176 177 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century Latin America of a sort of revolutionary ideal –since Castro took power in Cuba by force of arms– the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - CEPAL had stimulated a policy of Industrialisation by import substitution in the region. Basically, it invited countries to satisfy the consumer demands of their population by manufacturing or producing in the country itself, the greatest number of articles or products. The aim was to reduce commercial dependence on foreign powers, protecting national production and intervening in the market. In practice, many understood that this new policy could be extended to state participation in strategic economic activities, such as the exploitation of natural resources. Thus the government was participating more and more in the economy. The Agrarian Reform broke an economic model whose origin dated back to colonial times and which, certainly, in several aspects was out of date and in others was obsolete, but it was replaced by a worse one that ended up destroying national agriculture. The large landholdings were replaced by Agricultural Cooperatives of Production and Agrarian Associations of Social Interest, in which state officials, “representatives of the peasants”, took over control of arable land. Five decades later, it is evident that the ignorance of these officials in agrarian issues and modern methods, lack of knowledge about business administration, absence of investment in the replacement of equipment and technology, as well as the subsequent subdivision and atomisation of the properties by the peasants themselves, led to the national agricultural sector regressing more than thirty years. The so-called reform or the destruction of the previous system accomplished nothing. Moreover, in light of the facts, we fared much worse. The Velasco Agrarian Reform had begun in 1969, but the first expropriation of land that shook Cerro de Pasco had occurred in 1963, when the State allocated the estates of Pachacayo and Cónsac to the indigenous community of Canchayllo, in Jauja. But the greatest threat materialised in 1967. The Office of Agrarian Reform and Colonisation –installed four years earlier during the previous Military Government Junta– had initiated another expropriation process involving its estates. Among other things, the office justified the process by the continuous strikes, the social conflicts in the surroundings of the company and by the environmental liabilities caused by the mines and its refinery, despite the fact that these lands were unrelated to mining or metallurgical operations. Most of them, which were under the administration of the Livestock Division, had been acquired in the 1920s through an agreement with the La Oroya communities affected by the fumes from the smelter. A good part of these 232,000 hectares were used to sow grass for raising sheep. When the situation became irreversible, the government proposed to compensate the company with a twenty-year payment through Peruvian sovereign bonds, including interest. However, the amount was not defined. The promise was to also pay an amount in cash, agreed upon from the reports of three The drastic reforms were based on the benefit they would bring to the worker, but that only happened on paper. MANY UNDERSTOOD THAT THE IDEAS OF CEPAL (ECLAC) COULD BE EXTENDED TO THE PARTICIPATION OF THE STATE IN STRATEGIC ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES, NATIONALISING THE EXPLOITATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES.
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