Cerro de la Sal
Cerro de la Sal, or Cerro de Sal (Salt Mountain), is in the Villa Rica District of Oxapampa Province, Pasco Department, Peru. The mountain is about 1,750 meters high, with higher peaks around it. A salt vein near the summit is wide, and people mined blocks of salt there during the dry season. They weighed about 20 kilograms each and carried them a few kilometers to the Paucartambo River, where salt was put on rafts and sent downriver to communities in the Amazon lowlands. The river network carried as many as 600 salt rafts each season. The climate changes with height: tropical rainforest below about 1,550 meters and cooler, subtropical conditions higher up.
In ancient times, local Indigenous groups—especially the Asháninka (Campa) and the Amuesha (Yanesha)—used the salt and traded with nearby peoples, including the Inca, but kept control of the salt sources. The Cerro de la Sal was the main salt supplier for the eastern region called the Gran Pajonal and may have reached some traders as far as Brazil.
The salt site attracted Spanish missionaries, soldiers, and settlers from the 1600s. Franciscan missions were established at Quimiri and other nearby places, but indigenous uprisings often disrupted them. From 1635 onward, conflicts and resistance led to killings of several missionaries, and the missions were repeatedly abandoned and rebuilt. A notable figure, Pedro Bohórquez, led a 1645–1651 expedition to the area and mistreated local Asháninka people. In 1673–1674, violence continued, and many missions were destroyed or damaged. The Franciscans returned in 1709 with more resources, but diseases in the early 1720s sharply reduced indigenous populations, and by 1742–1752 a messianic movement led by Juan Santos Atahualpa destroyed the missions. For about a century after that, Spaniards and later Peruvian authorities had little control over Cerro de la Sal, and several Franciscan missionaries were killed in the 18th century.
After Peru gained independence, the government built a fortress at San Ramón in 1842 to try to reassert control over the region. Several military expeditions in the late 1800s faced strong resistance from Asháninka communities. Beginning in 1873, the government encouraged settlement by Europeans and others. Italians settled south of the Cerro, Germans and Austrians north of it, and later British and Dutch settlers acquired land along the rivers. In the 1890s, a British company, the Peruvian Corporation, held concessions near Cerro de la Sal and promoted settlement. The salt trade drew criticism because Indigenous salt miners were often exploited. The government created a Salt Monopoly to market the salt, while Indigenous communities resisted and some farms were destroyed.
The town of Villa Rica was founded in 1928 by German settlers, and coffee became the main cash crop in the area. Although European migration continued, Indigenous people still visited Cerro de la Sal to mine salt and bring it to their homes in the Amazon region, up to the 1980s.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:23 (CET).