Cajamarca once mined half of Peru's gold, now a quarter

Claim types Fact

Ministerio de Energía y Minas (MINEM), gold production by department, grams of fine content, monthly, as published in BCRPData (series family PE.BCRP.DEP.MINING.GOLD), read from the BCRP API via the progrss vault (§4.11, bcrp-peru passes value_checks). Annual values are the sum of the twelve monthly values (progrss calculation); shares are of the sum over the 17 reporting departments. Peru total 208.00 t (2005), 106.45 t (2025); 2020 low 84.5 t. Cajamarca 103.21 t to 25.99 t (49.6% to 24.4%); La Libertad 35.92 to 29.54 t (17.3% to 27.8%); Arequipa 18.51 to 22.62 t (8.9% to 21.3%); Ayacucho 0.04 to 8.55 t (0.0% to 8.0%); Ancash 19.61 to 0.01 t (9.4% to 0.0%); Madre de Dios 16.33 to 1.23 t (7.9% to 1.2%). Cajamarca's fall is 77.2 t of the national fall of 101.6 t (76%). Caveats: this is MINEM's record of mining companies' reported output; informal and artisanal gold is only partly in it, so the Madre de Dios fall mixes less informal mining with less reporting. Cajamarca was 20.1 t in 2024 and 26.0 t in 2025, so the long fall has levelled off (January to August 2026: 16.9 t, against 17.1 t a year earlier). No cause is claimed. BCRP's own national 'Total' series exceeds the department sum in 2016–2020 and 2024–25 (2019: 128.3 vs 119.7 t; 2020: 85.9 vs 84.5; 2025: 106.6 vs 106.4), so the plate uses the department sum throughout. Live re-read of the BCRPData API matched the vault to the gram; January–August 2026: Cajamarca 16.9 t, 25.5% of the department sum.