i

DISPLACEMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND CAPITALIST MODERNITY:

THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF MOROCOCHA IN CENTRAL PERU

by

LIN ZHU

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 2017

A thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Colorado in partial fulfillment

of the requirement for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of Geography

2020

Committee Members:

Dr. Emily Yeh

Dr. Joseph Bryan

Dr. Joshua Muldavin

Dr. Timothy Oakes

ii

ABSTRACT

Zhu, Lin (M.A., Geography)

Displacement, Development and Capitalist Modernity:

The making and unmaking of Morococha in Central Peru

Thesis directed by Professor of Geography, Dr. Emily T. Yeh

Drawing on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in China and Peru, this thesis is in

conversation with critical scholarship on the phenomenon of “Global China.” Specifically, it

engages with discussions on the particularity of Chinese state capital by following Chinalco’s

acquisition of the Toromocho project in Central Peru at a geohistorical conjuncture. Applying

analytics of the production and destruction of space, it critically analyzes the dialectic making and

unmaking of Morococha, attending carefully to the materially lived experience of alienation and

transformation of everyday life in the new town, and processes of abstraction and commodification

of space that produce rubble under destructive capitalist expansion. Taking a Marxian political

economy approach, the thesis then moves on to examine both the historically produced

dispossession of land and the current technological dispossession of labor. Whereas the process of

proletarianization transformed self-sufficient peasants into wage-dependent miners, an upgrade to

an open pit mine creates a pool of flexible and disposable labor to safeguard capitalist

accumulation. Therefore, although Chinalco does represent Chinese state capital, its behavior in

Central Peru follows an “entrepreneurial statehood rationale” to secure both geoeconomic and

geopolitical interests.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis is a product of many journeys travelled between Peru, China and the United States.

Fieldwork was funded by the Graduate Student Award from the Center to Advance Research and

Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) and the Adam Kolff Memorial Research Scholarship

Award from the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Many communities marked the routes I travelled. My deepest gratitude goes to the many men

and women of Antigua and Nueva Morococha in Peru, whose generosity, kindness and

knowledge have benefitted me greatly. As most of them chose to stay anonymous in fear of

future repercussions, I express my heartfelt appreciation here to those who wanted their stories

and struggles heard, including Lourdes Valentin Cuba, Nidia Blanca Cuba, Victor Rual Ancieta,

Cresenciano Guzman Estrada and Estefani Pinto Apolinario. I am especially indebted to Jacinto

Quispe for sharing his extensive knowledge on Antigua Morococha and the care as well as

courage he offered. My fieldwork assistant, Bryce Benavides, deserves special acknowledgement

for his patience, guidance and assistance throughout my summer fieldwork in Lima and

Antigua/Nueva Morococha. Beyond local communities, I am also indebted to the many NGO

workers, Chinalco and Social Capital Group representatives, local journalists, academics, and

bank policy makers who have taken time to share with me their views and experiences.

Particularly I want to thank Gonzalo Torrico for connecting me with others when I first visited

the country back in 2018 and Cesar Reyna for constantly updating me on Nueva Morococha

even after I left the field.

At the University of Colorado, Boulder, I am profoundly grateful to my advisor, Emily T. Yeh,

for her generous and genuine engagement with my work which never fails to challenge and

inspire me at the same time. Emily’s dedication to her students and academic work is highly

admirable. The broader intellectual community I had at CU Boulder also helped shape my work.

I benefited enormously from seminars and conversations with Joe Bryan, Tim Oakes, Jennifer

Fluri and Mara Goldman. If anything, the amazing friends and mentors I made along the way at

CU Boulder are what grounded and kept me going. They are indispensable for both my

intellectual development as well as personal growth. Among them, I would like to extend my

wholehearted appreciation for Phurwa Gurung, Shruthi Jagadeesh, Neda Shaban, Kylen Solvik,

Yuying Ren, Fedor Popov, Alex Jasper, Caitlin McShane, Prakriti Mukerjee, Kripa Dongol,

Ridge Zachary, Diego Melo, George Charisoulis, Dorje Tashi, Yang Yang, Xiaoling Chen, and

Xi Wang.

Finally, I thank my parents, Lichuan Zhu and Junying Lin, as well as my extended family back in

China for their unwavering love, trust and support as I walked down a path that is uncertain,

challenging and perhaps slightly unconventional. My parents are never fully convinced or

content with my stubborn decision to pursue a graduate degree in Human Geography, since they

never quite understand what the discipline is really about and what kind of jobs I can eventually

get. That being said, they thoroughly respected my choice and endured me being thousands of

miles away from home for almost eight years. Little do they know, it is their selfless contribution

to our community and their kindness to others that partially guided me onto the path that I

currently undertake and wish to continue taking.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I ....................................................................................................................................................... 1

INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING GLOBAL CHINA .................................................................. 1

1. Critical Scholarship of Global China .................................................................................. 4

2. Methodology ........................................................................................................................... 8

3. Chapter Overviews ................................................................................................................ 11

II .................................................................................................................................................... 17

SITUATING GLOBAL CHINA IN CENTRAL PERU: A GEOHISTORICAL CONJUNCTURE

....................................................................................................................................................... 17

1.Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 17

2.Acquisition of Toromocho at a Geohistorical Conjuncture ................................................... 20

3. Chinese SOEs and the “Entrepreneurial Statehood Rationale” ........................................... 33

4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 37

III................................................................................................................................................... 41

DISPLACEMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND CAPITALIST MODERNITY: THE MAKING

AND UNMAKING OF MOROCOCHA IN CENTRAL PERU .................................................. 41

1.Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 41

2.The Making of Nueva Morococha: The Production of a Resettlement ................................. 47

2.1 Creation City: A Technocratic Project that Rationalizes Dispossession ......................... 48

2.2 Instant City: Chinese Urban Product for Export? ............................................................ 58

2.3 New Town: Capitalist Production of Space .................................................................... 63

3. The Unmaking of Antigua Morococha: Destructive Production of Space ........................... 71

3.1 Production of Space: Creative Destruction vs Destructive Production ........................... 72

3.2 Concrete as Rubble: Abstraction and Commodification of Space .................................. 75

3.3 Coerced “Voluntary” Resettlement ................................................................................. 80

4.Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 91

IV .................................................................................................................................................. 95

DOUBLE DISPOSSESSION: FROM STRUCTURAL DEPENDENCY TO CORPORATE

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ....................................................................................................... 95

1.Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 95

2.The Process of Proletarianization and the Creation of Complete Dependency ................... 100

2.1 1902 – 1925: Peasantry as Temporary and Seasonal Workforce .................................. 101

2.2 1925 – 1945: Transitional Proletariat ............................................................................ 102

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2.3 1945 – 1973: A Formation of a Permanent Industrialized Workforce .......................... 107

2.4 1974 – 2008: From Cerro de Pasco to Chinalco ............................................................ 108

3.Open Pit Mine: Technological Dispossession ...................................................................... 110

3.1 Dwindling Employment ................................................................................................ 111

3.2 (Sub)contracting System................................................................................................ 116

4. From Structural Dependency to Corporate Social Responsibility ...................................... 125

5.Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 131

V .................................................................................................................................................. 134

CONCLUSION: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES ......................................................... 134

1.Advantageous Chinese State Capital in Central Peru? ......................................................... 135

2.Alternatives: Localized Resistance or Global Coalition? .................................................... 137

VI REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 147

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LIST OF FIGURES

CHAPTER 3

Figure 1 Antigua Morococha up from the cemetery, July 2019 ................................................... 43

Figure 2 Overlook of Nueva Morococha, June 2019 .................................................................... 47

Figure 3 Project Plan of Nueva Morococha by JP Planning, December 2013 ............................. 51

Figure 4 Antigua Morococha, courtesy of Morococha En El Olvido ........................................... 54

Figure 5 Toromocho Project Pamphlet, Accessed March 2020 ................................................... 57

Figure 6 Rubble in Antigua Morococha, June 2019 ..................................................................... 77

CHAPTER 4

Figure 7 Young men waiting for employment in the main plaza in Nueva Morococha. June 2019

....................................................................................................................................................... 96

Figure 8 Numbers of subcontractors hired by Chinalco’s contractors in the project’s direct and

indirect influence areas, July 2019.............................................................................................. 120

1

I

INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING GLOBAL CHINA

China’s growing integration into the global economy has been an attractive topic of

inquiry within the academic community. Earlier analyses mostly focused on China’s inward

foreign direct investment (FDI) which grew exponentially after Deng’s Open Door (改革开放)

economic reform in 1978. However, since the official incorporation of the Going Out strategy

(走出去战略) into China’s Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001- 2005) in 2000 as well as Xi Jinping’s

announcement of The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, more attention has been directed to

scrutinize its outward direct investment (ODI). Discussions around the phenomenon of “global

China”1 burgeoned further after the “rise of the South” in the aftermath of the 2007/8 global

financial crisis and the consolidation of South-South development cooperation around 2015

(Mawdsley 2017). The formation of South-South Cooperation (SSC) can be traced back to the

historical Bandung Conference in 1955, also known as the Asian-African Conference, when

newly decolonized countries of the global South congregated to challenge the long-established

political and economic domination by the global North. The goal is for less developed countries

to achieve economic and cultural development in a mutually beneficial manner amongst

themselves, and to nurture Third World Solidarity against global inequality (Gray and Gills

2016). The spirit of SSC could later be observed in both the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) and

1 Concerned about the imperial and neocolonial undertone provoked by the phrase “global China,” Klinger and

Muldavin (2019) advocate for a transnational China analysis which attends more to various actors and institutions

that mediate the frictions in the flows of capital, resource and labor across national boundaries. Hence, China’s

global integration is “global in scale but transnational in dynamics” (Klinger and Muldavin 2019, 7).

2

New International Economic Order (NIEO), but the Third World debt crisis and the rise of

neoliberalism in the 1980s restructured its course away from being a counter-hegemonic

movement (Gray and Gills 2016). However, the hegemony of “the global North” as the

benevolent donor and “the global South” as the disciplined recipient has been fractured,

reshaping the landscape of international development projects (Klinger and Muldavin 2019,

Mawdsley 2017), and interest in and debates about South-South Cooperation have once again

resurfaced in the hopes of transforming the existing world order (Gray and Gills 2016).

China as one of the fastest growing economies dominates discussions around SSC

(Mawdsley 2017; Mohan 2013; Gray and Gills 2016), but its global engagement expands beyond

borders of the global South. Global China materializes in myriad forms (Lee 2017), ranging from

student exchange programs in higher education to humanitarian aid and assistance, from

multilateral financial institutions such as The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to

cultural ones such as Confucius Institutes, and from labor export to global media networks.

However, Chinese foreign direct investment has attracted a disproportionate amount of scrutiny,

especially when compared to other national sources of investment. And Chinese state capital has

particularly been singled out and problematized because it is perceived to have prioritized

China’s “political and geostrategic concerns,” thus not only disrupting the “apolitical” and

“neutral” market in a neoliberal world, but also challenging existing global power structures,

U.S. hegemony for example (Gonzalez-Vicente 2012; Lee 2017; Brautigam 2009). Equally

evident is the uneven attention given to state-centered macro analyses of global China, with

disciplinary differences. Inquires of geopolitics and international relations are common themes in

studies of China’s global integration (cf Stallings 2016; Taylor 2002; Ikenberry 2008; Yong and

Pauly 2013). Also significant are questions on trade and FDI (cf Gallagher and Irwin 2015;

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Jenkins et al. 2008; Myers and Wise 2016; Kaplinsky and Morris 2008). Although economists

and political scientists make insightful and valuable contributions to understanding of a global

China, their state-centered analyses lack nuances and tend to aggregate and homogenize Chinese

global integration. These simplistic and macro assumptions quickly lose purchase in the face of

critically and empirically grounded scholarship on China’s global engagement (cf Lee 2017,

Brautigam 2009, Alff 2016).

Overall, my master’s thesis is an attempt to understand the material consequences of

Chinese foreign investment and to contribute to larger discussions on global China. My initial

interest on this topic was provoked during a study abroad program during which I saw

indications of Chinese elements wherever I went, from Chinese managers who were supervising

the ring road construction in downtown Kathmandu, to a cargo ferry painted with “中国船舶”

(the China State Shipbuilding Corporation)2 on the Red Sea in the Gulf of Aqaba, and the

furthest to Santiago de Chile where Huawei advertisements were ubiquitous in subway stations.

These simple observations spanning less than a three-month program encapsulated an

exhilarating yet highly complex phenomenon of global China: here we see personal interactions

between Chinese migrants and Nepali construction workers, investments of both private capital

of Huawei and a state-owned shipping enterprise, and lastly with host countries varying from

Nepal, which China not only shares a border with but also has special geopolitical interests in, to

Chile, the testing ground of neoliberalism. My decision to focus on a localized case study of

global China using an ethnographic approach is a result of both my academic training as a human

geographer as well as my reading of critical scholarship on global China.3

2 The China State Shipbuilding Corporation is the largest shipbuilding conglomerate in the world.

3 Although I used/compare localized China and/with global China, I do not conceive them as separate or

independent processes.

4

1. Critical Scholarship of Global China

Among a proliferating scholarship on Chinese foreign investment, the most pronounced

and common critique is the depiction of a “monolithic China” that obscures the interest, variety,

capacity and hierarchy of Chinese capitals (Mawdsley 2008; Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Yeh

2016; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Lee 2014, 2017). Labeling investment by its nationality alone

tends to homogenize a multitude of Chinese actors including SOEs at different levels (central,

provincial and local), transnational corporations of Chinese origin (Huaiwei or Lenovo), Chinese

domestic firms and entrepreneurial migrants (Yeh 2016; Lee 2014; Mawdsley 2008). These

entities not only sometimes compete with each other for markets or resources but are also

enacted by individuals with different personal interests. Therefore, disaggregation points to not

only corporations but also individuals who “command the micropolitics of everyday affairs”

(Gonzalez-Vicente 2013, 63; see Liou’s (2009) study of bureaucratic fragmentation within

Chinese oil companies’ foreign investment or Oliveira’s (2019) research on Chinese

agroindustrial projects in Brazil for examples). Meanwhile, a generic use of “Chinese

investment” conjures up an image of a single-minded actor, obscuring the interest different

varieties of capitals serve. While Chinese infrastructural investment in Nepal aims to assert

extraterritorial geopolitical control over Tibetan populations (Murton et al. 2016), Chinese aid in

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is considered a political tool to support the “One China

Policy” since over half of the remaining countries that recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty are in this

region (Stallings 2016; Erikson and Chen 2007; Taylor 2002). Besides geopolitical interests,

Chinese foreign investment, even those of state capital, is sometimes driven by pure economic

interests in profit maximization, investment diversification or market expansion, thus refuting a

narrative of global China that overly emphasizes resource extraction as the primary goal (Yeh

2016). Gonzalez-Vicente’s study (2012) on Chinese mining investment in Peru and Hofman’s

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research (2016) on Chinese agricultural investment in Tajikistan both pointed to market

expansion and portfolio diversification as driving forces of Chinese foreign investment.

Consequently, it is imperative to disaggregate Chinese actors and specify their motivations for

going global (Yeh 2016; Murton et al. 2016; Mawdsley 2008; Klinger and Muldavin 2019;

Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Lee 2017).

Another prominent critique of studies of global China is a lack of contextualization in

both China’s domestic setting as well as that of the host country. Studying internationalization of

Chinese development in Africa, Mohan (2013) observed a “theorization in relative ignorance of

China” (1257). Therefore, to critically study a global China, scholars need to situate Chinese

foreign investment in its domestic context, attending to parallels between Going Out and Going

West (Yeh and Wharton 2016) and historical processes that co-produced present-day China

(Klinger and Muldavin 2019). However, equally important is the need to ground Chinese

investment in the context of the host countries, paying attention to ways in which its regional

contexts, national histories and domestic political economy collectively determine Chinese

foreign investment’s materializations on the ground (Yeh 2016; Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Lee

2017). Jackson and Dear’s (2016) work provides a fitting example. They argue Mongolians’

suspicions and anxieties over Chinese mining investments can be best understood through a

Mongolian national identity in which memories of domination and fears of colonization are

integral due to the nation’s past interaction with Qing China. Last but not the least is the

necessity to situate “China’s rise” within the wider processes of global restructuring (Mohan

2013) and other development discourse such as “capitalism as a global process” or “D/d

development” (Hart 2001). A global outlook suggests an understanding of Chinese foreign

investment as “retroliberalism” (Murray and Overton 2016), in the sense that China does not

6

differ from its traditional Northern counterparts by subsidizing private sectors as well as state-

owned enterprise in overseas investments in the name of “development.” Mawdsley (2017)

argues the use of development finance ultimately supports Chinese geoeconomic interests

centered on “resource extraction, market-making, and ensuring investor profits” (114).

Consequently, global China is contextual and relational, processes that occur at specific sites

where the local and the transnational encounter to produce heterogeneous, contingent outcomes.

The global rhetorical battle between Western discourse of Chinese

neocolonialism/imperialism and Chinese framings of a mutually beneficial South-South

solidarity has also been heavily critiqued for two reasons. One is that it does more political than

analytical work to help us understand what is actually happening on the ground with Chinese

foreign investments (Zhao 2014; Lee 2014). And the other is that such a macro, abstract, state-

centered geopolitical framework overlooks ways in which individuals encounter and experience

Chinese investment at the local level on a daily basis (Alff 2016; Kiik 2016). One less common

critique of scholarship on global China revolves around the question of host country agency

(Brautigam 2009; Mawdsley 2007; Yeh 2016; Murton et al. 2016). While Jiang (2009) interprets

Chinese energy investment in Africa as a result of the state’s insecurity and vulnerability,

debunking an image of a predatory China, numerous studies still emphasize Beijing’s dominant

role in shaping local articulations of Chinese capital. Concluding based on contribution about

Chinese investment in Asia, Yeh (2016) warns us to be critical of a narrative of “passive, weak

states victimized by China” (283). As Lee (2017) demonstrated in her ethnographic study of

Chinese state capital in copper mining, the Zambian government was able to leverage Chinese

state interests to meet its domestic labor demands and negotiate national development. Similarly,

Murton, Lord and Beazley (2016) described an agentive Nepali state which utilized Chinese

7

infrastructural development and post-earthquake humanitarian aid to strengthen its legitimacy

and sovereignty, especially in the nation’s far-flung borderlands. In the same article, Murton,

Lord and Beazley also contributed to understandings of how China (broadly understood here as

multiple actors) is in return shaped by its internationalization, which in this case is its extended

geopolitical control over Tibetan refugees. The “boomerang effect” of China’s

internationalization is a less studied topic of global China (cf. Wang and Hu 2017; Lee 2017;

Zweig 2002). But a reconfigured China deserves more attention - not only is China’s internal

transformation itself worth studying, but it also means potential changes in Chinese state policy

and development ideologies/practices that will further impact the world.

Global China is complicated, contingent and controversial. To critically engage with this

phenomenon requires us to 1. disaggregate actors/capitals and specify their interests (Mawdsley

2008; Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Yeh 2016; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Lee 2014, 2017), 2.

contextualize it in the Chinese domestic setting as well as that of the host country (Mohan 2013;

Yeh 2016; Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Lee 2017; Gonzalez-Vicente 2012; Jackson and Dear

2016), 3. attend to local particularity and global processes (Hart 2001; Overton and Murray

2014; Mohan 2013), 4. avoid rhetorical and macro questions by rescaling state-centered analyses

to embodied everyday experiences at a local level (Zhao 2014; Lee 2014; Alff 2016; Kiik 2016),

5. recognize the host country as agentive actor (Murton et al. 2016; Lee 2017) and lastly 6.

understand ways in which the Chinese state is reconfigured by its going global experiences

(Wang and Hu 2017; Lee 2017; Murton et al. 2016; Yeh 2016).

The phenomenon of global China should be taken more as a provocative entry point than

a productive analytical tool, a practice grounded in empirical studies rather than a rhetoric found

in abstract debate. With China’s transformation into a global force, Lee (2017) argues that

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“global China” should be a subject of inquiry that pushes China Studies beyond China’s

territorial borders. Similarly, Agnew (2010) believes the study of “China in itself” can be

informed by an understanding of “China in the world” (580). Because the unfolding of global

China depends on a set of complex factors and is highly time and place specific, its

manifestations on the ground are manifold: local encounters with Chinese capitals are not

universal, homogenous or unilinearly progressive. Therefore, it is perhaps better to focus on

specific case studies than to seek broad generalizations. Or the generalizations scholars should

pursue are “theoretical” instead of “descriptive or statistical” (Lee 2017, xiii). In a nutshell,

global China is contextual, relational, processual and contingent, therefore, an ethnographic

approach is needed to generate rigorous and trustworthy analyses that attend to spatiality, scale

and time.

The intention to foster a conversation with scholars of Global China in a master’s thesis

leaves relatively little space to engage extensively with critical scholarships on the political

economy and mining/labor history of Peru. I recognize both the need and advantages to situate

this case more deeply in the Peruvian context. In addition, although this thesis argues to view

Chinalco’s acquisition and operation of the Toromocho project primarily as a capitalist project

aided by Chinese state capital, instead of a transaction with particular Chinese characteristics, it

is crucial to acknowledge Chinese government’s promises to “export” globally its own model of

development premised on infrastructure, including but not limited to the building of “instant

cities” (see Nyiri 2017; Roggeveen and Hulshof 2014; Roggeveen et al. 2017; Wan et al. 2020).

2. Methodology

This thesis is informed by four months of multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Peru (Lima

and Nueva Morococha) and China (Beijing). A preliminary field trip to Peru took place from late

9

December 2018 to early January 2019 and was followed up with more extensive fieldwork from

June 2019 to August 2019. My fieldwork in Peru focused specifically on Chinalco’s acquisition

of the Toromocho project and the resettlement of Nueva Morococha. To address the broader

theoretical question on Chinese foreign investment, or the phenomenon of global China, I

returned to Beijing, China to conducted interviews in the winter of 2019. In Peru, while my

primary field sites are Nueva Morococha and Lima, I visited Antigua Morococha several times

and took a trip to Huancayo, the capital city of the Junín region.

A mixture of qualitative research methods was applied to collect and triangulate data, of

which the main ones include semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and discourse

and content analysis. In total, I conducted 35 semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Among my

interlocutors in Peru, 9 have been resettled in Nueva Morococha, 4 refuse to move and currently

reside back in Antigua Morococha, 2 rejected the offer of Nueva Morococha but took

compensation and moved to other cities. The rest of the interviewees include 4 Non-

Governmental Organization (NGO) staff, 4 Chinalco employees (3 in Nueva Morococha and one

in Lima), 4 Chinalco subcontractors (2 from its consulting firm Social Capital Group, 1 from its

transportation service and one electric engineer), 2 local government officials and 2 journalists.

