166 167 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century was extending downward”, he recalls. As it was difficult to enter, the design for the calculation was drawn practically blind, with maps from the surface. The final project contemplated building, at level 52, two parallel tunnels of eleven kilometres in length that would connect each section. One for the water to flow into the Rímac River and the other for the transport of the company’s vehicles. In its time it was considered one of the most complex engineering jobs developed. Another Peruvian who worked in Casapalca at that time was engineer Guido del Castillo: “An unexpected thing was that 500 metres after the work began, the mineral water that supplied the town of San Mateo, dried up. That caused a series of problems for the company. But even more curious was that after five kilometres very hot water was found. The temperature rose so high that it was impossible to continue with the work. The miners climbed into the cars with cold water to pass these areas and continue drilling on the other side. In the end everything was stopped for a year and a special air conditioning system was built to continue the work”. While the company’s geologists were looking for another source of groundwater for San Mateo, it was possible to control the temperature in that sector, which they began to call Aguascalientes, and the work continued. In the end, when the water began to drain, the discovery was huge. The vein was more than five kilometres deep with copper and silver contents, which increased the life of the mine by twenty years and, as if that were not enough, other small, unsuspected veins were found. Beyond the monumental scale of the work, the Graton Tunnel was found to have a series of additional benefits. For example, that five metres per second of clean water came out of the intake in the western part, produced by the rain of the eastern mountain range. This current is added to the flow of the Ri mac river with an additional 25% volume of water. In this sense, the national scientist, Modesto Montoya, has referred several times to the Graton Tunnel as an example of what can be done to alleviate the water risk of Lima and has added the potential that this flow encourages the construction of small hydroelectric plants in different sections, downstream of the Rimac River, on its way to the sea. A boost to the industry Starting in the 1950s, the company designed a corporate policy for product diversification and expansion of the geographic scope of its mines and interests. The idea was for the corporation to start looking for projects to operate where business opportunities appeared, without the geographic restrictions that it had adhered to during its first fifty years. It is in this context that Cerro extended the exploration map beyond the central highlands, promoted and invested in industries based near Lima, and analysed the feasibility of operating a copper mine in Chile, among others. True to its philosophy of being more and more efficient and exploring the possibility of lowering costs, the company observed that the importation of some inputs made it less competitive. Thus, it promoted a series of industrial initiatives in the country and invested the seed capital so that these enterprises, subsidiaries of Cerro-Peru, could provide it with some of those intensively used inputs for its different activities. These companies settled in the perimeter of Lima because, in addition to allowing the company to be less dependent on imports, pursuant to their original design, they had to be self-sufficient and autonomous. The only way to achieve this objective was for them to attract other related companies in the national and international market as clients. For this purpose, they manufactured the inputs of excellent quality and safety requirements that mining and metallurgical tasks demanded, as well as other industrial sectors. That was its main letter of introduction.
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