Yeah it's counter intuitive, but I think it's because the mercury comes from the soil

“It is noteworthy that some areas with high averages of mercury are upriver from the mining zones,” states the map, which was shown to Health Ministry officials earlier this year.

The map suggests the second worse-hit area is inside the Manu park itself, immediately upriver from Boca Manu, along the River Manu’s left bank. The right bank is affected too. William Pan, the study’s lead researcher, told the Guardian “we didn’t sample people in Manu national park”, but explains the map on the basis that his teams have sampled several communities “along that bend of the river (Rio Manu/Rio Madre de Dios)” and “the map smoothing method creates a 10km buffer around the study sites and the exposure is extrapolated”.

How come people upstream are the most contaminated? Or maybe the mercury there has little or nothing to do with gold? As acknowledged by a 2011 report by the Environment Ministry, titled Gold-mining and Mercury Contamination in Madre de Dios: a Time-Bomb, mercury stored naturally in Amazon soil and vegetation is released when the forest is cut down or burnt and then leaches into the water.

Pan describes the mercury levels recorded by Duke as “very high” and says Madre de Dios is experiencing a “chronic mercury epidemic.” The contamination upstream was, he says, “the most surprising finding of our human Hg [mercury] assessment.”

“The communities near the confluence of Rio Manu and Rio Madre de Dios have the highest exposures in the region,” Pan told the Guardian. “When we tested fish, water and sediment, none of the values were high. So we were surprised when people were detected with high levels. We have several hypotheses that we are evaluating.”

According to Pan, those hypotheses are the people in that region migrate downriver to work in the mining, and that they are more dependent than the rest of Madre de Dios on local agriculture, fish and meat because there are no roads. Another is that “due to reliance on fish consumption, they are likely eat larger fish, which will have more Hg just naturally”.

According to USAID _{(Which, historically speaking, I have had no faith in...i.e. Soros)}:

Despite Peru’s sustained economic growth over the past decade, rural poverty remains remarkably high at 48%. Moreover, corruption has spread to an alarming degree to Peru’s interior. The Comptroller General’s 2017 Report states that corruption generates a loss of more than $3 billion dollars annually. More than 37,000 public officials have been identified as being involved in potential cases of corruption, affecting service delivery for the poorest and most vulnerable populations.

COMBATTING HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Peru is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, with more than 7,400 TIP victims been reported between 2009 - 2017. Indigenous Peruvian women and girls are particularly targeted. Since 2014, USAID works with the GOP to increase the understanding of human trafficking routes, identify improvements to victim and survivor protection services, train justice operators who work with TIP victims, and increase resources to counter Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in the areas of Loreto, Madre de Dios, Cusco, and Lima. USAID has provided legal and psychological support to almost 200 TIP victims rescued through the Center of Legal and Psychological Services operated by the local NGO Capital Humano y Social Alternativo and convened conferences across these regions to raise public awareness of TIP. USAID’s partnership with the GOP has helped increase public attention and more than doubled public funding to stop trafficking and help victims.