Most interviews were conducted in Spanish with assistance from an interpreter. Only five were

carried out solely by me in English and one in Mandarin. In Beijing, I interviewed a manager

from The Export–Import Bank of China (EXIM) who has participated in various hydro-dam

development projects in Ecuador, a resource prospecting manager working for MMG (owner of

the controversial Las Bambas in Peru) who works in South Africa, the program Manager of

Overseas Investment, Trade and the Environment from Global Environment Institute (GEI), two

researchers from the National Institute of International Strategy under the Chinese Academy of

10

Social Sciences (CASS) and a Chinese consultant who provides services to assist Chinese

corporations to go out. I conducted all of these interviews in Mandarin.

Participant observation of meetings and activities were held across local, regional and

national levels. They include local meetings among ex-owner of Morococha, local scholarship

briefing by Chinalco, regional Dialogue Table organized between Ministry of Energy and Mines,

Ministry of Health, Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Population, Junín regional government,

Morococha Municipality, Chinalco and representatives from the local community, and national

handicraft art fair in Lima in which Morococha’s Weaving Association participated. Discourse

and content analysis are based on documents collected from numerous sources, including

monthly newsletters Chinalco publishes and distributes in Nueva Morococha, Social Capital

Group’s publications prior to the resettlement, legal documents, and news articles. Examining

these enabled me to understand ways in which resettlement was framed and later contested.

Furthermore, I was fortunate to go on guided walking tours, one with Antigua

Morococha’s previous mayor and another with people that I stayed with at a local hostel. As they

narrated their childhoods along the tailing lake, described their family housing unit from the era

of Cerro de Pasco, or pointed to the clinic on the hill where their daughter was delivered,

Antigua Morococha, brutally destroyed to rubble, became an embodied space with living

memories and histories.

During my fieldwork in Nueva Morococha, I stayed at a local hostel that catered

specifically to migrant miners. I first stayed there back in the winter of 2018 during my first visit.

At that time, the owner thought I came to make sacrifices to Pachamama. Upon my return in

June 2019, the family was building a third floor and renovating its interior. The family operated

the hostel on the second floor, with five double rooms in total. On the first floor, it ran an internet

11

café and a small store in the front, and a laundry shop in the back. Locals would come here to

print receipts, make copies, use internet, drop off dirty laundry, purchase shampoo or simply to

hang out. Therefore, the place functioned as a social space where gathering and conversations

happen organically. Gradually, the little internet café became a place where I met and connected

with potential interviewees. Once I started interviewing people, additional interviewees with

valuable insights would be recommended to me. Different from the snowball sampling technique

I used to recruit interviewees with firsthand resettlement experience, my interlocutors from

NGOs, consulting firms or local/regional governments were selected due to their respective

knowledge and expertise. Particularly, my access to Chinalco employees and most of its

subcontractors were obtained unexpectedly. After multiple failed attempts to establish contacts

through emails and spontaneous visits to its office in Nueva Morococha, the opportunity finally

came around at the dialogue table I participated in Huancayo. I prepared lists of questions prior

to interviews to ensure key aspects were covered fully. However, they only served as guides and

did not dictate the flow of conversations. Questions were framed in open-ended fashion,

allowing enough space for residents to share their lived experience and add unique insights.

All collected data will remain confidential and pseudonyms are used throughout the

thesis unless interviewees preferred being referred to by their real names. Direct quotes were

translated either by my interpreter from Spanish or by myself from Chinese. I took all photos

with the exception of Figure 3 in Chapter 3.

3. Chapter Overviews

Chapter 2

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The second chapter, “Situating Global China in Central Peru: A geohistorical

conjuncture,” follows theoretical suggestions forwarded by critical scholars of global China to

contextualize and disaggregate specific instances of Chinese foreign investment. Based on the

case study of Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project in Central Peru, the chapter

develops an argument around debates on the particularity of Chinese state capital. It maintains

that Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho mine should be treated as a capitalist project driven

both by the interests of the Chinese state and those of the corporation. Whereas the state aims to

secure access to strategic resources, fix national crises of overaccumulation and build

internationally competitive SOEs, Chinalco as a corporation, though state-owned, is more

interested in investment diversification and profit maximization. In other words, here Chinese

state capital embodies both the “logic of state” and the “logic of capital” (Lee 2017), is driven by

entangled geoeconomic and geopolitical interests (Yeh 2016), and resembles what Gonzalez-

Vicente (2011) pointed to as the “entrepreneurial statehood rationale” under which SOEs are

“part and parcel of the marketization of the Chinese state” (Yeh 2016).

However, motivations to satisfy China’s strategic planning of resource security or

Chinalco’s quest of diversification alone do not sufficiently explain why Chinalco chose

Toromocho in Peru or what made this acquisition successful. Answering these questions requires

further contextualization which leads to the chapter’s second argument: Chinalco’s acquisition of

the Toromocho project in 2007/8 took place at a geohistorical conjuncture when multiple forces

at various scales came together. Globally, the 2007/8 financial crisis not only created favorable

conditions for internationalization of Chinese SOEs but also expedited the very same process as

a result of increasing concentration of mining assets in the hands of a few. Domestically in

China, the government had been supporting its SOEs with the launch of the Going Out strategy

13

in 2000. And in Peru, Fujimori’s neoliberal reform that began in 1990 was paramount for

attracting foreign investments in which Chinese SOEs were among the first. Specifically,

Morococha’s mining history, the region’s fixed mining infrastructures as well as the re-discovery

of Toromocho mountain all played significant roles in this transaction. Therefore, the case study

of Toromocho substantiates arguments made by critical scholars of global China, about the

importance of studying each project and its materialization as processual, contextual and

contingent in its respective local context.

Chapter 3

“Displacement, Development and Capitalist Modernity: The making and unmaking of

Morococha in Central Peru” charts the dialectic and co-constitutive making and unmaking of

Morococha with key concepts such as “the production of space” (Lefebvre 1991) and “the

destruction of space” (Gordillo 2014). The making of Nueva Morococha is the positive moment

of the production of space, in the sense that it denotes the material reassembly of matter.

Following Fortier’s (1995) “creation city,” Castagnola’s (2013) “instant city” and Lefebvre’s

“new town” (1995), the chapter argues that Nueva Morococha was designed based on

technocratic rationality to serve Chinalco’s corporate interests of capitalist accumulation rather

than the needs of the displaced. Designed and built with indifference to the historically and

geographically lived experiences of local people, Nueva Morococha’s discrete spatial design and

geometrical urban planning has led to a homogenous, abstract, and de-territorial space where

feelings of alienation and transformations of everyday life were ubiquitous (Lefebvre 1991).

Meanwhile, the unmaking of Antigua Morococha is the negative moment of the

destruction of space, implying material disintegration that consists of both physical destruction

14

and social fragmentation. By bringing together “creative destruction” (Harvey 2007), “the

production of space” (Lefebvre 1991), “destructive production” (Gordillo 2014) and “imperial

disregard” (Stoler 2009), it refutes an elite interpretation of destruction under capitalism as an

unfortunate by-product and insists on an analysis that centers spatial destruction by following the

omnipresent concrete in destroyed Antigua Morococha as rubble, “textured, affectively charged

matter that is intrinsic to all living places” (Gordillo 2014, 5). In doing so, it uncovers violent

histories of capitalist expansion which turned the incrementally developed Antigua Morococha, a

place where many called home, raised their families and longed for a better future, into an

abstract, quantifiable and homogenous space for commodification and thus profit, or in Smith’s

(2008) words, a transformation of the use value of “first nature” to its exchange value as “second

nature.” Not only was the physical landscape of Antigua Morococha altered, so too were the fate

and life of its residents. Chinalco coerced many locals to resettle “voluntarily” to Nueva

Morococha by swiftly transferring essential public services such as health care, education and

government administration to the new town, making life back in Antigua Morococha almost

impossible to sustain. This corporate strategy of coercion by deprivation helped facilitate

capitalist accumulation by clearing up the old town for open pit mining.

Chapter 4

This chapter, “Double Dispossession: From structural dependency to corporate social

responsibility,” is about two distinctive but interrelated processes of dispossession. The chapter

first details the historical process of proletarianization facilitated partially by dispossessing self-

sufficient subsistence farmers from their land and partially by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation’s

expansive provision of services to its employees and their families. During the time when

15

demand for labor was high in under-mechanized mines, the creation of a reserved pool of

industrial proletariat was crucial for capitalist accumulation. However, when Chinalco proceeded

with open pit mining in 2008 with the state-of-art technological innovations, a reformulated form

of dispossession emerged in Morococha, that is dispossession of labor, or of their ability to earn

a wage. Although it is not uncommon that technological advancement renders wage labor

replaceable by machines or makes them “surplus” to capital, the devastation it wreaks on

residents of Nueva Morococha is exceptionally grievous. Under this circumstance, the already

existing pool of reserved labor, created historically as a result of proletarianization, will be

further exploited as flexible and disposable cheap labor under the expansive (sub)contracting

system. In other words, while wage labor was initially desirable for CPC’s mining operations, it

is no longer beneficial for Chinalco in the face of open pit mining. While dispossession of land

took place in both processes, they manifested in different ways. Whereas the primary objective

of the historical dispossession of land was to create steady supplies of wage labor, the aim of the

technological dispossession of Antigua Morococha, or its spatial destruction, is to procure

minerals lying underneath the town. That being said, both wage labor and raw materials are

indispensable for capitalist production. Therefore, regardless of what is dispossessed or

produced, the ultimate goal is capitalist expansion.

Whereas structural dependency was necessary to stabilize the workforce and thus

safeguard mining operations for the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, it has now become baggage and

an obstacle for Chinalco to maximize its profit. Structural dependency here refers to mining

families’ complete reliance on wages and other essential services provided by mining

corporations, such as health care, education and housing. With fewer employees who are mostly

from metropolitan Lima or Huancayo, Chinalco slowly reformulated and rebranded the

16

previously expansive corporate benefits into limited Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), as

an additional benevolent contribution instead of fulfilling its obligations. Meanwhile, this

transformation from structural dependency to corporate social responsibility should be situated in

the wider neoliberal trend of extractive corporations trying to operate in socially conscious and

responsible manners.

17

II

SITUATING GLOBAL CHINA IN CENTRAL PERU: A GEOHISTORICAL

CONJUNCTURE

1.Introduction

Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco) is a Chinese State-owned Enterprise (SOE)

supervised directly by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of

the State Council (SASAC). This means Chinalco is fully funded and owned by the Chinese

state. As one of the 96 centrally administered SOEs (SASAC 2019), Chinalco is now the world’s

largest alumina producer and China’s largest nonferrous metals enterprise, playing a strategic

role in securing natural resources for national development. Six years after its establishment, in

August 2007, Chinalco acquired Vancouver-based Peru Copper Inc. with $860 million to acquire

its ownership of the Toromocho mine.4 Minera Chinalco Peru S.A, a subsidiary under Chinalco’s

copper branch,5 was created subsequently to fully execute this project. When the symbolic

transfer ceremony took place in March 2008, Alan Garcia, Peru’s then president, announced an

additional $2,150 million investment from Chinalco. The mine went into production in 2013 and

an expansion project framed under the Belt and Road Initiative is currently underway to enhance

its production output by 45% in 2020 (Chinalco News 2018).

4 Peru Copper Inc., previously known as Peru Copper Syndicate, acquired the project with only 2 million dollars

back in 2002 as a result of privatization of Centromin.

5 China Copper Group Holdings Co., Limited is created as a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinalco in August 2008,

a few months after the transfer of Toromocho project. It supervises Chinalco’s copper related activities such as

explorations and acquisitions. China Copper Group Holdings Co., Limited owns Chinalco Mining Corporation

International, the key platform for Chinalco’s overseas acquisition and the parent company of Minera Chinalco Peru

S.A.

18

According to Peru Copper Inc., Chinalco was among the first of a few companies

showing interest in the Toromocho project, sending a group of 6 engineers to visit Morococha

and research its potential (Lowell 2014). Elaborate efforts were made because copper is

considered a strategic resource for Chinese development. China’s copper reserves are relatively

scare compared to its intensifying demand, which grew from 20% of the world’s total in 2003 to

39% in 2010. However, its reserves only increased from 1 % to 4% of the world’s total during

the same period, creating an enormous supply-demand gap of 35% (Humphries 2015). Due to

China’s limited domestic reserves of copper ore and its relatively low quality, the Chinese

government has strategically promoted investment in copper production abroad to secure its

domestic demand.

The argument of this chapter is simple: Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho mine

should be treated as a capitalist project driven both by interests of the Chinese state and those of

the corporation. While Chinalco’s acquisition of Toromocho promises the Chinese state steady

and cost-efficient access to copper supplies, it also helps Chinalco diversify the corporation’s

investment portfolio and become internationally competitive. Therefore, state capital here

embodies both the logic of state and the logic of capital (Lee 2017). More importantly, this

transfer did not take place in a vacuum and its success does not solely rely on the Chinese state’s

determination to achieve resource security or the financial support from its state backed policy

banks. Rather, Chinalco’s successful acquisition of the Toromocho mine became possible in a

specific historical and geographical context when forces at various scales converged to create a

favorable investing environment. Understanding this geohistorical conjuncture requires us to

attend to the continuous concentration of mining capitals since the 1990s, the global financial

crisis of 2007/8, ways in which China’s domestic and overseas development processes relate

19

(relationships between Going Out strategy and crises of overaccumulation, oversaturated market,

growing competition with international firms after China joined WTO), host country’s political

economy (neoliberal reform in Peru), and the specificity of local geographies and histories of

Morococha. By contextualizing Chinalco’s acquisition in a specific historical moment and

situating it in a geographic context, it is clear that although the acquisition was partially driven

by state interest in securing copper supply, building internationally competitive corporations,

expanding market share and overseas resource layout (SASAC 2019), the decision to acquire this

particular project in central Peru was calculated based on market ideologies and capitalist

calculations of profit maximization, cost-efficiency, as well as investment climate. This

observation fits well into the framework of an “entrepreneurial statehood rationale” coined by

Gonzalez-Vicente (2011) under which geoeconomics and geopolitics are always entangled (Yeh

2016).

This chapter is in conversation with scholarship on global China (Mawdsley 2008;

Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Yeh 2016; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Lee 2014, 2017). Specifically,

it is developed around debates on the particularity of Chinese state capital. It offers a multi-scalar

analysis of the geohistorical conjuncture at which Chinalco’s acquisition of Toromocho project

took place in 2007/8. These convergent elements include but are not limited to the 2007/8 global

financial crisis, China’s Going Out strategy, Peru’s domestic neoliberal reform, the rediscovery

of the Toromocho mine, and Morococha’s mining history with fixed capital. Although these

forces are presented as separate processes unfolding at different scales, globally, nationally or

locally, it is paramount to remember that they are entangled, messy, and interdependent

processes. Lastly, the case study of Toromocho substantiates my first argument made in the

introduction, which is the importance of treating each materialization of global China as

20

processual, contextual and contingent in its respective local context. Achieving this goal means

to disaggregate a “monolithic China,” to differentiate “varieties of capitals” and sectors of

investment, to contextualize Chinese investment in host countries as well as at the community

level, and to attend to China’s domestic development.

2.Acquisition of Toromocho at a Geohistorical Conjuncture

Capital Concentration and Going Out Strategy under the 2007/8 Financial Crisis

Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project in 2007/86 took place against the

backdrop of two ongoing processes that were escalated by the global financial crisis. Globally

was the ongoing concentration of mineral resources in the hands of a few powerful transnational

mining corporations since the mid 1990’s (Yao and Sutherland 2009). This consolidation posed

potential threats to China’s economic development which relied heavily on raw materials such as

iron and copper. Domestically was Chinese government’s support to internationalize its State-

owned Enterprises (SOEs) under the Going Out Strategy (走出去战略) formally launched in

2000. By promoting outbound investment from China, this initiative aims to open new markets

for Chinese manufactured goods, secure natural resources, build internationally competitive

corporations, advance geopolitical interests and so on (Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Mohan

2013; Yeh and Wharton 2016; McMichael 2020; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011). Putting these two

unfolding processes into conversation helps explain the Chinese state’s strategic push for the

internationalization of its natural resource SOEs in order to secure steady and cost-efficient

supplies of raw materials. The catastrophic 2007/8 global financial crisis not only made this

6 In 2007, Chinalco Mining Corporation International became the parent company of Peru Copper Inc., which

owned the concession right of the Toromocho project under its subsidiary Minera Peru Copper. The transfer of

ownership of Toromocho took place in 2008. Therefore, I use 2007/8 to refer to the overall completed process.

21

resource-oriented agenda more imperative as it catalyzed both processes of going out and

concentration of mining capital. It also created more favorable conditions to advance this agenda,

of which Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project was a prime example.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, waves of capital concentration began in metal

mining industries after major mining corporations accumulated enough surplus capital due to the

unprecedented boom in metal prices, driven largely by rapid economic growth in developing

countries (Yao and Sutherland 2009). Capital concentration, most efficiently done through

processes of mergers and acquisitions, is necessary to sustain capitalist expansion by circulating

surplus capital and avoiding capital devaluation (Mann 2013; Yao and Sutherland 2009).

Between 1995 and 2006, 20 “mega-merger,” deals exceeding $1 billion, took place in the mining

industry, resulting in concentration of 58% of copper in the hands of the 10 largest companies

(United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2009). Well aware of the situation,

Chinese central government changed its position on relaxed decentralization of the mining

industry throughout the reform era, and helped create national champions capable of competing

with international mining giants by phasing out inefficient mining Town and Village Enterprises

(Rui 2005).

Trends of mergers and acquisitions accelerated during the 2007/8 global financial crisis.

The first five months of 2008 witnessed unprecedented takeovers in mining with a total value

tripled to $199 billion compared to 2007 (Choudhury and Foley 2008). Chinalco contributed its

share to these extraordinary transactions. In addition to spending $860 million on the Toromocho

project, it acquired 9% of Rio Tinto’s share with $14 billion in February 2008 and a year later

tried unsuccessfully to inject another $19.5 billion to form a strategic partnership with Rio Tinto

and BHP Billiton to meet China’s increasing demand of raw materials (Yao et al. 2010). The

22

result was rising consolidations of ownership and access to minerals in the hands of a few

powerful transnational corporations. For example, the attempted merger between Rio Tinto and

BHP Billiton back in 2008, if successful, would have created the largest single producer of iron

ore, copper, aluminum and power-station coal in the world. For the Chinese government, this

monopolistic nature posed potential threats as its resource-reliant development would then be

tied to powerful foreign corporations which it had little influence over (Yao and Sutherland

2009). The global consolidation of mining assets could not only increase the cost of Chinese

development considerably through price-setting but also potentially bring a halt to its economic

development. Confronted with the pressing need to secure steady, cost-effective access to

minerals and safeguard domestic development, the Chinese government felt the impulse to

further assist the internationalization of its State-own Enterprises (SOEs), especially those in

resource sectors such as Chinalco. In other words, against the backdrop of mining capital

concentration and the global financial crisis, Chinese SOEs became important vehicles to secure

state interests in resource supplies (Yao and Sutherland 2009).

The Chinese government’s effort to assist the internationalization of its SOEs officially

kicked off when the Going Out Strategy was written into China’s Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-

2005) for National Economic and Social Development in October 2000 (Gonzalez-Vicente

2011). However, its initial conceptualization and subsequent development can be traced back to

the second half of the 1990’s under the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996 -2000) (China Council for

the Promotion of International Trade 2007). After two decades of economic growth, China had

accumulated a tremendous amount of foreign currency reserves and surplus capital that were in

urgent need of recirculation (China Council for the Promotion of International Trade 2007).

Against this backdrop were the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 and China’s entry into the World

23

Trade Organization in 2001, making it more imperative for the Chinese government to seek

outlets for its surplus capitals by encouraging overseas investment. In addition, in an increasingly

globalized world economy, Going Out Strategy is also about building internationally competitive

Chinese companies to resist competition from transnational firms in domestic China (Gonzalez-

Vicente 2012), to maintain a certain market share and to occupy strategic positions in the

international economic order (Yao and Sutherland 2009). Wu Bangguo, a principle architect of

SOE reform and the then Vice-Premier of the State Council, believed “…in the next century our

nation’s position in the international economic order will be to a large extent determined by the

position of our nation’s large enterprises and groups… We must unite and rise together, develop

economies of scale and scope and nurture a ‘national team’ capable of entering the world’s

Fortune 500” (The Economic Daily, 1998, cited in Sutherland 2003). Equally important for

Going Out to accomplish is Chinese government’s determination to secure strategic resource

supplies ranging from minerals to agricultural products (McMichael 2020; Yao and Sutherland

2009; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Lee 2017). Overall, by promoting outbound investment from

China, Going Out aims to open new markets for Chinese manufactured goods, secure natural

resources, build internationally competitive corporations, and advance geopolitical interests

(Klinger and Muldavin 2019; Mohan, 2013; Yeh and Wharton 2016; McMichael 2020;

Gonzalez-Vicente 2011).

Going Out strategy was further consolidated during the global financial crisis in 2007/8.

In fact, financial crises are often “orchestrated, managed and controlled” by the ruling class to

justify the economic system and redistribute wealth, a perfect condition for accumulation by

dispossession (Harvey 2007, 37). When the world economy was left wrecked in 2007/8, Chinese

SOEs, backed up by China’s state-owned policy banks, were presented with unprecedented

24

opportunities to “go global” through cheaper mergers and acquisitions (Yao and Sutherland

2009). In addition, the Chinese state did so after realizing the dangers posed by its economic

structural imbalance which was largely export-oriented and depended on foreign direct

investment. This awareness reaffirmed the agenda of Going Out, which is the need to further

internationalize Chinese SOEs.

Consequently, Chinalco’s success in acquiring the Toromocho Project can be understood

in two ways. On the one hand, the global financial crisis heightened the Chinese government’s

existing anxiety over resource security due to further consolidation of the global mining

industries as a result of plunges in metal prices and declines in its global demand. On the other

hand, the same crisis created more advantageous conditions for Chinese SOEs to go out. In other

words, Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco) seized the opening created by the financial

crisis to advance the nation’s interest in resource security as well as its firm-level agenda of

profile diversification and internationalization (Hong and Sun 2006). The later motivation of

pursuing independent corporate goals, argued by Gonzalez-Vicente (2011), are not uncommon

among Chinese state-owned enterprises. These global forces and national policies were

intertwined and indispensable for the project’s materialization and for an understanding of the

formation of global China as an assemblage as well as a process.

