150 151 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century hair and eyes and rosy cheeks. Among the boys this capacity for integration and adaptation to the environment and the community was more noticeable. Daily life at the camp meant that, in the end, everyone became one big family. The ladies frequented each other, met at the club, organised various activities; the men drank their drinks, played billiards, played sports, or amused themselves with the other activities offered by the camp. A tacit rule was that “the first lady”, the superintendent’s wife, would make sure that the community and families were well taken care of. There was no ‘job description’ for that task but they always fulfilled the same function. Even dancing with them at parties was an honour. And they liked to dance with Peruvians because their husbands were very stuffy. All of this strengthened the fellowship between the families. One of the most remembered U.S. citizens to date is H. Willis Higgs, who would become Operations Manager for the Highland Division, that is, the highest-ranking official in Peru. His daughter Valerie lived in La Oroya for seventeen years and, in 2000, she published a review about the work her mother did: “Since we arrived in La Oroya, my mother, Leah Baxter, committed herself to a series of causes. She immediately started a kindergarten, gave bridge lessons to anyone who wanted to learn the game, taught dozens and dozens of teens to dance, and introduced horse riding to the community. She was also very attached to the boys in the camp, whom she used to take on outings through the adjoining fields, on excursions to Goyllarisquizga or even to some parts of the central jungle. As the wife of the Operations Manager, she was also in charge of organising receptions in her own home, sometimes for 150 people, attended by ambassadors, generals or bishops, as well as other authorities who came to visit the complex. She even managed to look after the workers’ representatives when strikes raged”. In other words, without holding any position, she was truly committed to the fortunes of the company and the well-being of the community. The creation of Southern After intense negotiations in 1955, the four founding partners signed the definitive contract for the formation of the Southern Peru Copper Corporation company. The American Smelting and Refining Company - ASARCO had a 57.75% stake, Phelps Dodge Corporation came in with 16%, as did the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, with the remaining 10.25% paid in by Newmont Mining Corporation. ASARCO became the principal partner thanks to its contribution of the Toquepala and Quellaveco deposits, while La Cerro included its Cuajone concession in the partnership, in which Newmont also held an interest. These three properties, very close to each other, opened a new mining development hub in the south of the country, between Moquegua and Tacna. The three properties were transferred to Southern Peru, which, had estimated aggregate mineral reserves in excess of one billion tonnes with an average 1% copper content. The operation was designed to work primarily in Toquepala with an open pit, extracting 30,000 tons per day during the first stage. This mineral was transferred to a nearby concentrator plant with the capacity to send 1,300 tonnes of concentrates per day to the new refinery, which was built on the coast in the bay of Ilo. Both the concentrator and the refinery were located at a safe and easily accessible distance from the three deposits, as the initial projection was that the same infrastructure would be used to treat the minerals extracted from the three mines. Five months ahead of the scheduled time, on January 1, 1960, the refinery started blister copper production at a rate of 145,000 tons per year. An auspicious beginning that foreshadowed the possibility of early repayment of the debt contracted with the Import-Export Bank in Washington D.C., the financial institution that had made possible bankrolling this work, the most important in mining in Peru after the arrival of Cerro. WITH TOQUEPALA, CUAJONE AND QUELLAVECO VERY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER, THE SOUTHERN PERU COPPER CORPORATION OPENED A NEW MINING DEVELOPMENT HUB IN THE SOUTH OF THE COUNTRY, BETWEEN MOQUEGUA AND TACNA.
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