Cerro de Pasco

Aerial view of Cerro de Pasco in 1956

Cerro de Pasco became one of the world's richest silver producing areas after silver was discovered there in 1630.[2] It is still an active mining center. The Spanish mined the rich Cerro de Pasco silver-bearing oxide ore deposits since colonial times. Sulfide minerals are more common in the Atacocha district however.

Francisco Uville arranged for steam engines made by Richard Trevithick of Cornwall, England, to be installed in Cerro de Pasco in 1816 to pump water from the mines and allow lower levels to be reached. However, fighting in the Peruvian War of Independence brought production to a halt from 1820 to 1825.[3]

Three major mines in the area include the Machcan, Atacocha, and Milpo. Silver ore occurs in hydrothermal veins or as sulfides and clay minerals replacing the Jurassic Pucara limestone. Porphyry dacite stocks are found intruded near the Atacocha and Milpo mines along the Atacocha Fault. Compania Minera Atacocha started operations at the Atacocha Mine in 1936. Ore minerals include galena and sphalerite.[4]

Contamination of the environment by lead, cadmium and other heavy metals has precipitated a public health crisis in the city, but a 2006 law proposing to evacuate all inhabitants and relocate the city has not yet culminated in concrete action.[5][6]

During the twentieth century, the United States contributed to railroad construction and Andean "progressive infrastructure," even as gilded U.S. companies superseded Spain as the dominant resource extractors in Cerro de Pasco. The "American colony" that had emerged at the apex of the Andes, "the very roof of the world," garnered attention from an array of writers, including Frank G. Carpenter. His 1913 travel narrative of Cerro de Pasco, published in a number of popular periodicals the next year, brought the U.S. Andean community to life for U.S. reading publics. Almost two hundred miles from the Peruvian coastline, Carpenter had encountered an "American industrial center," a "foreign colony" sustained by "American money." Copper initially had captivated "American capitalists" and launched a 1902 investment frenzy in Cerro de Pasco. By 1913, a "syndicate of some of our richest men have bought the mines here," from J. P. Morgan and Henry Clay Frick to James Ben Ali Haggin, Phoebe Hearst, and the Vanderbilt family. "Today the prosperity of Cerro de Pasco, indeed this whole mining region," Carpenter proclaimed, "is dependent on American capital."[7]

Present-day accounts of the twentieth-century colony, published by the Peruvian Mining and Engineering Institute on behalf of mining "entrepreneurs," parallel the Carpenter travel narrative. Carpenter's "stone cottages" for married miners, engineers, and their families were, according to a PMEI author, townhomes with wrought-iron balconies. Small windows allowed pedestrians to view interior hallways and courtyards, while the balconies formed perimeter barriers for bedrooms. The dwellings overlooked wide boulevards and serpentine avenues such as Marques and Lima Streets, which spilled into Chaupimarca Square and its principal retail outlets, the Commissary and Las Culebras.[8] Dieguez Hotel and Europa Hotel on opposing sides of Lima Street[9] highlighted Carpenter's dichotomy between so-called "bachelor" hotels for male students and new employees, long associated with escort establishments (hoteles andinos de hospitalidad legal), and the more "family-oriented" Europa Hotel. In Carpenter's travel narrative, the latter example was a "company" hotel operated by "Mr. Tocci, an Italian, and the manager of the hotel at the smelter, seven miles off, is a Mormon [from Salt Lake City]."[10]

Publications by the Peruvian Mining and Engineering Institute continue to emphasize the "cosmopolitan" contours of the U.S. colony.[11] Carpenter likewise observed Canadians, Australians, Germans, Austrians, Irish(wo)men, Scandinavians, and expatriates from a "half dozen different nations" traipsing among U.S miners and indigenous Andean peoples. Carpenter seemed to especially marvel at the golf "clubhouses, with libraries and reading rooms supplied with the latest magazines and papers, and also bowling alleys, billiard halls and rooms for entertainments and dances." The industrial center featured tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and Esperanza Hospital.[12] The Spanish Beneficent Society periodically hosted bullfights in acreage usually reserved for "football patches," although a handful of Cerro de Pasco Mining Company superintendents denounced this "blood sport."[13] Carpenter noted that the mining community generated its own print cultures, particularly with the flagship Inca Chronicle, edited by the Auditor for the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company, A.E. Swanson.[14]

Carpenter's guide for narrating the indigenous Andean labor community, the mines, and American imperialism itself was "J.T. Glidden," then the "assistant superintendent of the Cerro de Pasco mines." Glidden secured equestrian transportation for himself and the peripatetic author.[15] The assistant superintendent's tour and ideas substantiated present-day critical analysis of the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company's (renamed the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation in 1915) policies and practices, employed as contexts for case studies on indigenous villages and understudied mines, most notably by historical anthropologists such as Frederico Helfgott (a case study belied by the title).[16] Glidden, for instance, published on the causes of alleged indigenous Andean ignorance to the dangers of mining---"para el indígena peruano no existo el peligro; las precauciones más elementales le son descondidas"---and their purported lack of hygiene. For both, Glidden placed blame squarely on the shoulders of his "refractory" labor force: "la causa principal y talvez única de este mal, es la naturaleza refractaria del indígena al aseo general." It was his carga to spearhead a campaign for night schools in Cerro de Pasco, "el sistema educativo" dedicated to U.S. parameters for cleanliness and safety.[17]

The life and career of Carpenter's guide, who shaped many of the opinions on mining, safety, and hygiene in the subsequent Cerro de Pasco travelogue, exemplified the multivalent consequences of what the present-day PMEI describes as "relations between the [indigenous] community and the U.S. managers and employees."[18] During Carpenter's visit, John Tinker (J.T.) Glidden wed, in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel along Chaupimarca Square,[19] "a [neophyte] Peruvian lady (whose name was Angélica) and had two daughters [named after Yolanda of Vianden-Beryl and Olga of Kiev-Saint Bibiana]."[20] Glidden met his wife in 1912, when he collaborated with members of the (in)famous Ayarza family in drilling a sublevel Cerro de Pasco mine, which he christened Roosevelt.[21] Glidden, a graduate of M.I.T. (1905), had formerly served as U.S. Geological Surveyor for Oregon land fraud scandal acreage confiscated by the Roosevelt Administration and Charles Doolittle Walcott.[22] Amidst autumn financial negotiations during the Panic of 1907, Theodore Roosevelt reclassified the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company as a subsidiary syndicate of a "good trust," prompting Glidden's relocation to its namesake, and the Ayarza base of operations, two months later.[23]

The local soccer field, Daniel Alcides Carrión Stadium, is one of the highest altitude sports stadiums in the world.[25]

• Daniel Alcides Carrión

• Yanacocha
• Toquepala mine