Fujimori and Peru’s Neoliberal Reform

Peru’s continuous neoliberal reform which began under then president Alberto Fujimori

in 1991 played another decisive role facilitating the acquisition. Three decades of social unrest

and economic turmoil in Peru became the perfect breeding ground for Fujimori’s political

campaign and its subsequent election in 1990 (Felices-Luna 2017). Social movements

25

demanding justice and economic reform culminated into an internal armed conflict, Sendero

Luminoso (Shining Path). While economic reforms in the 1970’s deepened Peru’s economic

instability, bringing inflation to 73.9% in 1978 (Lora Cam 2001), the following anti-capital and

pro-capital reforms carried out respectively by García’s left-wing government and Belaunde’s

central-right government in the 1980’s brought Peru’s already fragile economy to the brink of a

total collapse (Felices-Luna 2017), resulting in the second worst inflation of 7,650% in Latin

American history (Kenney 2004). Under ubiquitous fear over an imminent civil war and

economic catastrophe, Fujimori won the election as “the hardworking, self-made, outsider to the

political class” who promised to save the national economy (Felices-Luna 2017, 166).

Fujimori’s administration capitalized on past social upheavals and insurgencies such as

Sendero Luminoso to delegitimize opposition to capitalism on the grounds that all anti-capitalist

projects were inherently violent and destructive (Felices-Luna 2013).7 Therefore, during his

eleven years in power, a wide range of economic reforms were initiated to implement a

neoliberal market-based ideology. For example, extensive efforts were made to attract foreign

direct investment, including financial and labor market deregulations8, privatization of public

enterprises, and reduction in tariffs (Roberts 1995). Reforms related to extractive industry, the

pillar of Peru’s economy, were especially pronounced: costs for mining prospecting and

exploration were deducted from tax payments due and mining tax could be suspended until

initial investments were recuperated or until production increased more than 10% (Campodónico

Sanchez 1999). Not only were these changes written into the 1993 Constitution, but revisions or

revocations were strictly prohibited to protect interests of transnational extractive capitals (Lust

7 It is interesting to see how investments from a communist state are used by the Peruvian government to counter

internal communist threats and promote neoliberalism. A lot of interesting analytical work could be done on this

thread but it is beyond the scope of this study.

8 A set of changes made in labor laws is elaborated upon in chapter 4 on dispossession.

26

2016). As a result, during Fujimori’s term, almost 90% or over 300 state-owned companies of

strategic sectors such as mining, oil and electricity were privatized (Duvillier 2016). Mining

investment in Peru went from $200 million in 1993 to $5 billion in 2010 (Gordon and Webber,

2016) and concessions to gas and petroleum extraction increased from 13% in 2004 to over 70%

the area of indigenous territories in 2008 (Pinto 2009). Although Fujimori stepped down in 2001

under charges of corruption and human rights violations, Peru’s neoliberal reform persisted and

deepened as its three subsequent democratically elected presidents unanimously embraced

neoliberal ideologies (Felices-Luna 2017; Lust 2016; Gordon and Webber 2016).

The ambitious neoliberal reform in a country with abundant natural resources attracted

Chinese investment to Peru from the very beginning in the 1990’s. Two years into Fujimori’s

presidency in 1992, Shougang Group became the first Chinese SOE to conduct overseas

investment in Peru. It purchased 98.52% of the shares of Hierro Perú, one of the first major state-

owned mines to be privatized. Subsequently, a wholly owned subsidiary, Shougang Hierro Perú

S.A.A, was created to manage its permanent mining rights, exploration rights and management

rights of the Marcona iron ore mine. This transaction was done partially due to China’s

increasing demand for natural resources and its domestic scarcity (Nolan 1998), and partially due

to Peru’s friendly investing environment, in which the capture of Abimael Gúzman in 1992,

leader of Sendero Luminoso, played a crucial role (Holmes and de Piñeres 2002). One year later

in 1993, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), another SOE, also obtained concession

rights of China’s first overseas oilfield in Talara. The emergence of first wave of Chinese

investment in Peru amid economic liberalization and market reform is also facilitated by an

opening crated by traditional western mining corporations’ reluctance to further invest under

27

Fujimori’s self-coup which declared himself as Peru’s permanent president under the state of

emergency.

The second, more intensified wave of Chinese investment in Peru did not commence until

the 2007/8 global financial crisis (Gonzalez-Vicente 2013). In the year of 2007 alone, two mega

acquisitions took place in addition to Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project. One was

Zijin Mining Group’s takeover of the Rio Blanco copper mine with $182.3 million USD and the

other was a collective acquisition of Northern Peru Copper Corporation made by China

Minmetals Corporation and Jiangxi Copper Co. The justification for opening of natural resources

to foreign extraction in Peru relies on an institutional framework based on a trickle-down

neoliberal rationality that encourages mining investment and measures its developmental success

by means of aggregate growth statistics (Gonzalez-Vicente 2013, Bebbington and Bebbington

2011). However, quantitative growth rarely reflects qualitative changes; as income inequality

deepened, the “Wall of Shame,” a six-mile long concrete barrier, was put up between Lima’s rich

neighborhood and its shanty towns (Janetsky 2019).

Re-Discovering Toromocho, 2002 – 2006

Despite its long history of mining, a complete and accurate picture of Morococha’s

mineral composition was unknown until Peru Copper Inc. conducted a comprehensive study

from 2002 to 2006. Peru Copper Inc. obtained Toromocho’s concession right in 2002 under

Fujimori’s neoliberal reform to privatize national industries. The company’s re-discovery of

Toromocho mountain’s abundant copper ore deposit was a forceful driver of Chinalco’s

acquisition. After all, for mining operations, nothing is more essential than the raw materials

28

which through exploration and processing can be turned into profitable commodities for sale on

international markets.

Since the 19th century, Toromocho mountain has gone through different phases of

exploration under shifting ownership. However, perhaps due to a lack of accurate information on

its geological composition resulting from underdeveloped prospecting technologies back then

and capital deficiency, Toromocho mountain had always been mined on a relatively small scale.

The earliest documentation of Morococha and its mineral wealth came from Antonio Raimondi,

an Italian-born Peruvian geographer who was most famous for his extensive travels across the

country, which culminated in the publication of El Perú: Itinerarios de Viajes (Peru: Travel

Itineraries). In 1861, he travelled from Lima to Morococha and conducted the first in-depth

systematic research on Morococha’s geological composition. After Raimondi passed away, his

findings from this particular trip were published in 1902 titled Estudios geológicos del camino

entre Lima y Morococha y alrededores de esta hacienda (Geological Studies of the Road

between Lima and Morooccha and its Surrondings). However, Toromocho mountain was not

mentioned in the book at all. It wasn’t until the 1940’s when Toromocho mountain was first

identified as porphyry copper deposit by Cerro de Pasco Corporation (Lowell 2014, 352). To

further study its geology, Cerro de Pasco Corporation carried out additional drillings and

underground explorations in the 1960’s. After the mine was nationalized by the Peruvian

government in 1974, Centromin initiated a second drilling project which led to the identification

of 350 million tons of ore reserve (Lowell 2014 352). Nevertheless, after the second drilling,

Centromin did nothing considering the mine was soon to be privatized under Fujimori’s

sweeping neoliberal campaign. Toromocho mountain thus remained underexplored. The

situation persisted as no one bid on the project when it initially went up for sale in the 1990’s,

29

due to its perceived “dodgy prospects” resulting from “mistaken general opinion based on the

previous geological work and published reports” (Lowell 2014, 357).

The turning point for Toromocho mountain appeared in 2002 when Peru Copper Inc.

acquired the concession right to develop more information on Toromocho under Fujimori,

described by J. David Lowell as “probably the best president Peru had ever had” (Lowell 2014,

353). Lowell led Peru Copper Inc,. a prospecting junior firm from Canada, and as such was the

key architect behind the re-discovery of Toromocho as well as its transfer to Chinalco. Born in

Arizona in 1928 to a mining family, Lowell received undergraduate training in mining

engineering at the University of Arizona and studied geology at Stanford University. He worked

as a mining engineer, an independent mining consultant as well as an independent resource

prospector at different stages of his life. In 1991, Lowell initiated his first self-financed

exploration trip to Peru, leading up to discoveries of Los Calatos and Pierina. Eleven years later,

he was again drawn to Peru, specifically to the Toromocho mountain and Morococha, because

their ore reserves were developed decades ago without the newest copper leaching techniques

(Lowell 2014). Using the most updated prospecting technology, the re-evaluation of Toromocho

mountain led to a surprising discovery of a tremendous untapped copper deposit, growing

exponentially from 350 million tons of ore reserve identified by CPC in 1970 to 2.2 billion tons

in 2007 by the time it was transferred to Chinalco (Lowell 2014, 363).

The decision to acquire the Toromocho mine was made strategically against the backdrop

of the gigantic supply-demand gap of copper in China as discussed above. However, the more

important driver for acquiring this particular project was the prospecting breakthrough which led

to an identification of 2.2 billion tons of ore reserve. This re-discovery transformed Toromocho

30

from an average mining concession to an extremely attractive investment asset promising

national resource security for the Chinese state as well as generous profit returns for Chinalco.

Antigua Morococha and its Mining Heritage

Equally important for Chinalco’s acquisition were the long-established mining history of

Antigua Morococha and the fixed mining capitals developed over time. Its particular history

affords enormous advantages that made Toromocho mountain attractive for future investments.

Specifically, there were experienced miners available for hire, a community that was friendly to

foreign mining investment, and established infrastructure to facilitate mineral exploration and

transportation at lower costs and risks.

Toromocho mountain sits 2.5 kilometers away from the traditional mining camps of

Morococha in the Junín Department of Central Peru. The town is located about 140 kilometers

east of Lima at an average elevation of 14,000 feet. Although the Toromocho project is a rather

recent discovery, the town itself has a rich entangled history of mining operation, specifically

with foreign investments.9 By the middle of the 19th century, Morococha was comprised of

numerous small concessions operated by Germans, Dutch and other immigrant families of

European origins (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). However, towards the turn of the twentieth century,

all mining haciendas faced severe difficulties - the rich top-layer minerals were exhausted

quickly while construction of deeper mining tunnels was met with serious water problems. Thus

they were acquired by the capital intensive and technologically more advanced Cerro de Pasco

Corporation (CPC) based in the U.S (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979, p44). When CPC was

nationalized by the Peruvian military government in 1974, Centromin became the major state

9 Lee’s (2017) study on Chinese investment in copper mining in Zambia also pointed to the preexisting landscape of

abundant foreign investment due to the country’s neoliberalization and liberalization.

31

operator in Morococha and the ownership again shifted after Peru’s neoliberal reform which

started in the 1990’s. Since then, Morocochans have witnessed the coming and going of various

mining corporations such as Volkan Compañía Minera (Peruvian), Sociedad Minera Austria

Duvas SAC (Peruvian), Pan American Silver Peru SAC (Canadian), Peru Copper Inc.

(Canadian) and the latest, Chinalco (Chinese). Antigua Morococha’s mining history was detailed

in a report submitted to Chinalco by its resource development company, Chinalco Mining

Corporation International. The report stated, “A large part of the population in the town of the

Morococha district and its vicinity work in the mining industry and are a potential source of

skilled and experienced labor for the Toromocho project” (157). Accordingly, it is evident that

Antigua Morococha’s mining history, especially its favorable labor conditions, had a positive

influence on Chinalco’s acquisition of Toromocho project.

Along with Antigua Morococha’s mining history are fixed capitals established overtime

to facilitate mining exploration in Central Peru. These fixed capitals, including transportation

networks, water plants and power stations, present Toromocho as an ideal investment project

with lower “construction and operational costs and fewer operational risks” (Chinalco Mining

Corporation International, 146). Take transportation as an example. The Toromocho project sits

along Central Highway and Central Railway, two existing transportation networks that connect

the mineral rich Andes with the Pacific coast. Central Highway links the regional capital of

Huancayo with Lima and is used primarily to transport miners and administrative staff between

their hometowns and the mine. Central Railway joins the department of Cerro de Pasco and

Juńin with the Callo port. It brings essentials such as diesel fuels and mill balls to sustain mining

operations and transport copper concentrates from the mine to the Callo port. The highway and

railway collectively provide Chinalco convenient and economic transportation options to

32

maximize its net profit. Already established infrastructure also serves as the foundation upon

which Chinalco further capitalizes to improve its overall transportation efficiency. For example,

Chinalco invested in constructing a one-kilometer spur connecting Toromocho mine directly

with the Central Railway and it incorporated Transportadora Callo S.A. to construct a specialized

transfer conveyor belt, a ship loading facility and a dock at the Callo port (Chinalco Mining

Corporation International, 164). Besides transportation, Kingsmill Tunnel has sufficient water

supply for Toromocho mine, and power stations nearby in Pomachoca will provide enough

electricity. Consequently, well equipped with infrastructures that support mining exploration and

transportation, the Toromocho project was an appealing investment opportunity with relatively

low production and operation costs for Chinalco.

Antigua Morococha’s mining history and its fixed mining capitals were significant,

partial factors that contributed to Chinalco’s decision to acquire this particular project instead of

others. Hence, even if this transaction is driven by the Chinese state’s interest in a steady and

economic supply of copper to sustain its domestic development, the way it was carried out does

not defy capitalist logics of accumulation or market ideologies. Chinalco privileged a friendly

and liberal investment setting resulting from the town’s long-established mining traditions and

Peru’s neoliberal reforms. The region’s established mining infrastructures, including its ample

experienced miners if we consider “people as infrastructure” (Simone 2004), further drew

Chinalco’s attention by promising lower cost and less risk in mining operations and construction.

In a nutshell, state capital in the case of Chinalco does not act “irrationally” or disrupt the

“apolitical” market. Quite the opposite, Chinese state interests in resource security are achieved

more efficiently through market-oriented strategies and capitalist calculations.

33

3. Chinese SOEs and the “Entrepreneurial Statehood Rationale”

Confronted with an increasingly neoliberal world order and its rapid integration into the

global political economy, the Chinese state has tactically appraised and developed particular

strategies and discourses to further its economic development while preserving certain features

and principles of its political structure (Gonzalez-Vicente 2011; Duckett 1996; Harvey 2007;

Pieke 2009; Sigley 2006; Ong and Zhang 2008). While Harvey (2007) conceptualizes China’s

economic development as “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics,” Ong and Zhang (2008)

describe it as “socialism from afar,” both referring to China’s increasing incorporation of certain

strands of market-based neoliberal approaches under its centralized authoritarian rule.

Emphasizing China’s socialist legacy, Pieke (2009) depicts a blend of socialist rule with market

economy, theorizing the combination as “a distinctively Chinese neo-socialist governmental

discourse.” Similarly, Sigley (2006) characterizes it as a hybrid socialist-neoliberal form of

political rationality. While these scholars all suggested a mixture of two types of seemingly

contradictory concepts in contemporary China, namely Chinese Communist Party’s centralized

control and Western “liberal” governance, Duckett (1996) draws our attention to the

entrepreneurial nature of Chinese state by focusing on its utilization of SOEs and state agencies

in adapting to an evolving market economy emerging out of China’s economic reform. Building

on the aforementioned scholarship to explain the internationalization of Chinese state, Gonzalez-

Vicente (2011, 2013) proposed “an entrepreneurial statehood rationale.” This concept stresses

the Chinese state’s embrace of a certain market strategies to develop a capitalist economy in

which it is an active participant rather than a mere regulator. This proposition is analytically

productive in understanding Chinese SOE investments, especially those abroad. Rather than

independent market actors, Chinese SOEs, particularly centrally administered ones, are part of

34

the state apparatus, pursuing state interests while operating under the foremost principle of profit

seeking (Gonzalez-Vicente 2011, 2013; Yeh 2016).

State-owned enterprises are strategic, marketized state entities. Chinese SOEs’ top

executives are directly appointed and evaluated by SASAC under the State Council and their

senior managers chosen by Chinese Communist Party. Promotions or punishments are thus based

on performances and their allegiance to the state, implying mandatory compliance to the central

government’s administrative arrangements and policy agendas (Chan 2009; Gonzalez-Vicente

2011). In addition, SOEs play paramount roles in Going Out policy and China’s modernization

agenda. Noted by Zhang (2004), some of the most powerful SOEs were formed as a result of

state decentralization and restructuring in the late 1990’s to advance Going Out. For example,

part of the former Ministry of Petroleum became PetroChina while the rest of it joined the

Ministry of Chemical Industry to create Sinopec. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Post and

Telecommunications was the predecessor of China Telecom, the country’s largest fixed-line

service and the third largest mobile telecommunication provider.

The history of Chinalco reflects the same strategy of transforming previous national

ministries into marketized corporations but its trajectory was a bit more tortuous. In March 1983,

the Chinese State Council took out the management of non-ferrous metals industry from then

Ministry of Metallurgical Industry and transferred it a month later to the newly established China

Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Corporation.10 During the 1998 State Council Institutional

Reform,11 the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry as well as China Non-Ferrous Metals Industry

Corporation were disbanded in response to state decentralization and economic reform, leading

10 See 中国有色金属工业总公司 (China Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Corporation) and Ministries of the People's

Republic of China for more details.

11 There has been 8 major State Council Institutional Reform since 1978.

35

to the formation of State Bureau of Metallurgic Industry as well as three major resource

corporations, of which the former Chinalco was one. However, in July 2000, the State Council

revoked the establishment of these three corporations and half a year later in February 2001, then

State Bureau of Metallurgic Industry was again dissolved under State Council Institutional

Reform directed by Zhu Rongji. Amid all the restructuring, reorganization and decentralization

processes in which political and economic interests were deeply entangled, Aluminum

Corporation of China, after asset reorganization and listing, reemerged under the State Council

as a prominent state-owned enterprise.12 Acts to turn former national ministries to publicly listed

corporations reveal that SOEs are results of “marketization of the Chinese state” that aim to

foster internationally competitive industries. Consequently, as Gonzalez-Vicente (2011) writes,

“Chinese SOEs operate as the spearheads of a developmental and geopolitical vision that

emanates primarily from the central state” (404).

However, the mission to advance geoeconomic and geopolitical interests of the central

government in a global capitalist economy is navigated under market orientation and corporate

development strategies -- thus the “entrepreneurial” component of “an entrepreneurial statehood

rationale.” Because profitability and international competitiveness are goals of both SOEs and

the Chinese state, the central government strategically decentralizes, liberalizes and restructures

the economy to provide Chinese SOEs different levels of autonomy to pursue commercial profit

and enhance market performance (Zhang 2004; Gonzalez-Vicente 2011). In addition, it is worth

noting that many SOEs exist quite independently from the state’s geopolitical interests with

profitability being their only responsibility (Gonzalez-Vicente 2011). Therefore, it is not

12 The process of reorganizing and listing Chinalco’s assets was briefed to Wu Bangguo, one of the principal

architects of SOE reform and the then Vice-Premier of the State Council, before its final establishment in August

2001. What ultimately took place was a swap from debt to equity. See Chinalco 2001 Events for more details.

36

surprising to observe mergers between SOEs and private non-Chinese corporations or

competition among SOEs for access to markets and resources. Under robust financial support

afforded by Going Out, smooth diplomatic relations nurtured by the central government and

possession of comparative advantage to Chinese market and distribution networks, capable SOEs

follow an entrepreneurial rationale and capitalize on these opportunities to advance their own

corporate interests, such as profile diversification and technology transfer (Gonzalez-Vicente

2012). The heterogeneity of SOEs’ corporate interests in foreign investments should be taken

into account to stress SOEs as agentive, autonomous actors under state supervision.

Gonzalez-Vicente’s (2011) proposition of “entrepreneurial statehood rationale” and Lee’s

(2017) theorization of “varieties of capital” complement each other. For Lee, what matters is

how capitals’ “interests, logic, power and practices interact with and contest one another in

specific historical contexts” (xiii). It is productive to read the theoretical framings of Lee and

Gonzalez-Vicente together because of their similarities: while “entrepreneurial rationale”

resembles “logic of capital,” “statehood rationale” mirrors “logic of state.” Lee’s fine-grained

ethnographic study brings her to argue that the uniqueness of Chinese foreign investment in

Zambia has to do with Chinese state capital, not private companies or migrant entrepreneurs.

Compared to global private capitals, Chinese state capitals open more room for the Zambian

government to bargain for domestic development, labor demands and political negotiations due

to its encompassing interests such as long-term resource security and geopolitical impacts (Lee

2017). Under the same circumstances, global private capitals are more interested in short-term

return and profit maximization and are more likely to be impacted by market fluctuations. In

addition to a framework of “varieties of capital,” one can also understand Lee’s observation in

Zambia using “an entrepreneurial statehood rationale” in the sense that Chinese SOE investment

37

in mining in driven both by Beijing’s geopolitical interests in Zambia such as political patronage

and resource security, as well as economic interests in profit optimization. Quite contrary to

unfounded critiques of neocolonial or imperialistic nature of Chinese state capital, and to the

orthodox neoliberal belief in market power, Lee (2017) and Gonzalez-Vicente (2012) both noted

opportunities and alternatives that state capital could possibly generate. For them, Beijing’s

encompassing geoeconomic and geopolitical interests will force SOEs to make compromises that

are beneficial for local communities and national development. This observation again

corroborates arguments made by Murton, Lord and Beazley (2016) on the agentive Nepali state

and Yeh (2016)’s warning of the narrative of “passive, weak states victimized by China” (283).

4. Conclusion

Mapping Chinese worldwide mining investment from 2000 to 2010, Gonzalez-Vicente

(2012) arrives at the conclusion that, similar to western transnational mining investments,

Chinese corporations gravitate toward liberal economics such as Canada and Australia.

Meanwhile, by qualitatively assessing 5 Chinese mining investments in Peru, including

Chinalco’s acquisition of Toromocho, the same author argues that Chinese corporations of both

state and private origins are profit-driven actors in the capitalist market even though they might

be constrained by geopolitical or geoeconomic interests of the Chinese state. A statement by

Xiao Yaqing, former president and executive committee secretary of Chinalco, supports this

argument: “We are responsible to the government to the extent that it is our shareholder; like any

company in the world, we are profit-driven and aim at maximizing shareholder value” (Chinalco

2009, first cited in Gonzalez-Vicente 2011). Despite this effort to portray Chinalco as purely

38

entrepreneurial and commercial, SASAC’s description of Chinalco’s internationalization tells the

story of a blend between corporate and state interests.

“In order to respond to Chinese government’s Going Out strategy and to

protect national resource security, Chinalco actively participated in the national

strategy of international development such as market expansion and resource layout

planning in the beginning of the 21st century. At that time, Chinalco directed its

investment towards Peru, a country with political stability, advantageous

geography, convenient traffic conditions, abundant mineral resources, important

regional economy and friendly trade relationships with China.”13 (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, 2019)

The quote above illustrates perfectly an entrepreneurial statehood rationale behind

Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project, where geopolitical interests are in symbiosis

with geoeconomic pursuits. On the one hand, Chinalco, as an integral part of the state apparatus,

was driven to central Peru by Beijing’s interests in national resource security, market share of

strategic resources, internationalization of the state through building competitive SOEs,

profitability and perhaps geopolitical interests in Latin America since the expansion of

Toromocho was framed under the Belt and Road Initiative. On the other hand, the corporation’s

decision to acquire the Toromocho project was a strategic corporate move to expand its focus

from just aluminum to become a “multi-metal company” (Gonzalez-Vicente 2012, 54).

