26 27 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century JP Morgan was a notable financier and key player in different parts of the world, as was Darius Ogden Mills, then the wealthiest banker in California and who from an early age acquired an in-depth knowledge of the mining business. It was a practically invincible group which from inception established within this business the bases for a philosophy that would guide the destiny of Cerro de Pasco Investment Company to the very end: self-reliance and autonomy. The birth certificate of this enterprise would be sealed with its official registration on June 6, 1902, although construction and exploitation would begin in February of that same year in our central highlands. In this way, suddenly and at a late date, Peru would fully enter the industrial age, during a period characterised by the swift expansion of world capitalism. � In order to promote the latter, a Mining Code, known as the 1900, was being prepared, but that only would only be enacted the following year. Among the innovations, the new norm established that that ownership of mining properties which had been legally acquired was final and in perpetuity, with the only condition that the mining contribution (canon) be paid. In the same fashion, tools, machinery and inputs for the development of the activity were exempt from the payment of import duties. In addition, ten years before, the government of Remigio Morales Bermudez had made mining activity taxexempt for 25 years. It was unlikely that things could go wrong at that dinner with a good part of the most powerful men in the United States in attendance. During that single evening, Haggin and McCune were able to raise the impressive sum of ten million dollars of that time to put the project in motion. Three million were contributed by Haggin himself, McKown Twombly pledged two million, and the rest of the guests came in with a million dollars apiece, thus confirming the required amount. Throughout the rest of his life, Haggin would control the company with a 34% share. He would be considered the brains behind this unusual and enormous enterprise which would be the largest in South America by far and until that moment the greatest U.S. investment outside of that country. However, the most noteworthy aspect of Haggin and McCune’s design was not that it had brought together the most powerful men of the mighty nation of the north, but that their participation ensured the strategic coverage of the most complex needs requiring solutions. Haggin and McCune were the experts in exploration, operation and development of mining technology; McCune, McKown and Twombly and J P Morgan owned the main railway lines in that country; Henry Clay Frick, partner of Andrew Carnegie had the largest and most efficient steelworks and coal-fired engines in the country; Right– Pay day for the workers at the La Esperanza estate in the early part of the last century in Cerro de Pasco.
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