www.guarango.org A devastating mercury spill by the world’s richest gold mining corporation transforms a quiet peasant village in Peru’s Andean mountains into a hotbed of civil resistance. A courageous young mayor emerges to lead his people on a quest for health care and justice. But powerful interests conspire to thwart the villagers at every turn in this 2-year epic chronicle of the real price of gold. THE SPILL On June 2, 2000, a truck from the Yanacocha gold mine spilled 151 kg of liquid elemental mercury along a 40 km stretch of highway passing through Choropampa and two neighboring towns. Villagers were not told the mercury was toxic. Assuming it was azogue, an ancient cure-all, they collected mercury in bottles and jars using their hands, sticks and brooms. Children were especially fascinated with the alluring silvery balls of liquid that sparkled in the bright sun; they played with it, spilling mercury on dirt floors and beds, near gardens and animals and inside the local school. Elemental mercury, or metallic mercury, evaporates rapidly at warm temperatures like those found in Choropampa at the time of the spill. Gregory Camacho, an industrial hygienist at the University of Columbia hospital in New York, specializes in cleaning up mercury spills. “Mercury is very difficult to clean-up on regular floors,” says Camacho in the film, “because it goes into every nook and cranny that it can find… On a dirt road or dirt surface it would definitely burrow.” Camacho …