Furthermore, this transaction was calculated carefully based on market ideologies of investing in

liberal economies with a stable regime friendly to natural resource extraction, and capitalist

calculation of maximizing profit by privileging fixed mining capitals such as established

infrastructures and experienced miners.

Chinalco’s successful acquisition of the Toromocho mine took place in a specific

historical and geographic context and was shaped by multiple forces at various scales. Globally,

13 “21 世纪初，为响应国家“走出去”战略、保证国家资源安全，中铝集团积极践行海外发展战略，加大了海外资源布局和市场拓展的

力度。彼时，中铝集团把投资方向瞄准了政局稳定、地理位置优越、交通条件便利、矿产资源丰富、与中国贸易关系良好的南美洲重

要的区域经济大国——秘鲁。”

39

an important force was the concentration of mining capitals in the hands of a few non-Chinese

transnational corporations. With the 2007/8 global financial crisis furthering this consolidation,

Chinese government’s already existing anxiety over resource security was exacerbated. This

accelerated the central state’s promotions of SOE foreign investments in natural resources under

the Going Out strategy, a state policy officially announced in 2000 to expand markets, export

surplus capital, secure natural resources supply, build internationally competitive corporations

and advance geopolitical interests. Peru became one of the popular destinations shortly after

Alberto Fujimori took power in 1990. Under Fujimori’s sweeping neoliberal reform, the long

forgotten Toromocho mine was privatized by Peru Copper Inc. for reevaluation and then its

ownership was transferred to Chinalco after 2.2 billion tons of ore reserve was rediscovered

under then president García. The Peruvian government’s highly liberal attitude towards natural

resource extraction was also a significant driver of increasing Chinese investment. Equally

important were local factors such as Morococha’s long-established mining history and its

continuous encounter with foreign capitals, and the region’s fixed capital such as central railway

and power station. These local, national and global unfoldings do not exist independently from

each other but are rather entangled messy processes. They converged at a historical moment and

in a specific context to collectively produce the ground on which Chinalco’s acquisition

materialized. As one of many examples of global China, it demonstrates the importance of

treating Chinese foreign investment and its manifestation as contextual, heterogenous,

processual, relational and contingent. To do so requires scholars to disaggregate a set of complex

actors and interests, attend to historical underpinnings, recognize the host country as an agentive

actor, contextualize both Chinese development trajectory as well as that of the host country,

40

situate it in wider global processes, ground rhetorical questions with everyday experiences and

understand a reconfigured China.

Motivations between Western transnational mining investments and those of Chinese

origin might vary. However, there is no difference in the destructive nature of extractive

industry, be it environmental, cultural or corporeal. Cost efficient exploration of the Toromocho

project requires a switch to open-pit mining. While this means lower production cost and fewer

operational risks for Chinalco, for local residents, it signifies a total demolition of Antigua

Morococha and its social relations. Before the mine was acquired by Chinalco, a resettlement

plan was already conceived by Lowell (2014, 364-367) who was concerned about “the problem

of owners of primitive houses among the 5,000-population Morococho [sic, author’s correction,

Morococha], who had to be bought out in a deal in which they would get a free, modern house in

a new town site.” When Chinalco took over this project, it swiftly proceeded with this plan by

building a “modern” town 6 miles away. The next chapter focuses on the demolition of Antigua

Morococha and the production of Nueva Morococha through analytics of the production and

destruction of space (Lefebvre 1991; Gordillo 2014).

41

III

DISPLACEMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND CAPITALIST MODERNITY: THE

MAKING AND UNMAKING OF MOROCOCHA IN CENTRAL PERU

1.Introduction

On July 6, 2019, Bryce, my field interpreter, and I went on a walking tour with Jacinto

Guispe in Antigua Morococha. We first met Jacinto half a month prior in front of the principal

cathedral of Huancayo when he generously invited us to attend and observe the June dialogue

table held between local representatives, various ministries at different levels and Chinalco.

Meeting Jacinto was a little unexpected because I had known his name for more than half a year

by then: when I first visited Nueva Morococha back in January, a staff member from Chinalco’s

community relations office shared with me his phone number after hearing my interests in the

history of Antigua Morococha. However, due to the limited time I had for winter fieldwork, I did

not get to meet him in person. After the dialogue table, Jacinto met us again for a “quick”

interview which lasted for more than 5 hours with us ending the day with Popeyes. During our

conversation, he drew me maps of Carhuacoto on napkins, recounted stories of a mining accident

that had completely destroyed the Morococha Lake in 1928, introduced me to Antonia Raimondi

– the great geographer who discovered Morococha – and explained Andean cosmology of Apu

and Pachamama. He was so passionate, genuine and charismatic, with love for Antigua

Morococha gently woven through his sense of humor. Before we parted, Jacinto offered to take a

5-hour trip from Huancayo to Antigua Morococha to show us where he grew up and spent most

of his life.

42

Our day started from the entrance of Antigua Morococha right off the Central Highway

and ended up in the cemetery where Jacinto felt the most tranquil and peaceful. Walking through

the town that was torn apart by bulldozers, where piles of concrete pieces lay around, Jacinto

showed us the mining camps he used to live in, the tailings next to which he played football with

his friends, and the half-standing church his parents took him to on Sundays, and the schools he

had attended. He remembered vividly the market, the clinics, and the neighborhood. People we

encountered in Antigua Morococha still recognized him and greeted him cordially. However, not

even halfway through the tour, we saw a packed van of men dressed in military uniforms and

shortly afterwards, we were followed by a security guard who stopped us from taking pictures as

they weren’t allowed on Chinalco’s private property. Indeed, concrete barriers painted with

Chinalco signs were everywhere. They constantly reminded us where we were, whose property

we were on and that we were being watched. It was not until we had returned to Lima that

Jacinto told us his friend from Chinalco’s community relations had called him to ask what had

happened that day. What actually happened that day was that Jacinto told us so much about the

place, the land, and the people. One could feel the sorrow and sadness he felt towards the

destruction of the town. He told us,

According to the Andean world view, when an Apu is destroyed, a whole

chain of well-formed mountains is split and Pachamama will shake thus affecting

the flow of farming or grazing. Why? Because there won’t be fluidity of lakes,

rivers, subsoil, and there isn’t that richness anymore…The land will search for its

equilibrium point and at some point, societies or food production will be affected;

someday nature will recover what was taken away because you reap what you

sow. We can trick ourselves, but we cannot trick nature. The Pachamama is

Mother Earth that our ancestors taught us to take care of and how beautiful would

it be if there were an equilibrium between mining, exploitation and environmental

care, but that doesn't happen.

When we finally reached the cemetery at the end of trip, I was struck by the despairing

panorama of the old own as well as the mine. Layers of the open pit could be seen clearly from

43

the top with the barren mountain that is about to be blasted. At its bottom were endless mounds

of concrete from houses that were brutally destroyed. Walking downhill through the overgrown

cemetery where Jacinto’s parents and relatives were buried, intense feelings of hopelessness

flooded me. The entire town was obliterated. In Chinese culture, we want the deceased to rest in

peace and buried in places with water and beautiful views. However, up here in Antigua

Morococha, the dead had to bear with constant explosions, dust, contamination and slowly

witness the demolition of the land they once raised their families on. How despondent!

Figure 1 Antigua Morococha up from the cemetery, July 2019

44

After having descended from the cemetery, we walked back to the Central Highway and

caught a minivan heading back to the resettlement after waiting for half an hour. Antigua

Morococha only sits about a 10-minute drive away from the new town, which instead of Nueva

Morococha, is better known as Carhuacoto, yellow [carhua] hill [coto] in Quechua, or the former

Hacienda Pucara. As we slowly approached Nueva Morococha, parallel rows of identical single-

story houses with tilted red tin roofs came into view. The town is nestled in the Montaro valley

and is surrounded with magnificent mountains. Hundreds of almost indistinguishable cookie-

cutter houses were laid out in a rigid grid formation. Occasionally, a few buildings with second

or even third floors popped up, disrupting the otherwise coordinated landscape. While some were

luxurious hotels and restaurants, others were built by residents to meet family demands for extra

space. The Carhuacoto river ran through Nueva Morococha slowly and peacefully, splitting the

town into the northern and southern parts connected with three bridges painted in bright orange.

On the slope of the riverbank, the name of the city “Nueva Morococha” was spelt with stones

covered in yellow paint. To its left and right were symbols of a safety helmet and copper made of

white stones, signifying the importance of mining operations and copper production for the

town’s foundation and development. Unfortunately, the river didn’t have much flow – water was

scarce, exposing a basin of shrublike vegetation. Occasionally one could see herds of sheep and

llamas struggling through steel fences to get down to the riverbank. Other times, one would find

a few horses roaming around or drinking from the stream.

Within such a short span of time, our view changed drastically from the gloomy and

depressing Antigua Morococha where rubble is omnipresent, to a visually pleasing and hopeful

urban town where picturesque mountains loom in the background. This chapter examines the

dialectical making and unmaking of Nueva and Antigua Morococha, processes that co-produce

45

this seemingly easy and peaceful transition of views that are in fact filled with violence,

destructions and sorrows. I am dedicated to understanding the materially lived experiences of

production and destruction of space and place, and of dissolution of the social relations produced

by violent disassembly. By using space and place, I acknowledge them as two categories with

distinctive analytical power. According to Creswell (2015), place is often associated with a sense

of belonging, rootedness, a material form, a specific location that is bounded, and embodied

experience through movements. Space, on the other hand, is often conceptualized as void,

boundless, universal and lacking in meaning. Its plasticity denotes a positive possibility of space

becoming anything through social constructions mediated through power (such as capitalism)

and struggles (local resistance). However, instead of reinforcing the dichotomy between space

and place, this chapter adopts the analytics of the production and destruction of space (Lefebvre

1991; Gordillo 2014) and treats both as processual and fluid. In other words, I do not treat space

as void and boundless or place as embodied and bounded.

In analyzing the making of Morococha in Section 2, I engage with concepts of the

“creation city” (Fortier 1995), “instant city” (Castagnola 2013), and “new town” (Lefebvre

1995). The overall argument is twofold. One is that Nueva Morococha is a technocratic project

designed by experts to construct a modern urban resettlement in the rural Andes that rationalizes

dispossession. The other is that the instantaneous production of Nueva Morococha is a corporate

project that aims to facilitate capitalist expansion rather than to genuinely accommodate the

displaced. Conceived and built based on expert knowledge indifferent to the historically and

geographically lived experiences of local people, the technocratic and corporate Nueva

Morococha is produced as an “abstract space” of capitalist modernity where accumulation is the

primary imperative, and where feelings of alienation and transformation of everyday life are

46

ubiquitous (Lefebvre 1995). Indeed, in Nueva Morococha, not only were previous ways of life

disrupted but also chances of survival reduced. Therefore, embedded in the ostensible splendor

and glory of the urban Nueva Morococha are profound feelings of suffering and sorrow.

Following this, Section 3 turns to the dialectic unmaking of Antigua Morococha by

bringing together Gordillo’s (2014) theorization of “the destruction of space,” Lefebvre’s (1991)

work on “the production of space,” and Smith’s (2008) argument on “the production of nature.”

Instead of the materially lived experiences of destruction alongside rubble, the section focuses

more on the processes of producing rubble under capitalist expansion, namely the physical

disintegration of matter and the social fragmentations of societies. Specifically, this section

argues that the physical destruction of Antigua Morococha was made possible by capitalist

commodification and abstraction of space that saw the old town as void, quantifiable,

meaningless and thus possible for wealth accumulations. Meanwhile, the social fragmentation of

Antigua Morococha was done through cunning corporate strategies of coercion by deprivation

and deception. Overall, Section 3 aims to refute a bourgeoisie interpretation of capitalism as

ultimately “creative” (Harvey 2007) and to deglorify the narrative of Nueva Morococha as a

“voluntary resettlement.”

47

2.The Making of Nueva Morococha: The Production of a Resettlement

Figure 2 Overlook of Nueva Morococha, June 2019

Visually almost an Andean Levittown, Nueva Morococha, incongruous with the

surrounding landscape, felt drastically different from towns we passed along the Central

Highway. Whereas towns that sat along the highway seemed to have developed incrementally

over time in relation to their surrounding geography and in response to practical communal

needs, leaving behind a seemingly chaotic and unorganized impression, Nueva Morococha was a

geographically contained and temporally constrained project built exactly as it was conceived

and planned, conveying a contrasting feeling of order and rationality. A similar contrast was

evoked by Lefebvre in 1960 when he stood on a hilltop looking down to Mourenx, a newly

constructed industrial town in which history (time) and sense of belonging (space) became

48

obscure if not nonexistent. This section of the making of Nueva Morococha first follows

Fortier’s (1995) concept of “creation city,” and then Castagnola’s (2013) argument of Nueva

Morococha as an “instant city” and lastly Lefebvre’s (1991) theorization on the production of

space. I draw attention to the lived experiences of alienation and the transformation of everyday

life in Nueva Morococha as a result of technocratic rationality in spatial planning and of

particular corporate interests in capitalist accumulation.

2.1 Creation City: A Technocratic Project that Rationalizes Dispossession

Nueva Morococha was designed and built based on careful technical and geometrical

calculation by architects and urban planners. The aim was to construct an efficient and rational

urban space in the rural Andes where development could flourish, resembling Lefebvre’s (1996)

description of an industrial new town as “a fusion of urban society with the countryside” under

capitalist modernity (120). The town can also be understood as a “creation city” (Fortier 1995)

that was meticulously planned to embody expressions of Eurocentric modernity. However, what

this technocratic project does on the ground is that it not only makes life in Nueva Morococha

more difficult, but also rationalizes dispossession through a purported sense of development

evoked by its geometrical spatial layout and modern infrastructures.

Bruno Fortier, a French architectural historian, made an analytical distinction between

“accumulation city” and “creation city” to discuss archetypes of urban forms. Fortier’s (1995)

theorization was based on morphological interpretations of spatial planning and design of ancient

Roman and Egyptian cities through archaeological excavations. He deemed ancient Rome an

“accumulation city” where urban development took place spontaneously without a plan, leading

to disorder and heterogeneity. The model of accumulation city can be used to describe most

49

Peruvian towns along the Central Highway, for their development took place incrementally and

without overarching plan, resulting in heterogenous forms of urbanity. Fortier (1995) saw the

accumulation city as a “negative model” and an exact antithesis of the creation city. Interpreting

Fortier’s conceptualization of “creation city,” Doevendans and Schram (2005) argued it was

premised on three major assumptions, which were complete conformity between design and

construction, geometrical planning, and de-territoriality. In other words, a creation city is built

geometrically as planned and is unconstrained by the landscape or the “genius loci.” All these

characteristics of creation cities were symbols of modernity for Descartes (1637), who saw

geometry as a sign of reasoning and thinking through scientific calculations, and de-territoriality

as markers of objectivity (Doevendans and Schram 2005). By de-territoriality, Doevendans and

Schram (2005) were referring to Pickstock’s (1998, 52) point that modernism and urbanism

should be free from “cultural particularity” and focus instead on methods that can be applied

universally regardless of location. Therefore, for Fortier and Descartes, while an accumulation

city is constructed out of chance and is thus unpredictable and irrational, a creation city is a

product of actions guided by reason and logics, the basis of universalism. Thus, architecture and

urban planning are seen as problem-solving disciplines grounded in the belief in plannability.

Built on the almost empty and flat Hacienda Pucara, Nueva Morococha was designed

without consideration of its geographical or cultural particularity. According to local people,

Hacienda Pucara, or Carhuacoto, was imposed by SCG and Chinalco.14 The Cerro de Pasco

Corporation acquired Hacienda Pucara in the 1950’s to farm animals, resulting in a resettlement

14 Almost everyone interviewed for this study voted Pachachaca over Llanten Pampa as the relocation destination

during community briefings. However, SCG proclaimed that Carhuacoto gained 69% of vote even though

community members said Caruhuacoto was never presented to them as one of the options. Additionally, Pachachaca

was not considered to be a viable choice because it is located in a different district. Since Antigua Morococha was

where the local municipality resided, relocating the town to Pachachaca would entail “complicated” shifts in local

political boundaries.

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of roughly 40 families to Antigua Morococha (Interview with Victor, July 2019). Ironically, half

a century later, those who were originally displaced from Hacienda Pucara to Antigua

Morococha now are forced to return back to the same plot of land.

Nueva Morococha’s final materialization was based on the initial conception by

architects and urban planners of JP Planning S.A.C., a Peruvian company founded in 1999 with

specialization in resettlement design and implementation.15 Indeed, one does not need to visit

Nueva Morococha to know what is exactly there in the creation city. The project blueprint plans

below accurately depict the current layout and composition of the new town. The southern part

of the town has 15 residential blocks equipped with community gardens from Calle 9 to Calle 12,

a community cemetery under construction, three public parks, one soccer field, a bus terminal, a

coliseum, a daycare and a nursery. Across the Carhuacoto river to the north of Nueva Morococha

lie most of the government buildings such as the municipality, the police station, the fire station

and municipal warehouses. Other public infrastructures include a health center, elementary and

middle schools, a community museum, a cultural center, a worker’s club (former workers union)

as well as a local market. This part of the town has 23 residential blocks from Calle 2 to Calle 8.

Calle 1 loops from the east end to the west end, carving out the shape of Nueva Morococha. The

detailed description above was generated solely based on the blueprint of Nueva Morococha and

it matches pretty well with existing infrastructures in town. Hence, it is convincing to state that

the construction of the town was done as it was planned initially.

15 According to the website of JP Planning, the company offers, “…design and implementation of participatory

resettlement processes and related services such as social accompaniment and adaptation programs for the economic

recovery of the population in the new environment. Our services are developed in rural and urban areas for

extractive, water, industry or infrastructure projects complying with current regulations, international standards or

requirements of multilateral banking and safeguards.” Similar to Social Capital Group, its primary clients are

multinational mining corporations or those that engage with extractive industries such as gas and oil.

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Figure 3 Project Plan of Nueva Morococha by JP Planning, December 201316

In addition, Nueva Morococha was geometrically planned and built based on a

functionalist rationality. A quick glance at its spatial layout reveals the resonances with

modernist urban planning that stresses capitalist efficiency and rationality. Unlike Antigua

Morococha where things spread out autonomously in culturally distinct spatial practices (see

figure 2), there are concentrated zones serving different purposes such as commercial activities,

public services and community gatherings, as well as exclusively residential areas, education

blocks and recreational spaces such as soccer fields and community centers in Nueva

Morococha. With each section given its primary function and purpose, Nueva Morococha

16 Please email the author to request the original file which is too large to upload here.

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becomes a city that is static, structured and even oppressive for those who live there, and rational

and efficient for urban planners and architects. For example, houses are structured in rigid rows

parallel to each other. On the front door one could find each household’s block number,

registration number and electricity meter, a few of the only indicators that helped differentiate

the identical looking houses unless the owner put up a poster or painted the wall.

The clear separation between residential area and commercial center, though it mirrors

ideas of rationality and efficiency, actually constrains possibilities of survival for the resettled in

Nueva Morococha. In Antigua Morococha, many residents relied on small business such as

grocery stores or restaurants for a living. Because the old town grew incrementally over time

with migrants arriving looking for jobs in the mine, there was no designated center for commerce

and trade. Instead, anyone could open a store or a restaurant without geographic limitations and

feel confident that they could get customers. However, in the new town, because the spatial

planning pushes commercial activities into one center in downtown Nueva Morococha, residents

no longer have the same opportunity to start or sustain businesses, especially if their houses are

located on the periphery of the town or in the strictly residential areas.17 Chances to survive by

opening businesses are further curtailed because of the size of new houses. Housing units in

Nueva Morococha were designed by Jorge Burga Bartra, a renowned Peruvian architect and

urban designer who served as the former vice dean at the College of Architecture in Peru. Based

on the status difference of renters and property owners, he came up with two types of housing

compensation. Tenants would receive 40 m² and property owners 55 m². Although they were

quite small compared to the previous housing units in Antigua Morococha which were typically

17 Another controversy with house locations is that those who moved the earliest, mostly renters in Antigua

Morococha, got to choose houses first. Therefore, tenants tended to have properties with better locations that would

allow them to prosper more easily.

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around 150 to 200 m², Bartra justified the design with the possibility of vertical expansion with a

financial subsidy from Techo Propio (The Own Roof Program), a government program launched

in 2002 with a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (UN-HABITAT 2008). Techo

Propio is one of the four existing projects under My Housing Fund (Fondo Mivividenda, FMV),

established in 1999 to help low-income families to “buy, build or improve their home, which will

have basic services of electricity, water, drainage” (FMV Official Website). In the case of Nueva

Morococha, the main usage of Techo Propio is to add more floors and thus space for the family.

If a family has a monthly income less than S / 2,627 ($776), it is then eligible for the Family

Housing Bonus (Bono Familiar Habitacional, BFH), a direct subsidy from the Peruvian State.

Each family gets S / 23,435 ($6926) to build their house or S / 9,890 ($2922) for improvement.

Although residents are allowed to add floors vertically with government subsidy, at less than

$3,000 the government subsidy must be supplemented with extra inputs of capital from their own

pockets which most people do not possess.

In addition, the geometric spatial planning with clear division of functions also makes it

more difficult for certain groups of people, for example the disabled and the aged, to procure

daily necessities. Whereas they could easily find groceries in a store around the neighborhood

corner in the past, now they have to go to a specific market and street in the town center. This

predicament is further exacerbated by the fact that Nueva Morococha has no internal

transportation, private or public. Whereas tricycles were everywhere in Antigua Morococha

because of its bumpy and rugged roads, the demand dropped to almost nonexistent due to the

improved infrastructures such as paved road and pedestrian paths in the new town.

Consequently, while a geometrical spatial design resembles modernity, rationality and efficiency

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for urban planning, it does the opposite for residents in Morococha who in general find life to be

harder to live and sustain.

Figure 4 Antigua Morococha, courtesy of Morococha En El Olvido

The difficulties that have emerged from Nueva Morococha’s geometric spatial planning

are ironic when juxtaposed with its promise of an efficient and functional modern town. This

unfortunate failure ties to the third characteristic of the “creation city” identified by Fortier

(1995): de-territoriality. The making of Nueva Morococha, conceived as a technocratic project of

resettlement, proceeded without taking into consideration the historically and geographically

produced particularities of Antigua Morococha, such as its mining history or economic structure.

