La Oroya

La Oroya, town and mineral smelting center in the central highlands of Peru (1990 population 33,594). At 12,200 feet, La Oroya stands at the crossroads of the central railway and highway systems connecting the mining center of Cerro de Pasco and the commercial city of Huancayo with the country's capital, Lima. The railway reached La Oroya in 1893 and a year later the Cerro De Pasco Corporation, formed with U.S. investment capital (Guggenheim interests), began to establish a smelting complex to treat minerals from Cerro de Pasco, Morococha, and other nearby mining areas. This gave the Cerro de Pasco Corporation the technological advantage to displace foreign and domestic competition. The smelter was upgraded by 1922. Pollution from the smelter modified the agrarian landscape and made possible the purchase of rich pasture lands formerly owned by the native Cattlemen's Society of Junín. With the nationalization of mining interests between 1968 and 1975, La Oroya smelter was managed by a state company.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Florencia Mallon, The Defense of Community in Peru's Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860–1940 (1983).

Elizabeth Dore, The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Pajuelo, Ramón. Medioambiente y salud en La Oroya: Sistematización de un programa de intervención. Lima: Cooper-Acción, Acción Solidaria para el Desarrollo, 2005.

                                      Alfonso W. Quiroz