On a sweltering day in Peru’s Amazon, Riquelme loads a bag of rocks onto his back, sticks a plastic hose in his mouth, and steps off the back of a makeshift barge into the chai-colored Tambopata River. He’ll spend the next two hours with his eyes closed, vacuuming up sediment from the river bottom. On the barge, his partner Borian works the vacuum’s motor and sprays the mixture onto a rug.
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In Peru’s Amazon, finding gold but leaving mercury