Many resettled residents complain that “Nueva Morococha doesn’t feel like a mining town” and

others groaned about its lackluster dynamic. For locals, Nueva Morococha is not simply a new

beginning and their life does not start with the construction of the new town. Quite the opposite,

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Nueva Morococha is at best considered a continuation of their previous way of life and at worst a

disruption of their ways of being. Similar to Lefebvre’s observation of the new town, Nueva

Morococha has no past and its landscape is devoid of sedimented histories. It could be said that

as a de-territorial project, Nueva Morococha could have been built anywhere for any purpose.

The making of Nueva Morococha is a technocratic and de-territorial task underpinned by

the modernist pursuit of universality and reasoning. Meanwhile, it is propagated by Chinalco that

a modern town with established infrastructure will bring development to Nueva Morococha. This

narrative of resettlement with development measured in universal quantitative terms tends to

legitimize and rationalize dispossession.

Local development in Nueva Morococha is measured in quantifiable terms rather than

lived experience. However, instead of widely recognized indicators such as Gross Domestic

Product (GDP) per capita or Human Development Index, Alan Dabbs, CEO of Social Capital

Group, referred to recreational space as an example of local development. There are ample

recreational areas in Nueva Morococha, including 17 community gardens, 50 municipality

gardens and 15 sports fields, amounting to a total of roughly 150,000 m². Percentage wise, this is

almost three times what the Peruvian national regulations require, which is a minimum of 8% of

the total area.18 Alan expressed much pride for this achievement during our interview. He

maintained that Nueva Morococha should serve as a successful prototype for future mining

resettlements across the country, even globally, and the fact that the per capital recreational area

in Nueva Morococha was much higher than that of Lima, the capital, reflected tremendous

improvement in local living standards (Interview with Alan Dabbs 2019). Using aggregated and

18 Nueva Morococha has a total land of 643,317 m². According to Peruvian national regulation on recreational areas,

the minimum of 8% is 51,473 m². Based on JP Planning S.A.C’s project blueprint published in December 2013, the

total recreational area of Nueva Morocoha is 151,651 m².

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abstract statistics to measure development is not new because quantitative practices, operating

like phantasmagram, have long been charged with powerful aspirations and affects (Murphy

2017, 24). However, it is quite unexpected, perhaps even absurd, that development in Nueva

Morococha is equated to access to recreational space per capita.19 After all, living in the

expansive and stunning Mantaro Valley in the Andes, the need for concrete soccer fields or

fenced gardens seem to be less pressing than employment. Moreover, comparing Nueva

Morococha’s infrastructural development to that of the old town, Alan described living

conditions in Antigua Morococha as abysmal and inhumane, with filthy public bathrooms, two-

hour per day water provision and muddy roads. While improvements in infrastructure are

undeniable and should be celebrated, they are not fundamental for survival. As many residents

who’ve lost their jobs expressed, “without employment, what can I do with a free house and 24/7

provision of water?” Consequently, not only did Alan fail to question the taken-for-granted

modernist and urbanist assumptions about recreational areas and living standards in quantitative

measures, he also spoke from a detached city elite point of view, with no concrete ideas of the

necessity of recreational spaces for the local community. Alan’s emphasis on aggregated data

again illustrates the technocratic nature of the project.

By demonstrating improvements in infrastructure and living standards using abstract and

quantitative measurements, a sense of development, although contested, is invoked to legitimize

and rationalize dispossession. The claim of resettlement as development is evident in Chinalco’s

widely distributed pamphlets, ¿Que Es El Proyecto Toromocho? (What is the Toromocho

Project?). Here Nueva Morococha was presented as an opportunity to improve life quality --

19 It is important to recognize that urban planning and development have been increasingly associated with ideas

such as recreational space throughout Latin America. But its application in Nueva Morococha seems less apt.

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“Nos mudaremos de una ciudad que

tenía grandes problemas para la calidad

de vida...Hacia una nueva y moderna

ciudad de Morococha. (We will move

from a city that had great problems in

terms of the quality of life...towards a

new and modern city of Morococha).”

Two pictures were chosen to

demonstrate the point: one barren,

depressing picture of disorganized

housing clusters made of cheap, flimsy

materials and another verdant,

prosperous and well-designed landscape

painting of what the future would look

like in Nueva Morococha. The framing presents an extreme contrast between Antigua and Nueva

Morococha, between the past and the future, and between poverty and prosperity. While the first

picture carved out the surrounding area to focus on impoverished living conditions and decaying

infrastructures, the contrasting painting included lush mountains, green recreational areas and a

sense of community. The erasure of human presence in both images is problematic. It assumes

that development can be achieved as long as the city is well designed and built with proper

infrastructures and public services, underplaying if not disapproving of the ways in which people

interact and experience the space socially and historically. The extreme contrast is presented in

an attempt to legitimize and rationalize dispossession. But as demonstrated above, infrastructural

Figure 5 Toromocho Project Pamphlet, Accessed March 2020

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development, although crucial, does not support basic survival. Meanwhile, the geometrical

spatial planning, premised on modernist assumptions of rationality and efficiency, actually

disrupts life more than it facilitates it. As a de-territorial and technocratic project that relies on

expert knowledge in urban planning and architectural design, the making of Nueva Morococha

as a “creation city” is not a genuine effort to resolve issues originating from dispossession but

rather an attempt to legitimize and rationalize dispossession through quantitative measurements.

2.2 Instant City: Chinese Urban Product for Export?

Nueva Morococha is an instant city (Castagnola 2013) built in two years to maintain

capitalist expansion. Its immediate construction entails that “instant cities” are often “creation

cities” that rely on technocratic expertise as well (Fortier 1995). Although both Fortier (1995)

and Castagnola (2013) emphasized the significance of expert knowledge in urban planning and

architectural design for urban development, their end goals differed. As an architectural

historian, Fortier focused on defining features of a “creation city” and attended to its

underpinning of modernist pursuits of rationality, while Castagnola stressed the importance of

instantaneity in sustaining corporate interests and capitalist expansion in which dispossession is

inevitable. Specifically, the instantaneous creation of Nueva Morococha as a modern project

aims to fulfill Chinalco’s corporate interest rather than that of the displaced. As a result, feelings

of alienation and transformation of everyday life are inevitable.

Castagnola (2013) detailed the topographically opposing formations of the San Cristobal

hill, an informal self-constructed settlement sedimented over a long period of time in downtown

Lima, and the industrial open-pit hole in Antigua Morococha, which led to the creation of an

“instant city.” He considered both the hill and the hole products of Peru’s historical processes of

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colonization, modernization, industrialization and globalization under neoliberal reform.

Compared to the organically developed informal settlement on the San Cristobal hill, which in

Fortier’s terms can be described as an “accumulation city,” Castagnola (2013) described Nueva

Morococha as an “instant city” built in two years to “mitigate the problems that arise from

mineral exploitation” (Castagnola 2013, 66). Its corporate nature can be further identified in an

interview between China Central Television (CCTV) and Shanfu Huang, Chinalco’s then CEO,

in 2016. Huang made straightforward that early resettlement of Antigua Morococha was the

premise for the mine’s exploration, a necessity without which Chinalco could not pass its

Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) and other essential permits. Therefore, rather than a

genuine attempt to construct a sociocultural entity that is dynamic and livable for the displaced,

Nueva Morococha is a corporate by-product with a primary goal of facilitating capitalist

expansion.

Castagnola (2013) stressed the importance of instantaneity for a corporate project. Here it

means the pursuit of efficiency in the immediate creation of Nueva Morococha. Before Chinalco

bought the Toromocho project, Peru Copper Inc. and the Peruvian state were co-responsible for

financing the resettlement construction. However, after the concession right was transferred to

Chinalco in 2008, Nueva Morococha became Chinalco’s sole responsibility. Was Chinalco being

taken advantage of in a foreign context? The answer is no. Rather, according to an interview with

Bill John Flores Rosas, resettlement project manager of Social Capital Group, Chinalco

voluntarily made the offer to assume all financial responsibility in order to carry it out at a faster

speed and thus expedite the project’s operation date. Clearly, it is not in Chinalco’s best interest

to work with the Peruvian government even though it lessens the overall financial burden.

Perhaps the amount of money saved by working with the government is minuscule compared to

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the potential profit the mine will generate by advancing production. Therefore, Nueva

Morococha as a corporate project not only has to be done to guarantee capitalist accumulation

through dispossession, but also completed in an efficient way.

In addition to steady financial support, expertise in resettlement also contributes

significantly to the project’s instantaneous creation. Social Capital Group (SCG) played a

decisive role in shaping Nueva Morococha. As a transnational consulting firm, SCG specializes

in analysis and management of “the social risks and opportunities associated with large-scale

investment projects in both the public and private sectors” (Social Capital Group Website).20 The

company was initially hired by Peru Copper Inc. to conduct comprehensive research to prepare

for the resettlement in 2006. It was selected for its extensive experience with mining-related

resettlement planning and implementation. By November 2019, SCG had participated in various

resettlement projects in countries such as Peru (3), Nicaragua (1), Colombia (5) and Madagascar

(1). When Chinalco became the project owner in 2008, it retained SCG to supervise the entire

resettlement with tasks including but not limited to organizing community workshops, arranging

open house visits, evaluating housing conditions for compensation, and assisting families

moving to the new resettlement. SCG’s expansive experience with resettlements across the globe

greatly helped the project’s immediate materialization in two years. Nueva Morococha in this

sense is a corporate project for both Chinalco as well as SCG. Chinalco deliberately distanced

itself from the community by subcontracting the resettlement project to SCG, relegating

20 Social Capital Group was founded in 1999 with offices in Lima, Bogota, Santiago de Chile and Washington D.C.

Based on its website, SCG works in three areas of services: social assessment, management planning and alignment,

and implementation and outsourcing. And the firm works in five sectors including mining, energy, oil and gas,

transportation and infrastructure, as well as agriculture and forestry. In addition to resettlement, other SCG projects

range from social management consultation for gold mining in Côte d’Ivoire to hydroelectric project evaluation in

Costa Rica; from community relations advising in Guatemala to stakeholder analysis for carbon projects in

Colombia; from technical advising for Indigenous issues of hydrocarbon development in Honduras to environmental

and social feasibility analysis in Chile.

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administrative power and offloading responsibility to a consulting firm that conceptualizes

resettlement from a technical and business-oriented perspective. Meanwhile, Social Capital

Group through its direct contract only needs to be upward accountable to its client Chinalco,

leaving little agency to thousands of Morococha residents in the process of resettlement.

Interestingly, Castagnola (2013) saw Nueva Morococha as a direct result of “Chinese

urban product for export” and instant cities in general as “new products of the Chinese capitalism

in their expansive regime, in which cities are not socio-cultural entities but corporative by-

products” (66).21 Although the instant creation of Nueva Morococha can be directly attributed to

Chinalco’s acquisition of the Toromocho project, the assertion that it is particularly Chinese

needs to be further interrogated. Most academic discussions on instant cities revolve around

urban development in China and many researchers refer to Shenzhen in southern China as the

prototype of an instant city (see Du 2020; Chen and de'Medici 2010). The creation of Shenzhen

was a process of consolidating hundreds of fishing villages and its formation as a Special

Economic Zone (SEZ) was intended to facilitate economic exchanges (Du 2020). However,

instant cities are not projects of Chinese export but outcomes of continuous capitalist expansion

that requires cost-effective and effortless solutions to problems such as dispossession. In other

words, instead of a project with inherent Chinese characteristics, Nueva Morococha is one of the

many examples of capitalism attempting to ameliorate the destruction it inflicts upon

communities in order to gain legitimacy and/or sustain its development trajectory.

The materialization of Nueva Morococha substantiates this argument. The process of

building the resettlement relied on an expansive assemblage of transnational corporations

specialized in urban planning, resettlement consultation, construction and management. The

21 This is an exact quote. By “corporative,” I think Castagnola (2013) was trying to say Nueva Morococha was a

corporate by-product.

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underpinning logic is that a clear division of labor not only improves efficiency and productivity

but also reduces the total cost. Therefore, the massive networks of contracting and

subcontracting can be conceptualized as a profit-seeking capitalist project in and of itself. As

Castagnola (2013) himself had pointed out, the overall planning of Nueva Morococha was

carried out by JP Planning S.A.C while CESEL S.A. was in charge of project management,

including design revisions, procurements, construction bidding processes, on-site supervision,

and commissioning (CESEL S.A. Website). Meanwhile, JJC Contratistas Generales S.A was

responsible for construction of 685 houses and urban infrastructure in Nueva Morococha, and

Social Capital Group played an indispensable role in facilitating the whole process. All of these

corporations have participated in mining-related resettlements across the world financed by

capitals of different nationalities. Accordingly, the production of Nueva Morococha itself can be

read as a capitalist expansion project which facilitated wealth accumulation for corporations

specialized in resettlement. In this sense, the production of Nueva Morococha as an instant city

does not reflect any inherent Chinese traits but rather follows general capitalist logics of cost-

efficiency.

Equally important to notice is that while the creation of an instant Nueva Morococha

assists capitalist accumulation by freeing land for mineral extraction, the production of the new

city itself is also made possible by capitalist practices of labor exploitation. Whereas Nueva

Morococha was conceived and imagined by architects, consultants, urban planners and engineers

from afar, sitting in their air-conditioned rooms with laptops in Lima, it was the ordinary

citizens, many from Antigua Morococha, who helped assemble the material constituents so that a

technical imagination could do its work. Nueva Morococha is a spatial production in which labor

is indispensable. Tens of thousands of workers, men and women, paved concrete roads, painted

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houses, built community centers, nursery, schools and cemeteries. They mixed concrete, carried

heavy machines, cleaned the streets, piled up bricks, drilled holes, offloaded trucks and so much

more. Among them were not only construction workers but also cooks, janitors and shopkeepers.

Working in a harsh environment at high altitude with an extreme climate, they were exploited by

the subcontracting system. According to Bill Flores, project manager of Nueva Morococha under

Social Capital Group, around 12,000 people were employed during the construction of the town

and the mine from 2010 to 2012. The number dropped drastically after the mine operation started

in 2013 due to lower demand of cheap unskilled labor. Temporary and precarious employment

during the town’s construction phase were used unabashedly by Chinalco to justify its promise of

providing jobs for the local community, which was stated clearly as the most important social

and economic contribution of Chinalco to Antigua Morococha in its Environment Impact

Assessment (EIA). The exploitation of labor through the subcontracting system, essential to the

production of Nueva Morococha, illustrates another layer of instant cities’ capitalist nature and

calls into question Castagnola’s (2013) argument on their specifically Chinese characteristics.

2.3 New Town: Capitalist Production of Space

Exactly six decades ago in 1960, Lefebvre stood on a hilltop gazing down upon the newly

built industrial complex of Mourenx in France. He described the town as a “social text”

(Lefebvre 1995) in which “the nature of capitalist modernity can be deciphered with unusual

clarity” (Wilson 2011, 993). Mourenx was newly built to accommodate workers of a natural gas

processing plant after discoveries of natural gas deposits in 1951. Its rigid spatial formation with

identical rows of buildings conveyed a dreadful sense of “abstract homogeneity,” erasing the

historical and cultural foundation upon which the town was produced (Lefebvre 1991, 370). The

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production of space Lefebvre referred to is not the mere making and assembling of objects, such

as houses and roads, but the materially created conditions on which everyday life is organized

and structured in destructive ways and on which social relations are radically altered. His Notes

on the new town (1995) is a direct critique of the capitalist production of space that privileges

homogeneity over differences, transforms everyday experience of precapitalist communities by

imposing rigid spatial layout and capitalist relation, and fragments with feelings of alienation.

What Lefebvre identified in Mourenx was a transition from a precapitalist peasant

community to an industrial urbanization, a process in which people were separated from means

of production and forced to become wage laborers. Since Antigua Morococha was a mining town

for centuries and the process of proletarianization had already been completed by the mid

twentieth century, the transition from Antigua to Nueva Morococha does not fundamentally alter

the ways in which locals are tied to capitalist relations of production (see chapter 4). However,

Nueva Morococha still stands as a contemporary example of a “new town” in which everyday

life is radically transformed by a reorganization of space based on technocratic rationality and

where feelings of alienation are ubiquitous. More importantly, Nueva Morococha is a neoliberal

“new town:” it is a “privately funded public project” (Stauffer 2012) instead of a “technology of

power” for state control (Wilson 2011). Meanwhile, its creation is a direct result of Peru’s

neoliberal reform which opened the country’s mineral abundance for privatization by

transnational corporations. In other words, Nueva Morococha is configured by capitalist social

relations and corporate power.

Nueva Morococha was envisioned by urban planners and architects as a landscape

painting – an “abstract space” to be appreciated only from the outside, not as a “social space” to

be lived and experienced from within. In fact, surrounded by incredibly stunning mountains,

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Nueva Morococha sometimes does look like a landscape painting – it appears orderly and

peaceful, with scant economic activities taking place in town and only a few people roaming

around. Staring down from the Central Highway, what comes into view are infrastructures

arranged in rigid spatial layouts: rows of identical houses in grids, zones of commercial activities

and sections of education blocks. It is designed based on technocratic rationality in which the

quality of life is “constructed exclusively on the basis of positive knowledge, thereby implying

the death of lived experience” (Lefebvre 2008, 139). The positivist aspect of Nueva Morococha

is also evident in the quantitative and statistical measurements of living standards. While Fortier

(1995) would favor the modernist expression of Nueva Morococha as a “creation city,” Lefebvre

(2000) would condemn it as “the negation of traditional towns” (59) and an “irruption of the

urban” (quoted in Soja 1996, 49 ) that is strictly structured and neatly organized to colonize

everyday life. Hence, Lefebvre would appreciate more its counterpart, the “negative

accumulation city” of Antigua Morococha, for its readable history embedded in the material

landscape, such as the Yankee Bajo neighborhood where the earliest group of German settlers

resided, or the miner statue placed at the town’s entrance in the 1990s.

For Lefebvre, the new town is the epitome of capitalist modernity embodied in

“quantitative growth and qualitative alienation” (Wilson 2011, 996). He considers the production

of space disruptive and devastating because the process is filled with contradictions and struggles

inherent to a planned spatial formation, especially under capitalism (Lefebvre 1991; Gordillo

2014). It is precisely the materiality of lived experiences of alienation and the transformation of

everyday life that interest Lefebvre. And these matters could not be more pronounced in Nueva

Morococha.

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One of the apparent contradictions in Nueva Morococha is between its modernist pursuit

of efficiently planned urban space and the lived experience of an increasingly more difficult life

under the technocratic functionalist planning. As mentioned above in the section on Creation

City, residents in the new town now live a spatially fragmented life with concentrated zones of

commercial activities, administrative services and residential areas. This division not only

disrupts the fluid and semiautonomous life in Antigua Morococha by imposing hierarchical

spatial relations within the resettlement, limiting chances of survival for those who used to run

small businesses, but also renders local people legible and controllable – many residents

interviewed for this study expressed fears of been monitored or surveilled by Chinalco or its

employees. Particularly, the spatial distribution and design of rigid grid formation of identical

houses is crucial in restructuring everyday experience in Nueva Morococha. Feelings of

alienation are present among the resettled because family visits could no longer happen

organically with highly individualized units and limited space, and there is a sense of

disorientation walking around a sea of identical looking houses.

In addition, in Nueva Morococha there exists a discrete separation between public space

and private space: as soon as residents walk out of its front door, they step into an abstract public

space. However, what is public in town does not necessarily mean communal. When I first

visited Nueva Morococha back in January 2019, I watched a soccer game played by a group of

youth on a concrete basketball court. Right next to them was a newly built half-dome building

with stained glass windows in which an indoor soccer field was paved with artificial grass.

Wondering why they didn’t use the stadium, I walked over only to find a thick security chain

wrapped around the steel handles. Perhaps these young men felt unentitled to use this public

infrastructure for private purpose? Or maybe they did want to use the facility but were not

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granted access? Public space is not always open to the public and it surely doesn’t mean

communal. Studying the state-planned resettlement named Rural City Project in Chiapas,

Mexico, Wilson (2011) provides a similar observation in which quasi-private and quasi-public

communal space between streets and houses is gone in the new town. Whereas traditionally built

houses usually have porches wide open towards streets, providing pedestrians shelter from sun,

rain or for conversations, newly built housing complexes under Rural City are surrounded by

high-wire fences with porches facing inward, creating a highly individualistic and alienating

feeling. Therefore, different from the dynamically interwoven social relations embedded in

Antigua Morococha’s landscape where distinctions of private space and public space were

blurred, the rigid spatial planning of Nueva Morococha conveys a sense of isolation through

disembodied abstraction and clear-cut separation between private and public space.

Another contradiction, or economic alienation, is the undelivered promises of economic

development by a modern town, as demonstrated in the next chapter on precarity. While this has

made the act of waiting the state of being for “surplus labor” who decided to stay, it has also

produced waves of out-migration or pure abandonment for those who only see a murky future in

Nueva Morococha. While Wilson (2011) sees Mexican peasants’ abandonment of state-planned

housing projects in Chiapas and their following return to subsistence farming in villages as acts

of resistance, Lesutis (2019) maintains that coping mechanisms such as abandonment of

resettlement by Mozambican farmers only reconstitute the precarity created by dispossession and

thus should not be considered as transformative politics. Abandoning Nueva Morococha is not an

uncommon move: whereas the majority out-migrated due to dim economic prospects, a handful

of residents, knowing Antigua Morococha was forever gone, left because they feel culturally and

socially alienated. Interviewees who had given up Nueva Morococha completely by taking cash

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compensation and moving to cities such as Huancayo or Lima expressed nostalgic feelings for

Antigua Morococha as well as hardship in coping with more hustling city life. However, whereas

these people were able to keep family unity by leaving in groups, those who simply left by

themselves in search for work were confronted with serious repercussions such as fractured

families and broken relationships. In an interview, Lourdes Valentin Cuba (July 2019) recalled

heartbreaking stories of children feeling distanced from their fathers who had left for work for

years, as well as the tragic death of a migrant miner working in a Brazilian mine whose family

wasn’t even able to perform a burial because they didn’t have enough money to retrieve the

corpse. Therefore, the abandonment of Nueva Morococha does not seem to constitute the

transformative politics Lesuitis (2019) was talking about.

Although experiences of out-migration are not exclusive to those who resettled in Nueva

Morococha – in an age of neoliberal globalization, resettlements often exacerbate pre-existing

problems and thus lead to abandonment of the sites – they mark a stark contrast to a life lived

back in Antigua Morococha, a town composed of mining camps where families always lived

alongside each other. In addition, as Angel, the local family judge, revealed, even for some who

had jobs in the mine, there was migration on a micro level between the mining camp and Nueva

Morococha. Indeed, since Nueva Morococha was built to be an urban town instead of a

traditional mining camp, those who work in the mine have to commute either weekly or monthly.

