52 53 cerro de pasco The greatest investment of the XXth century Thus, in 1922, the La Oroya Smelting and Refining facility was inaugurated and by the following year, Fundicion had already become a ghost town. Decades later, the cold winds and the snow had fashioned wavy furrows among the crumbling walls and barely a few bewildered sheep would indifferently pass among the rubble of those ghostly remnants. Goyllar, the black star Goyllarisquizga –“where a star fell”, translated from the Quechua words “Ccollor Ishquishga”– is a settlement 35 kilometres from Cerro de Pasco at an elevation of more than 4,200 metres above sea level in the province of Daniel Alcides Carrion. This community has the historic reputation of being known for two centuries as the world’s highest coal-mining capital. Its best years were precisely when the Cerro de Pasco company began extracting this resource. From there, some 270 thousand tonnes of raw coal were shipped and used at the Tinyahuarco and La Oroya smelters, as well as for domestic consumption throughout the region. Before the arrival of the U.S. corporation, coal production on an industrial scale was practically non-existent, since there were virtually no production or manufacturing activities in the country. For all the demand for coal in the region, there were the Quihuarcancha and Vinchuscancha mines in the department of Junin. However, the construction of the coal railway to Goyllarisquizga would greatly boost its production, which lasted throughout the entire 20th century until 1992. This branch of the railway began its activities in 1905, winding from Vista Alegre –between Cerro de Pasco and the Smelter– along a stretch of 42 kilometres. The coal deposits of this mine were so huge that they encompassed the districts of Yanahuanca and Chacayan, covering a distance of sixteen kilometres between one and the other. This was all part of the same group. At its initial stage, the company acquired some twenty square kilometres where close to 600 mining properties were located, since it was estimated that these reserves would be enough for the first years. The main route of the mine was called Pique Grande (Big Shaft), a sloping mine gallery over three hundred metres long that allowed the movement of cabledriven cars and mining drills. Starting from that gallery, many perpendicular ones were made that went down for five levels. Before the end of ten years, that coal seam was exhausted and the engineers built another slope of the same length and used the same technique for perpendicular galleries and called it Pique Chico (Little Shaft); further along, an even more inclined gallery was built from the end of the second shaft, allowing it to reach the bottom of the seam, and which was known as the H2 Shaft. To extract coal from this last level through three sloping surfaces demands powerful machinery and high costs, which is why it was decided to establish a connection from the surface to the lowest point in the mine, which came to be known as the Chontas vertical shaft. This work in its time, became one of the most complex and striking structures of its kind in South America, since it was over 320 metres deep with three chambers, two of which were devoted to coal movement and the third one for people as well as all the services that were grouped around it. All traffic in the system was driven by powerful electrical motors and six winches distributed to suit the needs of the jackhammer drills or the compressed air cutters that allowed incredible advances for the time, up to two metres every twelve hours. From the three previously mentioned galleries twenty horizontal levels were formed between the surface and the bottom and from each one a tertiary raise was developed, following the inclination of the seam, forming solid walls that could be identified for extraction of the product. Goyllarisquizga did not stand out just for its engineering on the surface, but additionally, on the inside, THE GOYLLARISQUIZGA COAL DEPOSIT WAS SO LARGE THAT IT INCLUDED THE DISTRICTS OF YANAHUANCA AND CHACAYAN, A DISTANCE OF 16 KILOMETRES BETWEEN ONE AND THE OTHER.
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