo Reátegui Ávila, told local radio station Radio Programas del Perú (RPP).
“I shot him twice and he doesn’t fall but gets up and disappears,” Reátegui Ávila confessed to local radio station. “We are afraid of what is happening in the community”
But another key prosecution witness, a school teacher, reported seeing these eerie beings rise from the ground in a much more terrestrial manner.
According to that teacher, Cristian Caleb Pacaya, and other prosecution witnesses, the illegal mining cartel used propellers and high-tech equipment. Peruvian law enforcement agencies have dubbed the devices “jetpacks.”
“They would use cutting-edge technology, like engines that would allow people to fly,” Carlos Castro Quintanilla, the Peruvian government prosecutor investigating the case, told RPP
Pacaya, who works in the nearby community of San Antonio de Pintuyacu, told RPP Noticias news agency that he witnessed illegal miners attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old girl on July 29.
The teenage girl reportedly sustained cuts to her neck and other injuries in the attempted kidnapping and is now being treated at the scene.
Quintanilla, Loreto’s special prosecutor for environmental affairs, told RPP that these “mafias de extranjeros,” or foreign mafias, operate their gold mining operations in towns in Loreto, Peru’s northernmost region.
Quintanilla said 80 percent of these illegal gold mining operations are located in the Nanay River Basin, an area northwest of the capital of Loreto and home to the Ikitu people.
As Loreto’s environmental crime watchdog, Quintanilla told the outlet he suspects these illegal gold miners initially used the jetpacks to prospect deeper into the dense Peruvian jungle for promising new riverbed gold deposits.
“We investigated that these gentlemen would use this suit to reach these places,” he said.
According to this theory, the gold cartels’ use of jetpacks to stage their violent otherworldly attacks would have been more of an afterthought.
Frightened villagers in a rural Peruvian district have claimed they were attacked by 7-foot-tall aliens they dubbed “Los Pelacaras” (the face peelers). Above, a man with bandages around his head, who is said to have been attacked by the aliens, is assisted by two other villagers
The Ikitu have asked the Peruvian military to intervene in the face of the extraordinary Scooby Doo-style attacks on their home in Alto Nanay last month.
Locals initially described the attackers as silver-colored creatures with huge heads, impervious to the tribe’s hunting weapons.
“They seem to be armored like the green goblin from Spider-Man,” said Ikitu leader Ávila.
Ávila went on to describe the attacker’s shoes as “round shaped”.
“With that they rise,” he declared. “They levitate a meter high and have a red light on their heel.”
“His head is long, his mask is long and his eyes are half yellowish.” “They see you well with them and leave,” Ávila’s statements read, as quoted by RPP.
“They are experts at escaping,” he said.
After one such “alien attack” a 15-year-old girl (pictured) had to be taken to the hospital. According to local reports, she suffered neck injuries while fighting one of the mysterious beings believed to be criminals from the Gold Cartel
Unable to continue with their daily lives in the village, which is about ten river hours from Loreto’s capital Iquitos, the Ikitu have now organized night patrols to hunt down their high-tech attackers until the Peruvian military can intervene .
Alongside the “7-foot-tall alien invaders” theory, some locals also referred to the groups as “Los Pelacaras,” after the alleged organ traffickers known in the area, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the face-peeling monsters of local legend.
While gold mining has been part of Peru’s economy for centuries, the practice of wildly unregulated, so-called “artisanal mining” boomed in the region during the 2008 global financial crisis, when gold prices had been skyrocketing for a long time.
“In some countries,” according to a 2016 assessment by international law enforcement agency INTERPOL, “illicit trafficking in gold would be more profitable than drug trafficking and would be considered low-risk by criminals, likely reflecting the strong law enforcement response to drugs .” Human trafficking in the region.”
As more investors flee national currencies due to market instability or inflationary pressures, gold’s value continues to lure organized crime to expand these illegal mining operations.
While it has been difficult to quantify the true value of this black and gray market gold, the non-profit Artisanal Gold Council (AGC) estimates that these activities account for about one-fifth of all gold production worldwide.
“Artisanal gold mining,” as AGC describes it, is a distinct industry worth between $30 billion and $40 billion.
Illegal, unregulated and “artisanal” gold miners were producing about 500 tons annually, according to AGC estimates for 2023, a steady increase from the roughly 330 tons produced by this nebulous underworld of gold mining in 2011.
Peru is currently the largest gold producer in Latin America, uncovering approximately 150 tons of “artisanal gold” each year, according to AGC analysis.
The devastation and pollution caused by these gold cartel operations has become so great that its impact on the Peruvian jungle can be seen from space.
On Christmas Eve 2020, an astronaut was able to photograph the glittering gold mines of eastern Peru while orbiting the International Space Station.
As later explained in a post from NASA’s Earth Observatory, these gold prospecting pits consist of hundreds of densely packed, water-filled pools carved out of cleared and devegetated patches of mud.
As noted by NASA’s Earth Observatory, the criminal gold pits consist of hundreds of packed, water-filled pools carved into cleared and devegetated patches of mud. While the pits from space are beautiful, they leave behind toxic mercury and other devastation
Unable to continue with their daily lives in the village, which is about ten hours by river from Loreto’s capital Iquitos, the Ikitu have now organized into night patrols to hunt down the attackers of the high-tech gold cartel – until that Peruvian military manages to intervene seriously
Environmental agencies, local citizens and many others have expressed concern at how these illegal gold miners use mercury and its no less toxic sister compound methylmercury to separate gold ore from the surrounding soil.
Mercury, synonymous with ‘Mad Hatters’ in the Victorian era, is a powerful neurotoxin that can harm local wildlife and humans when it enters ponds, waterways and underground aquifers.
Worse still, once the pure mercury is in the soil and water, bacterial and microbial processes will inevitably convert it into highly toxic methylmercury, allowing it to persist and amplifying its damage.
From orbit, however, the illegal gold mines shine with an otherworldly, menacing beauty as they reflect the sun’s rays.
South of Loreto, in the Madre de Dios region or “department”, the Peruvian government declared a “state of emergency” in 2019 and deployed 1,500 police officers and soldiers to crack down on criminal gold mining.
According to a 2022 USAID report, around 6,000 gold miners were working in the Madre de Dios region alone with formal permits from the Peruvian government.
But according to USAID estimates, almost six times as many, around 40,000 illegal gold diggers were deployed in Madre de Dios.
So far in 2023, Quintanilla and his environmental prosecutor’s office in Loreto report that they have managed to destroy 110 illegal gold diggers and 10 mining camps.
Last weekend, Peruvian Navy fighters were fired upon by illegal gold miners near the municipalities of Pucaurco and Alvarenga, RPP reports. In doing so, they managed to destroy oil drums, a gold mine water extraction system, and other equipment used by the criminal gold miners.
However, no jetpacks were recovered from these weekend raids.