According to Angel, this micro-migration left many teenage girls unattended with their

grandparents in town, and when coupled with unregulated flows of migrant young men, helped

explain the raising rates of youth abortion or unmarried parents in Nueva Morococha. Hence,

Nueva Morococha is not a reconstruction of Antigua Morococha with aims to retain its social

relations as a mining town (which would be an almost impossible mission to accomplish) but is

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rather a project of mere physical replacement that attempts to deliver modernity and

development. Both its internal spatial layout and overall spatial relationship with the Toromocho

mining camps produce feelings of cultural and familial alienation while transforming the

everyday life of residents by either forcing them to look for alternatives somewhere else or

fragmenting family relations.

One of the alienations is manifested in further marginalization of the local people under

capitalist relation of production: instead of serving local needs, some businesses in Nueva

Morococha mainly cater to Chinalco and its mining operations. This unfortunately transformed

certain spaces into socially segregated areas, reinforcing the stringent structures imposed by the

town’s original spatial design. Therefore, not only were people’s lives structured through spatial

planning underpinned by a technocratic functionalist rationality, they also participated in this

reconfiguration. This sudden realization came up when I failed to find any restaurants open for

business at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. I had just come back from Huancayo after attending

the June dialogue table held between the Morococha representative, ministries of various levels

and Chinalco. After a 6-hour long trip, I stood astonished in front Olla de Barro, a restaurant I

visited the most frequently in downtown Nueva Morococha. Having been there mostly on regular

mealtimes, I never noticed its daily operations were from 6 am to 8 am for breakfast, 11:30 am to

1:30 pm for lunch, and 6 pm to 8 pm for dinner. As soon as I saw the announcement posted on

its door, I realized it was because most restaurants in town had contracts with Chinalco to

provide three meals a day for short-term subcontractors who worked on temporary projects in

mine. Since there was little business besides the main contracts, restaurants only opened at

selected times when the workers were off duty. This helped explain why I had only seen a few

local people at any local restaurants during my entire stay there. Like restaurants, hotels and

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hostels in Nueva Morococha also relied heavily on Chinalco’s mining operations as they were

mostly filled with migrants looking for jobs or temporary subcontractors. Some of Chinalco’s

direct contractors, in order to efficiently manage their employees, rented empty houses to turn

them into dormitories. Internet cafés were popular gathering spots for workers to either print

receipts for reimbursement or use computers for socialization or computer games. Hence,

although Nueva Morococha was built to accommodate those displaced by the Toromocho

project, it does not wholeheartedly assist the reconstruction of the community. Instead, the

resettlement as a corporate project furthers Chinalco’s interests in capitalist accumulation and as

a result, local residents are further alienated as “outsiders” in their alleged hometown where

certain spaces are reserved for specific groups of people. Therefore, for local residents, in

addition to an unfamiliar distinction in private and public space, a new form of special

segregation emerged.

Moreover, non-human relationships have also been transformed in Nueva Morococha as

a result of spatial reorganization. In an interview with Blanca Cuba (July 2019), she complained

how the resettlement was designed for human beings without any considerations for animals or

local ecology. Indeed, walking around Nueva Morococha, one could see numerous stray dogs

roaming around or flipping through garbage looking for food. On rainy days, they look

especially limp and dirty with matted fur. These dogs were abandoned because the new houses

are too small even for a family of 3, leaving no space for pets. While some families continued to

raise chickens in their rather contained backyard, others either sold their livestock before

relocation or occupied public space such as community gardens in Nueva Morococha to raise

livestock that needed spacious room, such as sheep, llamas or pigs.

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Contemporary Nueva Morococha is one of the many new towns that have emerged under

rapid global transformations of capitalist modernity and neoliberal reform. Conceived and built

as a technocratic and corporate project, its functionalist spatial layout bore little similarity to the

heterogenous and semiautonomous villages its residents used to inhabit. Nueva Morococha is a

result of capitalist production of space, a space that is abstract and homogenous, where problems

of alienation and transformations of everyday life are pronounced. The discrete separation

between private and public not only fragmented communal ties with feelings of social alienation

but also helped population control. A hierarchal spatial formation of concentration zones limited

chances of survival and structured ways in which people moved around the town. With dim

economic prospects, out-migration and abandonment of the resettlement became new norms.

Meanwhile, a modern, urban and business-oriented Nueva Morococha further marginalized local

residents by rendering them as outsiders in certain spaces of consumption, thus reinforcing the

discrete spatial layout to some extent. As summarized well by Wilson (2011), the new town is

where “the symbolic richness and creative autonomy of daily life are progressively eviscerated

and replaced by the homogenization and fragmentation of a technocratic rationality projected

onto reality through the planned production of space” (Wilson 2011, 998).

3. The Unmaking of Antigua Morococha: Destructive Production of Space

Dialectically linked to the material making of Nueva Morococha is the unmaking of the

old town. However, while Nueva Morococha as a technocratic and corporate project can be

translated into a mere reconstruction of a physical container devoid of social relations, Antigua

Morococha is a historical-geographical entity sedimented with social entanglements among

residents themselves and between the human and non-human. Thus, a de-territorialized Antigua

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Morococha means both physical disaggregation and social fragmentation. This section builds on

Gordillo’s (2014) theorization of “destructive production” and “the destruction of space.” First it

brings together Harvey, Lefebvre and Gordillo into a conversation on the production and

destruction of space. Then it offers an empirical account of capitalist destruction of an abstract

and commodified space by conceiving of concrete as rubble. Lastly it turns to coerced

“voluntary” resettlement, focusing on corporate tactics as an integral part of the production of

rubble.

3.1 Production of Space: Creative Destruction vs Destructive Production

Lefebvre’s theorization of the production of space is useful to examine the material

making of Nueva Morococha and the role it plays in transforming people’s lives. However, as an

analytical tool, it is less fruitful for exploring the destructive unmaking of Antigua Morococha as

the precondition for assembling the new town. Gordillo (2014) was well aware of Lefebvre’s

primary interest in the “creative” side of spatial production rather than its “destructive” aspect.

Therefore, in order to more productively examine spatial destruction under capitalism, he

developed the concept of “the destruction of space” in his illuminating monograph, Rubble: The

Afterlife of Destruction. For Gordillo (2014), there is the positive moment of production of

material re-assembly after its destructive moment of social fragmentation and physical

disintegration. Although Gordillo perceives production and destruction as consecutive and

constitutive processes taking place in the same locale, I offer a slightly different example in

which they unfold in distinct geographies but remain co-constitutive. In other words, while

Lefebvre provided helpful toolkits to understand the material assembly of Nueva Morococha and

its afterlife, Gordillo’s destructive production explains better the devastating unmaking of

Antigua Morococha where rubble, manifested in forms of concrete, is omnipresent.

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Gordillo beautifully wove together historical analyses of Spanish colonialism, foreign

imperialism and neoliberal capitalism on the western edge of the Argentine Gran Chaco. He

critiqued the elite fetishization, reification and abstraction of ruins and space which worked to

conceal ruptured histories of exploitation, discrimination and oblivion suffered by subaltern

people. The prioritization of an elite version of ruins crafted for cosmopolitan consumerism,

Gordillo argued, tended to beautify a cruel past by erasing alternative narratives of what ruins

could mean or do, as well as the histories and politics behind them. Therefore, Gordillo (2014)

advocated for a reconceptualization of ruins as rubble, and more specifically, rubble with an

afterlife “towards further historicizing and politicizing our understanding of the materiality of

space in its immanence: that is, space as we know it in this world” (263).

Harvey (2007) argued that neoliberalism, founded on political ideas of liberty and

freedom, is a hegemonic system within global capitalism and a class project to restore power

through redistribution of wealth from lower to upper classes. His contribution of geographically

uneven development wrought by neoliberal accumulation by dispossession is seminal.

Specifically, Harvey was referring to the “channeling of wealth from subordinate classes to

dominant ones and from poor to richer countries” (22), a spatially uneven and destructive

process in which some places became sacrifice zones for capital accumulation. While

recognizing Harvey’s scholarly contribution, Gordillo (2014) disapproved of his uncritical use of

“creative destruction” for its “bourgeois baggage” (80). For Gordillo, destruction was only

acknowledged to be disregarded and silenced as an unfortunate by-product of capitalism. In other

words, by framing capitalism as ultimately productive and desirable, its destructive side is

depoliticized and subordinated to its creativity. Gordillo’s remarks on bourgeois disregard of

destruction are partially influenced by Ann Stoler’s (2009) concept of “imperial disregard,” a

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term that points out the power of imperial elites to “refuse to take notice” of suffering and

exploitation. To confront destruction and creation face to face, Gordillo (2014) developed

“destructive production” as an analytical approach to rubble at the foot of the Argentine Andes

for it “captures the twofold movement of production and destruction without recoding

destruction as creative” (81).

Although Harvey and Gordillo were both concerned about space and destruction, they

approached them differently. Harvey (2007) understood destruction as dispossession manifested

in things such as repression of labor movements, expanding economic inequality and

privatization of public goods. Although these events to some extent entail material destruction of

communities and households, his contributions to theorizations of spatial unevenness address

more broadly the unequal spatial relationships between countries and regions rather than the

physical destruction of space, something Gordillo (2014) was more interested in. As Gordillo

(2014) argued, destruction “disintegrates not just matter but the conditions of sociality that define

a particular social node” (81). Speaking specifically about destruction brought by mining

corporations, he stressed that spaces were destroyed not just because rocks were obliterated, but

because “they saturate places with rubble and poison that negatively affect people and living

forms” (82; also see Li 2015 and Graeter 2017). By de-fetishizing ruins as rubble, Gordillo

attempted to bring forward lived experiences of subaltern people and to uncover violent histories

of conquest and domination. Therefore, while he focused on the physical shattering of spaces,

Gordillo was ultimately striving for a “political understanding” and an “affective view” of spatial

destruction, that is, how people live through destruction. In this way, Gordillo and Lefebvre were

both interested in issues of matter and materiality, or in Smith’s (2008, 123) words, “the

reproduction of social relations of production.”

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3.2 Concrete as Rubble: Abstraction and Commodification of Space

Concrete is, after water, the most widely used substance on the planet (Watts 2019). It is

truly everywhere in our lives, from paved roads to hydro dams, from factories to power grids.

Instead of a foundational construction material, Forty (2012) saw concrete as a medium and

process that refutes clean categorizations. For him, concrete is caught between dualisms such as

natural and not natural, modern and un-modern, solid and flexible, as well as aspirational and

despairing. However, as an architectural historian, not only did Forty take dichotomies such as

nature and society or nature and culture for granted, he also was solely interested in

understanding its materiality rather than the materially lived experiences of concrete. Forty

(2012) argued that concrete was seen as backwards because of its earthbound origin and the

minimal requirement of technical skills to make reinforced concrete. However, in the chapter on

Mud and Modernity, he remarked, “…not that the backwardness of concrete has ever stood in the

way of its adoption as a paradigmatic symbol of modernity. Whenever and wherever urgent

modernization has been called for, concrete has been pressed into service” (15). More than that,

Forty (2012) suggested a reconfiguration of concrete’s primary associations with modernity in

the aftermath World War II during which unprecedented quantities of concrete were produced,

hence aligning it with “violence, destruction and death” (178).

Concrete buildings used to be everywhere in Antigua Morococha before the town was

obliterated. As one of the well-known mining areas in Central Peru, Morococha was seen as

developed and modern, or in Victor’s words, “… cosmopolitan and always adaptive, a town that

had no fear of change” (Interview with Victor, 2019). However, since the resettlement process

started in 2012 and by the time I first visited in January 2019, besides a few strongly standing

houses occupied by families who were reluctant to move, most of the town was torn apart and

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covered with concrete remnants of the destroyed houses. In the aftermath of capitalist expansion

and destruction of Antigua Morococha, local elite and officials did not fetishize or commodify

pieces of shattered concrete as ruins that were once modern, but rather treated them as worthless

and shapeless, apolitical and ahistorical. More than anything, pieces of smashed concrete that

used to make up dreams of modernity in Antigua Morococha are now seen as obstacles to

capitalist modernity that an open pit mine would bring to this region. Hence, similar to the

“imperial disregard” Ann Stoler (2009) describes, the nonexistent attention paid to the desolation

of Antigua Morococha is a capitalist disregard of “unworthy” concrete. Following Gordillo’s

(2014) theorization of rubble as “textured, affectively charged matter that is intrinsic to all living

places,” (5) I argue for the need to conceive pieces of concrete in destroyed Antigua Morococha

as rubble for its analytical potential. Indeed, what concrete uncovers are violent histories of

spatial destruction wrought by capitalism through abstraction and commodification of space, and

by a callous disregard for both human and non-human lives.

Large tracts of Antigua Morococha were shattered and covered by rubble. Amongst them,

pieces of concrete depict the destruction of what was once there. The grey of concrete was

spattered with colors from its past life as buildings inhabited by people. Graffiti that could still

be seen on concrete walls of the previous kindergarten screamed of an existence that once was.

Fragments of concrete walls were scattered around, where even through the peeling plaster, one

could read “Propiedad Privada” (Private Property). Empty houses were stamped with Chinalco

signs and their windows blocked by wooden boards. Concrete as rubble does not only signify

destruction in the past. It also marks the ones yet-to-come. Tens of concrete barriers painted with

the Chinalco symbol in different shades of blue were ubiquitous in Antigua Morococha, loudly

proclaiming corporate private ownership and marking the upcoming destruction. In addition to

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concrete, other forms of devastation were also present. In the Yankee Bajo neighborhood, half a

wall stood with jagged edges of exposed bricks, and near the entrance of the mine, a stand-alone

mud houses had cracks created by dynamite explosions from the mine. As I walked down the

main street in town, I saw pieces of rusted billboards laying around, half-covered by outgrown

grasses and piles of wooden frames.

Figure 6 Rubble in Antigua Morococha, June 2019

The despairing feeling exuded from rubble was amplified by its surroundings. Some

mountains in the back remained barren in their natural state and others had been transformed by

mining operations. Their surfaces were built into zig-zag roads extending from the bottom all the

way to the top, providing entrance into the mine. The Toromocho mountain, after a few years of

exploration, had already been turned into a giant hole with vertical layers discernable from afar.

Its cross section revealed layers of sedimented rock, each telling a unique part of the geological

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history. Located in the middle of the town, the Morococha lake had been drained after a mining

accident in 1928. Its lakebed was barren with some parts covered by grass. In the middle of the

lake was a small pond of highly contaminated mine tailings, which under bright sunlight would

turn purple or dark brown. Overall, physically shattered Antigua Morococha appeared anguished

and hopeless.

Instead of dismissing the omnipresent concrete in demolished Antigua Morococha as the

undesirable by-product of capitalist expansion which ultimately leads to innovation and

creativity, it should be seen as rubble to place destruction at the forefront of this analysis, and

more importantly, to unveil the uneven spatial destruction wrought by capitalism. Besides

tangible equipment needed to produce rubble in Antigua Morococha, such as bulldozers,

excavators and paramilitary forces, this capitalist destruction of space also requires ideological

work and corporate tactics. While the rest of this section focuses on the abstraction and

commodification of Antigua Morococha, the next part details coercion and deprivation as

corporate tactics in producing rubble.

Neil Smith’s (2008) influential work on the corollary relationship between the production

of nature and the production of space is helpful to understand the commodification of Antigua

Morococha. In Ideas of Nature, Raymond Williams (1980) argued that when mixed with labor,

nature as a “quality” becomes a “description,” meaning nature is now being approached from its

exchange value as opposed to its use value. Smith (2008) had a similar theorization about the

relations between labor and nature. However, he paid particular attention to the division of labor

that creates second nature (exchange value) instead of the general labor that produces first nature

(use value). In addition, for Smith, the era of nature as quality in its use value is long gone, and it

has become an ideology that is part of second nature or exchange value. In other words, second

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nature is now nature due to capitalism’s totalizing forces. However, it is important to keep in

mind that, similar to Harvey, Smith was more concerned with geographically uneven

development at various scales under capitalist expansion as opposed to the materially lived

experiences of this unevenness.

Smith’s theorization of the production of nature stands true in the case of Antigua

Morococha: its mountains and subsoils, or nature, are treated as raw materials, which through

divisions of labor assisted by the infrastructures including people of Antigua Morococha, can be

efficiently turned into commodities for profit. Therefore, while nature is foundational to the

existence and expansion of capitalism, it is the process of commodification that enabled capitalist

production and accumulation. In the past, Antigua Morococha served primarily as mining camps

that housed workers with different specializations. However, with the re-discovery of

Toromocho, which led to identification of abundant ore deposits underneath the old town,

Antigua Morococha is more valuable destroyed than standing. The land unleashed by its

destruction will be incorporated as part of the open pit mine; thus, the destruction is geared

toward production of new commodities and accumulation of wealth. Undoubtedly, the

development of capitalism has changed our relations to the world by commodifying it and

making it integral to the production of commodities, a total transformation from its first nature to

the second nature.

Abstraction of space is also essential for the physical destruction of Antigua Morococha.

For some people, Antigua Morococha is a place with sedimented histories of colonialism,

imperialism and capitalism, as well as a material entity composed of physical infrastructures and

social relations. Its sense of belonging is rooted in its historical-geographical formation as a

mining town in the Andes. However, capitalism tends to see Antigua Morococha as a positive

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and abstract space that is void, boundless, universal, meaningless and therefore malleable for all

possibilities. Not just a local Antigua Morococha, Gordillo (2014) argued that capitalism sees the

entire planet as “a blank, available surface to be exploited for profit regardless of who lives there

and of the qualitative nature of those places” (82). Thus abstraction as a powerful ideological

tool enables capitalists to unsee a world filled with living beings, histories, social relations, and

memories. Instead, what they see are profit and wealth, sources of their desire for ego and power.

Abstraction of space then implies detachment from the material world and normalization of the

violence and destruction that are necessary for capitalism to survive and thrive.

Emphasizing rubble and concrete as matter with history of their own produces an analysis

centered on the destruction of capitalist expansion. Instead of disregarding destruction and

privileging creation, “destructive production” considers them both outcomes of the very same

process. In addition, commodification and abstraction are not two independent processes either:

to a large extent, to commodify is to abstract and abstractions allows commodification. Rubble

recounts a violent history of commodification and abstraction that reduced the sensory,

multifaceted textures of Antigua Morococha to a quantifiable and homogenous space. This

ultimately led to obliteration of the old town into pieces of rubble in the form of bulldozed

houses, abandoned playgrounds, demolished churches, piles of bricks and wooden frames,

overgrown cemetery, barren mountains blasted by dynamite, and the list of destruction goes on.

In the end, rubble is the direct embodiment of the physical disintegration of Antigua Morococha.

3.3 Coerced “Voluntary” Resettlement

In the process of unmaking Antigua Morococha, equally important as technological

mechanization and ideological commodification and abstraction of space are corporate strategies

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designed to encourage and even coerce people to resettle. As mentioned earlier, the unmaking of

a sociocultural and geohistorical Antigua Morococha means both physical disintegration and

social fragmentation. While social fragmentation can mean dissolution of trust and solidarity

among residents themselves, this section focuses primarily on the socially destructive process of

uprooting local families from Antigua Morococha based on corporate tactics such as deception,

deprivation and coercion.

According to Chinalco, since 2013, more than 4,000 residents of Antigua Morococha had

moved “voluntarily” to the new town with “a better quality of life for all” (Environmental Impact

Study of Toromocho). Wilmsen and Wang (2015) argued that the dichotomy of voluntary and

involuntary resettlement is false but it is in the interest of state and non-state actors to maintain

the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy (Baird and Shoemaker 2007), either to attract backing from

international aid organizations as they can justify their involvement as altruistic (Schmidt-Soltau

and Brockington 2007), or to obscure more secondary motives for land acquisition such as

securing a contested border or private investment. A scale of resettlement like Nueva Morococha

cannot be entirely voluntary and even cases of so-called voluntary relocation need to be further

interrogated. Indeed, however effective the discourse of development or attractive the promise of

private property might be, some residents were reluctant to leave the place where they grew up

and called home. Hence, tactics and mechanisms had to be deployed to encourage or force

people to move, especially given the fact that its mining explorations could not proceed without

an empty Antigua Morococha. Based on interviews conducted with local residents in Nueva

Morococha, a different story of “voluntary resettlement” surfaced. Quite opposite to the official

narrative, it is a story of deception, deprivation and coercion.

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As Wilmsen and Wang (2015) argued, there exists a false and unnecessary dichotomy of

voluntary and involuntary resettlement. This statement holds true in the case of Chinalco:

whereas many did move willingly to Nueva Morococha with aspirations for development and

private property, others were coerced and/or deceived to relocate “voluntarily.” Although the

latter is the focus of this section, it is also important to acknowledge aspirations of the previous

group. Nueva Morococha was framed as resettlement with development. Chinalco and Social

Capital Group claimed that not only would living standards improve significantly in an urban

town equipped with modern infrastructure, but economic development would also follow as a

result of the advanced open pit mine.

The idea of Resettlement with Development (RwD) was first brought up by Cernea

(1997) when he wrote, “resettlement operations should be treated as development projects in

their own right, benefiting the resettled.” For Cernea, compensation is the traditional means used

to avoid impoverishment. What is needed in involuntary resettlement then is a switch of

mentality from passively coping with impoverishment to actively considering resettlement as an

opportunity for development (Cernea 1997). Writing from the Ecuadorian oil frontier in the

context of global land grabbing after the 2008 financial crisis, Lyall (2017) provided an example

of voluntary resettlement in which consent was given for an aspirational future of economic

development. The Ecuadorian state has planned 200 urban-like resettlements for communities

impacted by extractive industries on the Amazonia oil and mining frontiers. Describing them as

“development-induced displacement” (Correa, then Ecuadorian president, cited in Lyall 2017),

the state urged citizens to see resettlement as “an ‘opportunity’ and even a ‘blessing’ for rural

communities on resource frontiers” for the potential generation of revenues near “strategic” sites,

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such as oil wells, mines, or hydroelectric dams (962). A blueprint of a brighter future had

aspirational locals resettle voluntarily.

Similar aspirations for economic prosperity and modern infrastructure were also

important drivers for those who resettled willingly to Nueva Morococha. But what is particular

about this case was that a disproportionate number of residents moved voluntarily for free houses

with property titles, things they understood as “development.” The history of Antigua

Morococha, as detailed in the previous section, is a story of incremental settlement largely by

migrants. According to Social Capital Group, roughly 90% of Antigua Morococha was

comprised of migrant miners who had been renting houses from local residents, leaving about

10% of the population house owners.22 In most resettlement cases, tenants would at best receive

monetary compensation if their landlords were to be resettled. However, in the case of Antigua

Morococha, anyone who had lived there for more than a year before March 2006 and decided to

move voluntarily would be qualified for a new house in Nueva Morococha, regardless of house

ownership.

In Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon, Harms (2016)

discusses the dialectical making and unmaking of Ho Chi Minh City amid rapid reorganization

of urban space in Vietnam. There, locals in underdeveloped Thu Thiem used a rights discourse

to demand higher compensation based on the market value of land amid dispossession and

displacement. Seen through his analytical lens, those who equate development with property

rights in Antigua Morococha are borrowing and reinforcing 1) market logics that drive their

dispossession by deeming Antigua Morococha more valuable destroyed than preserved, as well

as 2) the exclusion-based rights discourse that Chinalco, as the property owner of Antigua

22 The 34 acres of land in Antigua Morococha was owned by the municipality before its transfer to Chinalco. Hence,

no one in the old town owned any land.

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Morococha, utilized to justify the removal of local residents. Where Harms would critique both

residents of Antigua Morococha and those of Thu Thiem for failing to realize the contradictory

and ironic relationship between their own dispossession and the tools they mobilized for self-

interests, I argue that Antigua Morocoha’s marginalized renters’ use of ideas or tools that

originally dispossessed them is actually an act of resistance.

Just as rubble can be appropriated by the bourgeoisie as a sign of creation, it can also tell

stories of catastrophic destruction under capitalism. In a similar vein, while one can take pride in

Nueva Morococha as a success based on cases of voluntary resettlement, one can also scorn it as

a failure to deliver promises of economic development (see chapter 4), or in this case, a

fabrication based on deception, deprivation and coercion which leaves traces of rubble in

Antigua Morococha. The following are some empirical stories demonstrating the aforementioned

corporate strategies.

In 1994, Yolanda Vincere and her family moved to Antigua Morococha from

Andaychagua, a nearby mining town in San Cristobal District in the Yauli Province. For 21

years, they lived in a rented house and worked in the mine. Life back in Antigua Morococha was

comfortable as Yolanda and her husband both had stable jobs. Like many others, when she first

found out about the resettlement plan in 2006, ambitious promises of employment and

development were made by Chinalco, including a free house with property title and two

Chinalco payroll jobs. Staff of Social Capital Group even paid an individual visit to her family,

asking how they were doing in a rented house and if they would like to own a property in the

new resettlement. When Carhuacoto was announced as the final location for the resettlement

project, Yolanda refused to move. Widely known as Hacienda Pucara (Pucara farm), Carhuacoto

was famous for its humidity and toxicity, a legacy of colonial artisanal mining. Unwilling to

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resettle, Yolanda was invited by Social Capital Group to visit the new town and see the new

house before its completion in 2012. However, shortly after they toured the houses in Nueva

Morococha, SCG staff gathered them into a room for housing lotteries. They were instructed to

sign a document that confirmed acceptance of a free house and were informed that this would not

impact their decision to stay in Antigua Morococha. Initially reluctant to sign, Yolanda was

pressured and finally convinced that she would not lose anything by putting down her signature.

Little did she know that this signature would change everything. A week after she returned to

Antigua Morococha, Yolanda received a call from her boss, who threatened to fire her if she

didn’t move to Nueva Morococha immediately. Although she only had a temporary, low-wage,

and menial employment with Chinalco’s contractor, Yolanda was terrified of losing half of the

family income and decided to move shortly afterwards. Sadly, resettling to Nueva Morococha

did not allow her to keep her employment – a few months later, she was fired anyway. Hence,

moving to Nueva Morococha was not a voluntary decision made by Yolanda and her family.

Quite the opposite, she was deceived and forced to leave the place she had been calling home for

more than two decades. Additionally, her story interestingly reflected the fact that not all renters

prioritized free private property and moved voluntarily.

What happened to Yolanda is not uncommon. Although locals were told that accepting

new houses had nothing to do with their willingness to stay or move, they were threatened with

losing their employment as soon as they signed the document. Thus, free houses, instead of

providing comfort for families to start a new life in the new town, are the premise of acts of

coercion. In other words, one would more likely be threatened once he or she signed the paper

and had a place to resettle. Therefore, free houses in Nueva Morococha more or less became a

corporate tool to unmake Antigua Morococha. In addition, not only those with employment were

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threatened to move voluntarily in order to keep their jobs; others who were actively looking were

also forced to resettle since employment, either with Chinalco or its contractors, would be denied

unless one had resettled voluntarily to Nueva Morococha. As a result, many residents from

Antigua Morococha were coerced to “voluntarily” resettle to secure future employment.

Another prominent approach of unmaking Antigua was the withdrawal of public services.

In other words, it was coercion by deprivation. Ever since the actual process of relocation started

in 2012, life was dismantled and made hardly manageable in Antigua Morococha. As Schmidt-

Soltau and Brockington (2007) noted, the “discouragement against staying is likely to figure as

strongly as the encouragement to move.” Shortly after people started moving to Nueva

Morococha in 2012, public services were withdrawn and transferred to the new city, including

schools, clinics, police stations and churches. In addition, as the number of residents in Antigua

Morococha decreased, grocery shops, restaurants, tricycles, minivans and other businesses

suffered tremendous economic loss, and thus started migrating as well. The plight of Antigua

Morococha forced residents who stayed behind to commute more frequently to access public

services and purchase basic necessities. Commuting not only posed an economic burden for all,

but also physical hardship for the elders and those who were responsible for family errands such

as grocery shopping. Furthermore, with the decline of population in Antigua Morococha,

minivan services, the principal means of transportation, became increasingly unavailable and

inaccessible. When I first visited Antigua Morococha in January 2019, it only cost 5 soles to get

a private taxi from Nueva Morococha. When I returned in June, the price had gone up to 20

soles, a four-fold increase. The taxi driver justified the price hike saying he would get no

customers coming back, implying dim economic prospects in Antigua Morococha resulting from

its diminished population size. The number of minibuses going up to Antigua Morococha also

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dropped drastically. Although the price remained at 1.5 soles one way, its schedule changed from

every 10-15 minutes to almost every hour. Blanca Cuba and her 81-year-old mother Vicenta

Paucar still lived in Antigua Morococha when I conducted my fieldwork in July 2019. For them,

life was extremely difficult to sustain because all the public services were gone. To manage daily

life at the basic survival level, they had to get groceries from La Oroya every week, taking first

the minivan to Nueva Morococha and then transferring to La Oroya. But if Vicenta needed

medical care, they had to leave for Nueva Morococha before the minivan stops running at 5pm.

Since no one could predict when Vicenta would fall ill, Blanca suffered from constant anxiety

that her mother could not receive proper medical care when she is in critical condition.

Although some services and private businesses moved down to Nueva Morococha

organically over time in response to declining demand, other essential public goods such as

education and health care were transferred at an unprecedented and unnecessary speed,

prompting suspicion in the real objective of its relocation. The process of resettlement officially

kicked off in October 2012. Two months later, schools of all levels in Antigua Morococha were

ordered to move due to contracts signed between the Ministry of Education of Junín and

Chinalco. The National Professors Union and local parents protested against the demand, and

one of the events quickly culminated to a violent clash between armed locals and the policemen

on December 14th regarding the relocation of Kindergarten School No. 512 Infante Jesus de

Praga. According to a report by Zevallos (2012), after Social Capital Group staff finished

packing up school furniture and other essentials for relocation, they were stopped by local

parents who wished to halt the move. The confrontation ended up with around sixty policemen

showing up and throwing tear gas to forcefully push the resettlement. This incident speaks

abundantly to the coercive nature of the “voluntary” resettlement which relied extensively on

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withdrawing public services two months after its initiation. Although transfers of schools are

inevitable once most people move down to Nueva Morococha, to move them when the majority

had not left Antigua Morococha seems to be carrying another objective that serves Chinalco’s

corporate interest in expediting the resettlement process.

The strategy of coercion by deprivation proved to be efficient, especially when related to

the future and safety of the next generation. Lourdes Valentin Cuba, Antigua Morococha born

and raised, made the compromise to resettle for her children when a school bus crashed on its

way from Antigua Morococha to Nueva Morococha. “I don’t want my children to commute daily

and risk their lives. But there is no place to go other than Nueva Morococha.” Her love for her

children was further capitalized upon by SCG staff, who told her if she didn’t move immediately,

her children would be discriminated against in schools and she would decimate her children’s

future because the later she move, the fewer benefits she would secure for the family. Up until

2012, Social Capital Group was making monthly visits to individual households in Antigua

Morococha, bringing along with them gifts such as cooking oil, flour, clothing and sometimes

toys for children. When the physical resettlement process took off in 2012, they intensified their

home visits from every month to every day. Having uninvited guests showing up daily and

describing you as an irresponsible parent who does not care about your children’s future was

psychologically torturing and overwhelming. Lourdes could no long put up with a life devoid of

essential public services, constant parent shaming, daily harassment, and anxiety over her

children’s safety. After 36 years of living in Antigua Morococha, she left reluctantly for the

resettlement in 2016, signing a document that declared the move to be entirely voluntary.

However, after three years of living in the supposedly better Nueva Morococha, Lourdes felt

depressed, lonely and even guilty. She expressed these emotions during an interview, “I think

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people who are still up in Antigua Morococha are more courageous than I am. Indeed,

sometimes, my husband and I think we were too weak for coming down. Those who stayed also

have families and children, but they didn’t make compromises because they love Antigua

Morococha. After all, back there, we shared, helped and supported each other. It is different here

where everyone is always at home and rarely goes out. That has me a little depressed. It makes

me think a lot about how I could have failed as a person, but I don’t feel so sad because I did it

for my children.” Lourdes’ complex feelings were echoed by other interviewees on various

occasions, substantiating previous observations of alienation as the prominent problem of the

new town.

A few months after I returned from the field, I was informed by a few interlocutors that

since November 6, 2019, electricity service in Antigua Morococha was entirely terminated due

to unresolved problems between Chinalco, Morococha municipality and Electrocentro, the utility

company. Based on interviews conducted with local residents, there was also a short period of

power outage back in 2013 when Chinalco purposefully discontinued electricity provision to

force people to resettle. However, the municipality intervened in a timely manner and restored

the service, justifying it as its essential duty to provide basic necessities to its residents since

most people still remained there. However, this time was not that fortunate. To date, residents in

Antigua Morococha have been living without electricity for months. In addition to power outage

and water shortage, locals also complained about road maintenance in Antigua Morococha:

whereas they were often watered to control dust in the past, nowadays, air in Antigua Morococha

is filled with dust and toxic mineral particles. Already in a desperate situation deprived of basic

dignity, families who stayed behind in Antigua Morococha are experiencing another level of

“infrastructural attack” (Chu 2014). Based on ethnographic work on evictions in Fuzhou, China,

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Chu argued that infrastructures were appropriated insidiously by state power at various levels to

drive people out of their houses for urban redevelopment. Specifically, she maintained that “the

slow crumble and sudden disconnections of infrastructures,” instead of unfortunate side effects

of urban revitalization, are the embodiment of “the spectral forces of state plans for eviction and

demolition” (352). Although mainly an encounter between corporate power and citizens with

less state presence, what has unfolded in Antigua Morococha is precisely forced resettlement by

manipulation of infrastructure.

A ruthless withdrawal of public services instigated systematically and purposefully by a

transnational mining corporation, when coupled with constant destruction of space that has

historical and cultural significance, threats of unemployment, extreme hardship of living, and

simple cruelty, contributed to the motivations to escape from the predicament, or more

accurately, coerced people to resettle “voluntarily.” These corporate strategies contributed

significantly to the social fragmentation of Antigua Morococha, a painful process “with a lot of

tears” (Interview with Jacinto Guispe, 2019).

The unmaking of Antigua Morococha is composed of physical disintegration of matter

and social fragmentation of relationships, two destructive processes that both produce rubble in

town. Although I have focused primarily on the ways in which rubble is produced, I

acknowledge the importance of studying the lived experiences of rubble in Antigua Morococha,

which is beyond the scope of this study. Building off of Gordillo’s (2014) theorization of rubble

and destructive production, I argued for concrete as an entry point to uncover the violent

histories of commodification and abstraction of space behind Antigua Morococha’s destruction.

Contrary to Harvey’s concept of creative destruction, which may privilege creativity, I have

followed Gordillo in emphasizing destruction as equally important as the creative forces of

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capitalism. The physical shattering of matter in Antigua Morococha is however only part of the

unmaking. What is also indispensable is the social fragmentation and dissolution achieved by

Chinalco’s corporate strategies to coerce “voluntary” resettlement. Although some residents

moved willingly aspiring for economic and social development, others were threatened and

compelled to move for reasons such as future employment, public services, concerns for their

children’s future and so on, refuting the dichotomy of voluntary and involuntary resettlement.

4.Conclusion

The material making of Nueva Morococha is dialectically linked to the material

unmaking of Antigua Morococha. As Descartes (1673) stated, the presence of the new is

premised on the destruction of the old. The destruction of Antigua Morococha is indeed

indispensable for the new town because it renders physical relocation unavoidable and pressing.

However, in the case of Nueva Morococha, the opposite is true: the presence of the new is also

the precondition for the destruction of the old. The completed production of Nueva Morococha is

a prerequisite for the demolition of Antigua Morococha since physical shelter and administrative

buildings need to be provided before the old town could get obliterated. In other words,

assemblage in one locale and fragmentation in another are co-constitutive processes.

Nueva Morococha can be productively understood as a “creation city” (Fortier 1995), an

“instant city” (Castagnola 2013), and a “new town” (Lefebvre 1995). As a “creation city,” the

technocratic design of Nueva Morococha was premised on a modernist pursuit in which

development is measured quantitatively in aggregated numbers and rationality visualized in

geometrical spatial planning. The purported sense of modernity created through infrastructural

development and the town’s seemly rational geometrical layout attempts to rationalize

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dispossession. Meanwhile, as an “instant city” built in two years, Nueva Morococha is a

corporate project with a primary goal to advance capitalist interests. Its immediate and cost-

efficient production relied on exploitation of laborers and contracting corporations specialized in

resettlement. Therefore, the production of Nueva Morococha not only enables capitalist

accumulation in Antigua Morococha but is in itself a capitalist project. Lefebvre’s (1995) notes

on Mourenx and his emphasis on alienation and transformation of everyday life brings together

the analytical potential of “creation city” and “instant city” by focusing on the material and lived

experiences in Nueva Morococha. Rather than a genuine attempt to construct a sociocultural

entity that is dynamic, sustainable and livable, Nueva Morococha as both a “creation city” and an

“instant city” was designed based on exogenous technical knowledge derived exclusively from

urban contexts that does not speak to the cultural, historical, social or economic development of

Antigua Morococha. In addition, instead of being treated as a holistic project, the creation of

Nueva Morococha was compartmentalized into broken pieces of technical contracts handed over

to specialized corporations. As a result, while it physically resembled a planned urban space,

Nueva Morococha as a de-territorial technocratic formation not only lacked conditions of

sociality that were vital for a city to survive and thrive, but also failed to deliver a grounded

sense of place and belonging for relocated people. Indeed, as a planned production of space that

is abstract and unlived, feelings of alienation and transformations of everyday life are

omnipresent (Lefebvre 1991). Just as Castagnola (2013) argued, while Chinalco had the capacity

to build an instant city, it did not have the capacity to build an instant community.

Co-constitutive of the making of Nueva Morococha is the brutal unmaking of Antigua

Morococha only six miles away. Lefebvre’s (1991) theorization on “the production of space,”

though it acknowledges the simultaneously “destructive” nature of spatial production, prioritizes

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its “creative” aspect. Thus, I turned to Gordillo’s “destruction of space” to examine the

unmaking of Antigua Morococha where not only the physical world vanished but also its social

relations. By juxtaposing “the destruction of space” (Gordillo 2014) and “imperial disregard”

(Stoler 2009) with “creative destruction” (Harvey 2007), the section argues that any analysis of

capitalist expansion should be questioned if it subordinates the destructive outcomes under what

is created, or if destruction is only acknowledged to be disregarded as an unfortunate yet

ultimately unimportant by-product of capitalism’s progressive force.

Smith’s (2008) seminal work on “the production of nature” helps to explain the

commodification of Antigua Morococha from its “first nature” of use value as a town for living

and socializing, to its “second nature” of exchange value, referring to the minerals lying beneath

the town. The transformation from its “first nature” to “second nature,” or from its “use value” to

“exchange value,” is made possible through abstraction of space under capitalism. Space is then

seen as a void that is meaningless and boundless, where ample opportunities of capitalist

accumulation prevail through quantifications and commensurations. In other words, to

commodify is to abstract and abstraction of space allows its commodification. Both processes

contributed to the demolition of Antigua Morococha by turning the living place into an abstract,

quantifiable and homogenous space for capitalist accumulation, leaving behind concrete as the

vestige of spatial destruction.

Following traces of rubble in Antigua Morococha, one also uncovers violent histories of

social fragmentation. Just as Nueva Morococha is a corporate project of making, Antigua

Morococha is a corporate project of unmaking based on strategies such as deception, deprivation

and coercion. Although a number of aspiring residents moved willingly to Nueva Morococha in

search of Chinalco’s promised future with stable employment and property titles, lots of locals

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were coerced to leave Antigua Morococha due to either a ruthless withdraw of public services

such as electricity and public schools or outright threats of future employment. Thus, Chinalco’s

glorified narrative of Nueva Morococha as a “voluntary resettlement” is deconstructed,

substantiating Wilmsen and Wang’s (2015) argument on the false dichotomy of voluntary and

involuntary resettlement. Moreover, Cernea’s (1997) proposition of Resettlement with

Development (RwD), which considers resettlement as a development opportunity in itself, is

problematic for several reasons. First, by juxtaposing development with impoverishment, it

demonstrates Cernea’s narrow understanding of development as purely economic and neither

sociocultural nor sociopolitical. In addition, similar to an understanding of capitalism as creative

destruction, the idea of Resettlement with Development privileges creation and underplays its

destructive forces. Furthermore, instead of questioning why resettlement exists in the first place,

the concept of RwD takes resettlement for granted. Lastly, by presenting resettlements as

development projects, there is not only a tendency to legitimize brutal dispossession and

capitalist accumulation, but also a possibility to encourage yet-to-happen ones.

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IV

DOUBLE DISPOSSESSION: FROM STRUCTURAL DEPENDENCY TO

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

1.Introduction

Nueva Morococha felt ghostly and depressing most of the time: 95% of stalls in the

central market still remained vacant by July 2019 and parts of the streets in the residential area

were occasionally appropriated by families who intended to build a second floor to keep

construction materials, implying negligible traffic in town. Despite its overall despondency, one

could always find a noisy and energizing crowd in the main plaza across from the municipality,

made of locals as well as those who traveled to Nueva Morococha in search of jobs. While local

women enjoyed soaking up the sun and talking about family updates, the elders would sit quietly

observing what was going on in their surroundings. On weekdays in the afternoon, school kids in

uniforms usually came to hang out before heading back home to finish tedious homework. The

most consistent groups of people were migrant laborers who gathered here to exchange

information on employment, wait for physical exam results and/or other updates, and find a

temporary sense of community. The plaza had a round shape and was connected to the church,

the police station and the clinic through descending stairs. To its left and right were six small

patches of public parks where sheep and pigs would occasionally roam around looking for food.

The plaza’s boundaries were elevated up to form sitting areas made of concrete. On sunny days,

there were always a number of young men lying down on their backs with arms half covering

their faces, hiding from the dazzling sunlight while enjoying the warm Andean winter. Some of

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them were napping while others talking or texting on the phone. It was also common to find

young men standing in groups, discussing the upcoming hiring opportunities or exchanging

information on company entrance exams and/or job training sessions. While the scene can be

interpreted as quite lively and energizing as people gather to discuss about work, support each

other and from a community, the major theme here is endless waiting – waiting for opening

positions with contractors, waiting to submit their applications, waiting to be called for

interviews, exams, medical tests, waiting for results, waiting for technical training if ever

admitted, and waiting for signing the contract. Waiting has become the normal state of being for

many who are searching for jobs in Nueva Morococha.

Figure 7 Young men waiting for employment in the main plaza in Nueva Morococha. June 2019

Employment prospects in the resettled Nueva Morococha and other impacted areas of the

Toromocho project are bleak. Workers have to wait, beg, and even fight for work, often under

precarious situations. However, before Chinalco arrived in 2008, the opposite was true in

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Antigua Morococha23. It was the mining company that desperately sought to get people to work

in mines. This rupture from easy and secure access to abundant employment opportunities to a

precarious state of job-seeking can be understood partly as a result of technological

advancements to open-pit mining. A switch from the labor-intensive underground tunnel mining

to open pit mine demands fewer but highly skilled professionals due to processes of

mechanization. This prompted more extensive application of the already existing contracting and

subcontracting systems to avoid investing in machines that would only serve the mine

temporarily for specific tasks. Consequently, locals, mostly without mechanical training, were

lumped indiscriminately into a pool of reserved labor whose surplus value can be extracted from

their flexible and disposable bodies. However, technological dispossession alone does not

explain the extent of current unemployment in town. What is particular about Nueva Morococha

is the lack of alternative working opportunities given the town’s history of proletarianization and

structural dependence on mining. Since the early 20th century, various strategies and tactics were

developed to deruralize and transform peasants to proletariats in Central Peru during the Cerro de

Pasco era from 1902 to 1973 (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979; Dewind 1975). Therefore, what

Chinalco encountered was a community of industrial proletariat that had been solely relying on

mining for employment for almost a century, or in other words, a historically produced

dependency on extractive industry. Under this peculiar circumstance, advancement to open pit

mining seems exceptionally fatal.

Two periods of dispossession can be identified in the case of Morococha. The first one is

a historical dispossession of land which took place gradually in the 20th century when poor

peasants who relied on subsistence farming were transformed into an industrial proletariat and

23 I use Morococha and Antigua Morococha interchangeably in this chapter. Morococha is used mostly to describe

pre-resettlement events and processes since Nueva Morococha did not exist until 2012.

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made dependent on wage labor in the mining industry. This dispossession of land, and thus

livelihood and ways of being of local peasantry, is the key to reproduction of labor before mines

become highly mechanized. The second is the period of technological dispossession that became

pronounced in Morococha in 2008 with the arrival of Chinalco. Specifically, two things are

dispossessed in concert: the first is the space of Antigua Morococha and the other is labor,

meaning their ability to earn a wage is rendered replaceable by machines or that they become

“surplus” to capital. It is worth nothing that territorial dispossession occurred in both periods in

slightly different ways. While during the process of proletarianization, peasant lost access to the

ability to physically farm the land and thus to make a living, the second, later dispossession that

took place in Morococha was the loss of material and social conditions on which residents form a

community (see Chapter 3).

