In the Peruvian Andes, La Rinconada is the highest settlement on the planet, a place whose bleak existence depends on the high price of its most coveted resource—gold. As the price of the precious element more than quintupled over the past two decades, what was once a small town in the shadow of snowcapped Mount Ananea has transformed into an uncontrolled sprawl of corrugated metal shacks packed around artisanal mine entrances and a refuse-choked lake. The biting cold and lack of oxygen at 16,732 feet above sea level leave even the locals gasping for breath, and it smells like what it is—a settlement with a transient population of some 30,000 to 50,000 people and no garbage collection or sewer system. Fatal accidents in the labyrinth of mines deep inside Mount Ananea are common, as are lethal brawls. Miners have been robbed or even murdered after selling their gold, their bodies left in mine shafts. Some murder victims have been women and girls lured from larger cities in Peru and Bolivia by human traffickers who confiscated their identity papers and put them to work in La Rinconada’s dingy bars and brothels. Several small companies have claims in Mount Ananea, and one contracts out sections of its claim to around 450 members of cooperatives who are among its shareholders. The conditions in La Rinconada harm workers’ health and poison the Andean landscape, but that hasn’t stopped buyers and refiners in the United States, Switzerland, and other countries from purchasing La Rinconada’s gold, processing it, and turning it into bullion and brilliant jewelry. By that time, the gold bears no indication of its origin in poorly regulated Peruvian mines. International efforts to fetch better prices for gold from mines that meet higher standards have made no inroads in La Rinconada.