Hi everyone!

Today I want to share a project I recently worked on, which was published in Bloomberg and written by my incredible colleague Marcelo Rochabrun. It's an in-depth investigation into Rainbow Mountain in Peru, a breathtaking tourist destination that hides a dark and tragic reality tied to a shocking murder and local conflict over tourism profits.

As the photographer, I had the privilege and responsibility of capturing the visual soul of this complex story. Going beyond the polished Instagram images and showing the truth behind the stunning beauty was both a challenge and a profound experience.

Ivcher Illatinco, the son of the murdered protagonist Flavio, also shared his perspective with Bloomberg:

"When people realized that tickets to Rainbow Mountain could generate thousands, even millions of dollars, they didn’t know how to handle it. That’s when the problems began.” Ivcher’s powerful words encapsulate the raw pain of this story: “He was unrecognizable,” Ivcher said. “His face was disfigured, covered in blood, with a gaping wound in his head.”

As former Deputy Minister of Tourism Madeleine Burns told Marcelo:

"This has been handled like the Wild West. I sincerely hope a solution can be found."

And as the prosecutor in charge of the case, Rina Arana, observed:

"One of the great drivers of conflict, confrontation, and human selfishness is money—and the greed that comes with it. Even more so when it involves people who, until recently, had never had anything in their hands.”

To read Marcelo Rochabrun's full article and understand this investigation completely, visit Bloomberg here:

English: MURDER ON RAINBOW MOUNTAIN
Spanish: A MALDICIÓN DE LA MONTAÑA DE SIETE COLORES

This post offers a behind-the-scenes look at my work and the images I captured, which aim to tell a story of conflict, greed, and violence within an Indigenous community. In many of the portraits and scenes I photographed for this story, I chose to light them with a red light—a symbolic choice meant to recall the blood spilled on a mountain that the world sees as beautiful, but which some now see as a place of mourning.

I arrived in Chillihuani alongside journalist Marcelo Rochabrun in the first quarter of 2025. We wanted to go beyond the postcard images, capturing the complexity of a place that is both stunning and deeply marked by pain. For seven days, I walked, listened, and photographed with one goal in mind: to reveal what tourists don’t see—but what the community remembers and lives through every day.

Despite the important work of Marcelo Rochabrun’s investigation for Bloomberg in bringing Flavio’s story to light, most tourists who visit Rainbow Mountain will remain unaware of the violence and hardship experienced by the people who live nearby. Today, Chillihuani is a fractured community.

And yet, amid all this, I also found dignity. I saw children playing beneath the same pole where Filomeno, a survivor of the night Flavio was killed, had been tied.

I saw Ivcher selling his father’s alpacas to feed his family. I saw life pushing through. Telling stories like this is why I do what I do—because behind every image, behind every “postcard” place, there are voices that deserve to be heard.

I saw firsthand what money can do when it suddenly enters a community that has historically been abandoned by the state and has lived for generations through subsistence farming. Everyone talks about Rainbow Mountain as an economic miracle—but few ask what it cost. Photographing these contradictions was one of the hardest tasks I’ve faced, because the fractures are everywhere: in faces, in streets, in the silences.

While working on this story, I met Ivcher Illatinco, Flavio’s son. He’s barely in his twenties but carries an enormous weight. In his eyes I didn’t see resignation, but the strength of someone determined to continue something bigger than himself—and a hunger for justice. Photographing him as he told his father’s story, seated in front of the house where Flavio had once envisioned a better future for his community, was one of the most emotional moments of this work.