In addition, on a regional scale, technological dispossession in the form of unemployment

and thus denial of basic survival in Central Peru dates back to the 1930’s with gradual

mechanization and industrialization in mining (Dewind 1975). While Antigua Morococha

certainly was part of the process as its mine had a direct link with the Central Railroad as part of

the technological improvement, the town remained largely explored with underground tunnel

mining until Chinalco’s arrival after the re-discovery of the Toromocho mountain. Therefore,

while the unfolding scene of unemployment due to technological advancement in Nueva

Morococha should not come off as a total surprise but rather a continuation of a general trend on

a macro level, the year 2008 can be identified as a rupture in the local history of Morococha. In

other words, the period of historical dispossession of land (which produced labor) and the

technological dispossession of space/labor charted in this chapter do overlap and are recursively

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linked as general trends of capitalist development. However its manifestations in Morococha,

especially that of technological dispossession, are more pronounced due to the rupture in 2008.

In this chapter, I will first detail the process of proletarianization and dispossession in

Central Peru during the 20th century when a structural dependency on mining was engineered to

assist capitalist expansion. To understand the existing unemployment in the new resettlement of

Nueva Morococha, a historical materialist approach is essential. Then I move on to the period I

call technological dispossession in Morococha and focus primarily on the dispossession of labor

manifested in dwindling employment opportunities and harsher exploitation. A shift to open pit

mining not only resulted in displacement of Antigua Morococha but also spearheaded a sharp

decrease in labor demand and intensified the existing (sub)contracting system of exploitation. A

more extensive engagement with (sub)contracting network renders locals as highly flexible, and

accessible cheap labor whose bodies can be exploited and discarded at any time. Lastly, I

conclude with an argument on the relationship between dependency and corporate social

responsibility. I want to suggest an upended reading of dependency from serving the interests of

mining corporation under labor-intensive regimes to hindering capitalist accumulation with rapid

development of modern technology. I argue that infrastructure and social welfare, once core

elements for cultivating dependency, have been increasingly reformulated and repackaged under

a discourse of corporate social responsibility. They become coded as additional benevolent

contributions of the mining industry rather than foundational services to maintaining a

workforce, thus securing capitalist exploitation.

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2.The Process of Proletarianization and the Creation of Complete Dependency

Mining in the Central Andes predates the Inca Empire. During Inca times, mining

exploitation was carried out temporarily by peasants to comply with compulsory public service

in the form of labor, a system known as mita. Gold and silver were the most common minerals to

be extracted for purposes such as religious ornaments or palace decorations. When the Spaniards

conquered the Inca Empire, mita was gradually transformed into a coercive labor system and

mines became small pieces of private property known as mine-haciendas, where Indians labored

under extreme conditions in exchange for shelter and food (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979).

Willingness to work voluntarily in mines first emerged by the end of the 17th century and

continued to the 19th century when voluntary mine workers were employed as seasonal wage

labors on mine-haciendas (Roel 1970). Before the revitalization and industrialization of the

mining industry in the 20th century, the Andes in Central Peru were mined at a relatively small

scale with temporary workforce from nearby villages.

With the establishment of Cerro de Pasco Corporation (CPC)24 in 1902 and its seventy-

five-year mining operation, rural communities in Central Peru were gradually transformed into

an industrialized proletariat. This chapter follows the periodization provided by Kruijt and

Vellinga (1974) on the process of proletarianization in their seminal contributions to the study of

the Cerro de Pasco Corporation in Central Peru, Labor Relations and Multinational

Corporations: The Cerro de Pasco Corporation in Peru (1902 - 1974). Their theorization of the

process matches well with that described by Dewind (1975), and consists of 3 consecutive

stages: 1) recruitment of local peasantry as temporary and seasonal workforce from 1902 to

1925; 2) establishment of a “transitional proletariat” when workers would stay at mines for a few

24 Cerro de Pasco Corporation will be referred as CPC throughout this chapter. At different periods of time, the

company was also known as “Cerro de Pasco Investment Co.” or “Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation.”

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years, from 1925 to 1945; 3) a formation of a permanent industrialized workforce in a situation

of complete dependency from 1945 to 1973 (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). Once the process of

proletarianization was completed in the 1970’s, rural communities that used to rely on

subsistence farming in the Andes were fully transformed into an industrialized proletariat who

had to sell their labor in mines in exchange for wages. The dependency of the local community

on the mining industry was thus successfully engineered by dispossessing peasants from their

land and social relations. Historicizing proletarianization in Central Peru proves to be essential in

understanding the current economic precarity in Nueva Morococha.

2.1 1902 – 1925: Peasantry as Temporary and Seasonal Workforce

In 1901, a new Código de Minería (Mining Code) was formulated to promote foreign

investment in mining in Peru. A year later, a group of North American industrialists and bankers

including J. P. Morgan formed a syndicate, the Cerro de Pasco Investment Co., to acquire mining

concessions throughout Peru. They targeted existing mines that were either broke or stagnant due

to technological difficulties. With ample capital and technological know-how skills, the strategy

worked, affording the possibility of exponential growth in Return on Investment (RoI). At that

time, the corporation mostly focused on well-known mining areas in the Central Andes: it

acquired 70% of the existing concessions and two coal mines in the department of Cerro de

Pasco at the beginning of its establishment. Meanwhile, it was interested in Morococha where

mining production was revitalized by the Pflücker family of German descent at the turn of the

nineteenth century. During that time, all mines in Morococha slowly ran into technical problems,

thus prompting CPC’s subsequent acquisition of all concession rights in Morococha (Kruijt and

Vellinga 1979, 44). With the financial and technical support of CPCP, Morococha gradually

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became an important place on the mining landscape in Central Peru: it had a great number of

small concessions by the mid nineteenth century and a smelter by the end of the nineteenth

century.

For a few decades after 1902, CPC recruited a large number of unskilled peasants for

Morococha using the enganche-system, an advance cash payment/loan to “hook” men from the

surrounding area into working in the mines (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979, 59). Most of the recruits

were peasants from the Mantaro Valley who sold their labor temporarily during off-harvest

months. Since farming still remained the foundation to their ways of living, connections to

communities and dependence on agricultural production were maintained and prioritized even as

they worked in the mines (Dewind 1975, 48). Mining production therefore adhered to

agricultural calendars and would slow down or even be temporarily suspended during harvest

seasons. According to research done by Flores (1974) and Bonilla (1974) on the

proletarianization of Morococha, there was an enormous turnover among miners and hardly

anyone would work for more than a few months. Given the extremely harsh working conditions

– shifts of 36 hours – and their economic dependence on traditional subsistence farming, it

makes sense that wage labor in mines rarely appeared enticing for peasants in the early 20th

century so the mining industry was always short on labor. Similarly, Long and Roberts (1984,

cited in Li 2015, 44) argued that wage labor only constituted a complement to small scale

agriculture.

2.2 1925 – 1945: Transitional Proletariat

Kruijt and Vellinga (1979) considered 1925 the beginning of the second stage of

proletarianization because by then, the processing center at La Oroya was completed by nearly

2,000 laborers hired under the enganche-system (Li 2015, 41), and mining operations in

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Morococha and Casapalca had moved into a more permanent phase (63). In the period between

1925 to 1945, a transitional proletariat emerged, which means workers would remain in the mine

for several years in a row and were likely to return for re-employment after taking time off. The

transitional proletariat developed with gradual mechanization and industrialization in the

Peruvian mining industry in the 1930’s. Consequently, demands for a stable and highly skilled

workforce surfaced. With the expectation of helping to stabilize mining production by breaking

ties with agricultural cycles. Cerro de Pasco Corporation made elaborate efforts to lure and

persuade future miners by building infrastructure such as housing units, schools and hospitals. In

addition to a higher wage, the corporation also put in place systems of bounties, a one-time sum

paid to encourage a transition from peasants to miners, and provided technical workshops to train

unskilled peasants. As of 1930, more than half of Morococha’s payroll were listed as former

CPC-worker, implying they had gone back to the mine for re-employment.

The demand for a more permanent workforce was partially fulfilled with higher wages

and better social welfare and partially by the commercialization of the peasant economy in the

1940s, a period when “reciprocal labor in the fields gave way to wage labor; subsistence

agriculture became increasingly supplanted by the planting of commercial crops; and artisan

goods were replaced by manufactures” (Dewind 1975, 55). In addition to commercial

agriculture, there was also division of land as a result of centuries of encroachment on communal

land by outsiders and ideas of inheritance brought by Spaniards (Ford 1955 cited in Dewind

1975). Division of land into minifundios, smallholdings, also forced peasants to seek more

permanent jobs in the mine because they could no longer be self-sufficient with a small plot of

land, especially so when the land was damaged by toxic smoke released from the smelter in La

Oroya.

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Smoke made of toxic matters such as lead, sulfur dioxide and arsenic did play a crucial

role in creating “a reservoir of unskilled labor for the mines” by “freeing” a substantial number

of peasants whose labor was firmly tied to land (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979; Ocampo 1972;

Bonilla 1974). The problem of smoke emerged first after the completion of a metallurgic

processing plant in La Oroya. Smoke from the smelter dispersed like “an invisible fire” (Muñiz

1935, 46). A toxic mix of lead, bismuth, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, and other contaminants, resulted

in catastrophic environmental problems including soil erosion, water contamination and air

pollution. Its material consequences were further manifested in health issues, crop failure, as well

as massive deaths of livestock, which resulted from inedible vegetation and direct poison.

According to Laite (1981, cited in Li 2015), in La Oroya, local representatives claimed that 278

cattle, 3,874 sheep and 200 mules and horses died from smoke poisoning. Within four years of

the smelter’s operation, adjacent communities of Huaynacanchas and Huari as well as hacienda

Quimilla were completely destroyed (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979, 47). Haciendas partnered up to

pursue legal actions against CPC (Laite 1981) while thirty communities brought claims against

the company for the smoke’s ecological and social damage on land and communities (Muñiz

1935). To settle these legal claims, by 1926, Cerro de Pasco Corporation had purchased 27

haciendas covering 1,047 square meters according to DeWind (1987), or around 30 haciendas

covering 1,057 square meters according to Dewind (1975). In addition, it paid compensation to

those who held communal properties: land offers to those who wished to continue an agricultural

lifestyle and monetary compensation for those who’d like to stay and work in the mines (Laite

1981 cited by Li 2015). It was estimated that with further purchases of small haciendas and the

consolidation of its property, CPC became owner of one of the largest latifundia (a large landed

estate) or hacidendas in Peruvian history. Therefore, non-human agents such as smoke were

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indispensable in facilitating CPC’s gradual land acquisition in Central Peru, which helped to

create a reservoir of unskilled and stable workforce.

Instead of perceiving the release of toxic smoke as an innocent corporate act with

unintended ecological and social consequences , many understood the conditions on which CPC

acquired land as something orchestrated deliberately or appropriated opportunistically by the

corporation to create a labor reserve, obtain cheap land, and/or reduce its operation cost through

agricultural production (DeWind 1987; Li 2015; Dewind 1975; Bonilla 1974). Some critics such

as Ocampo (1972) argued the desire to create a stable reserve of industrial wage labor, instead of

an unintended outcome of CPC’s land purchase following its lawsuit, was actually the driving

force, what Bonilla (1974) called a “curious mechanism of proletarianization.” Others believed

that the smoke was deliberately unfiltered before its release to devalue haciendas for CPC’s

already planned acquisition (see Dewind 1975, 57). Different from narratives of a complete

conspiracy, Li (2015) and Dewind (1975) provided much more nuanced explanations. Both

noted an insidious motivation lying behind CPC’s expansive land purchase. To put it simply,

when CPC noticed improvements of land quality after the forced installation of a small treatment

plant, the corporation took advantage of the opportunity presented by the smoke problem to

consciously acquire more land in order to develop its own agricultural production.

Not only did land acquisition help resolve legal claims against CPC, it also became

economically beneficial for the corporation. Harold Kingsmill, CPC’s then manager and the man

after whom the water treatment plant Chinalco built was named, delegitimized claims of toxic

smoke as “smoke farming” (DeWind 1987), meaning locals were taking advantage of the not so

serious smoke problem for monetary gain. However, the government-sponsored “Smoke

Commission” set up in 1923 ruled in favor of local communities and CPC was thus forced to

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build a small plant to treat and reduce its toxic emission (Li 2015, 43). Interestingly, the

involuntarily construction of the plant brought tremendous economic gains for CPC: not only

was the corporation able to reclaim commercially valuable metals by filtering its emission but it

also increased its land value since significant reduction in emission enabled CPC to engage in

agricultural production (Laite 1981; Li 2015). A División Ganadera (Ranch Division)25 of

roughly 500,000 hectares was formed by CPC to oversee its livestock and agricultural

production, which according to Li (2015, 44), “enabled the company to reap from its investment

(as) the food produced was sold to workers at a low cost, which in turn allowed to company to

maintain worker’s low wages.” According to Dewind’s (1975) calculation based on the 1969

annual report of the Administration Department of the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, the company

sold to its employees 1.1 million kilos of meat at 5 soles lower than the market price per year

from 1960 to 1965, amounting to 5.5 million soles saved every year, which the corporation used

to legitimize a 3% cut in labor cost. Therefore, knowing the plant’s ability to ameliorate damages

done previously and curb future ecologic devastation, instead of raising wages for miners who

could no longer rely on farming, CPC engaged in smoke-related land acquisition hoping to

develop its own agricultural production to provide essential products at prices lower than what

the market offered. This not only kept wages low, but also offered their justification for it.

Regardless of the real motivation behind CPC’s land acquisition, and whether the release of toxic

smoke was deliberate or not, the consequence on the ground was undebatable: a transition of

peasantry from seasonal miners to more permanent proletariats due to loss of access to arable

land.

25 Not just cattle were raised but also a popular breed of sheep called “Junín,” with yield higher amount of wool and

meat (Li 2015, 44; Dewind 1975).

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2.3 1945 – 1973: A Formation of a Permanent Industrialized Workforce

A combination of soaring demand for minerals during post WWII reconstruction and new

labor legislation kicked off the final stage of proletarianization (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). With

a transitional proletariat workforce established in the 1930’s and 1940’s, a completion of

proletarianization was achieved in the fifties. Since then, labor recruitment became effortless

with rural communities becoming a steady labor reservoir for CPC. Gradually, supply

outnumbered demand and certain criteria were put in place to select more skilled labor. For

example, according to Dewind (1975), ability to read and write Spanish became mandatory in

addition to spoken skills. Medical exams were the strictest and mandatory for hiring – those who

needed dental care or had lung problems were outright rejected. The problem CPC confronted

then was no longer labor recruitment but labor stabilization. Stabilization meant no longer

maintaining unskilled labor for only a few months or years, but rather retaining skilled labor for

decades. To accomplish that goal, CPC offered a cash bonus to those who participated in training

sessions; retirement bonuses and access to advance payment/loans were calculated based on

years of employment; holiday pay was instituted and welfare such as national health insurance

became mandatory. The development of stabilization mechanisms coincided with that of labor

legislation. With President Bustamante taking office in1945, Peruvian labor laws became more

favorable to miners: CPC could no longer dismiss miners without valid grounds. Meanwhile,

after 90 days’ trial, CPC had to offer permanent employment for workers along with medical

care and other essential benefits. Scholars have argued that additional expenditure on social

welfare and strict labor regulation stimulated waves of contracting temporary workers, which

proved to be quite simple given the existing pool of reserve labor from rural communities (Kruijt

and Vellinga 1979; Dewind 1975).

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The complete proletarianization transformed a rural peasantry that used to rely partially

or fully on non-market oriented subsistence farming to a permanent industrial workforce whose

livelihoods were solely dependent on wages and commercial consumption. Most had lost access

to land and those who still owned small pieces of farmland could no longer be self-sufficient

under subsistence agricultural production. Many had moved into mining camps where living

conditions were horrendous and had to spend their meager wages on higher-priced goods

provided through company stores. As class specific consciousness developed over time, miners

started to demand higher wages, safer working conditions and other improvements. The worker’s

union became the main platform for collective organizing and the Central Andes in Peru became

battlefields for proletariats to strike and protest.

2.4 1974 – 2008: From Cerro de Pasco to Chinalco

The period from 1974 to 2008 witnessed changes from the nationalization of Cerro de

Pasco Corporation to the subsequent privatization of the state-owned Centromin and finally to

the current phase of neoliberalization. Cerro de Pasco Corporation was nationalized by the

military junta of Velasco in 1974. The call to nationalize the three largest mining corporations in

Peru, all of North American origins, appeared first in 1971 during a union strike against CPC

(Dewind 1975, 45). The same year in 1971, a new mining law, Legislative Decree 18880, was

enacted to enhance the role of the State in extractive industries in hopes of making mining the

basis of Peru’s national economic development and industrialization. Centromin, owned by the

Peruvian state, was created accordingly to take over various mining concessions, including those

of Morococha. Under Centromin, Morococha remained active in mining exploitation using the

same underground tunnel mining of comparable scale. According to Victor Rual Ancienta,

mayor of Morococha from 1980 to 1983, a population of approximately 25,000 to 30,000 people

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resided in Morococha in the 1980’s and 1990’s. However, with rapid globalization and

neoliberal reform in Latin America, Centromin was one of the many underperformed sate-owned

companies to be privatized under Peru's sweeping privatization campaign which began when

then President Alberto Fujimori took office in 1990.

After Centromin was privatized, a few corporations became the main providers of mining

employment in Morococha. In addition to Volcán and Austria Duvaz of Peruvian origins, there

was Argentum, a subsidiary of Pan American Silver from Canada. The presence of multiple

competing corporations in town gave locals leverage to bargain for higher salary and better

welfare, thus generating a sense of security. Up until the arrival of Chinalco in 2008, mining in

Morococha still remained relatively small in scale as well as labor intensive. This is partly

because little was known about the geological composition of the region until more

comprehensive research was conducted to uncover its copper wealth by Peru Copper Inc. in

2003. This new “discovery” was a game changer. During the era of CPC, “…. ‘Labor’

constitutes a large share of the production costs and technological innovation plays a relatively

minor role” (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979, 78). However, technology would assume a crucial role

when the decision of open pit mining was made: the adoption of heavy, automated machines will

certainly be productive for mining operations, but it is also destructive for local communities

where a complete dependency had been engineered through processes of proletarianization and

dispossession. What this means is that Morococha residents have historically been made

dependent on mining operations to aid capitalist accumulation, and the switch to open-pit mine

will render their labor replaceable and surplus to capital and machines instead of essential, thus

resulting in another round of dispossession that continues to support capitalist accumulation that

is now at a new stage.

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3.Open Pit Mine: Technological Dispossession

Working in narrow underground tunnels, miners are subject to explosive toxic gas,

unbearable heat, lack of oxygen, long working hours and constant threats of cave-in. In

Morococha, fatalistic songs used to circulate. One went: “Morococha, cold ground with white

mountains, so much misery is hidden behind your winches and in your tunnels”26 (Morococha

cited by Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). Another: “Sorrow and signs are mine, you will consume me,

bleak Morococha”27 (Tristezas cited by Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). Kruijt and Vellinga describe

the harsh working conditions (1979, 74):

…(in underground tunnels) the workers descend to a certain level, 100,

200, 400 meters, in a cage which is open on all sides…The worker is usually half

naked or completely so, standing in water…(in San Cristóbal) the men ascend

(after working underground) in an elevator to a (ground level) height of about

5500 meters, where in the outside air among the glacier-ice they work in silence,

chewing their coca.

By comparison, the switch from underground tunnel mining to open-pit surface mining

seemed to be an improvement on workers’ safety, all but eliminating the physical demands of

working underground. Open pit mining offered other advantages in efficiency and productivity,

as well as lower operation costs by replacing workers with machinery (Center for Energy,

Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at University of Dundee). Free from the constraint of

working underground, machines could move more ore at a faster speed than people working

underground, accelerating production rate at a lower cost per ton ore deposit. Labor done by

mining company employees was replaced by contractors who often owned their own trucks,

shovels, and loaders according to their area of specialty. The Toromocho mine is the world’s

second largest pre-production copper project measured by proved and probable copper ore

26 Morococha, tierra fria / de Nevada cordillera / cuántas penas ay’ escondes / en las winchas y tajeos

27 Penas y suspiros son mis alimentos / me vas consumiendo Morococha helada.

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reserves, and the third largest pre-production copper project by average planned annual

production between 2012 and 2020 (Chinalco Mining Corporation International). Given its scale,

open-pit mining will guarantee investors maximized profit return in the shortest time.

Open-pit mining is one of the prime examples of a rapid transformation caused by

automation, technologies based on computational algorithms and artificial intelligence. With

advantages such as lower operation/production cost, improved efficiency and safer working

conditions, automation technologies are preferred and adopted across industries, driving the

unemployment rate to historical highs in manufacturing, mining and tertiary service sector.

While a drastic decrease in labor demand in open-pit mines is economically rational based on a

profit-driven calculation, I argue its impact is geographically and historically specific. In the case

of Nueva Morococha, an upgrade to open-pit mining has more devastating consequences given

its structural dependence on mining developed through processes of proletarianization. In other

words, Nueva Morococha and its residents are disproportionately hurt in the face of automation

as the open-pit project will wreak havoc on the entire town instead of just a few families. The

upgrade to open pit mining will not only lead to a spatial dispossession with the complete

destruction of Antigua Morococha and its social relations (see Chapter 3), but also dispossession

of labor. Residents of Nueva Morococha are rendered replaceable by and surplus to machines, as

cheap, flexible, and disposable labor which under the expansive (sub)contracting system can be

further exploited for neoliberal capitalist accumulation.

3.1 Dwindling Employment

A rapid and expansive adoption of machinery for open-pit mining will inevitably impact

mining employment. The demand for labor, already lowered by a transition to more machine-

based operations, will be further curtailed due to mining related technological advancement in

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automation and artificial intelligence. According to a report co-published by International

Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) and Columbia Center on Sustainable Development

in 2016, the mining industry will expedite its application of automated technologies in the next

10 to 15 years, which will have devastating impacts on mining employment. The same report

predicts that “Automation will reduce the number of operational jobs in areas such as drilling,

blasting, and train and truck driving—areas that typically constitute over 70 per cent of

employment in mines” (Cosbey et al. 2016, vi). Similarly, McNab et al. (2013) suggest a

reduction of workface of a typical open-cut, iron-ore mine to be approximately 30 to 40 per cent

by introducing fully automated equipment.

The reduction in number of employees due to automation is not a new phenomenon in the

21st century, and its manifestation in Nueva Morococha is no different with former proletariats

replaced by machines. Indeed, Nash (1993) had already observed the unfolding of technological

dispossession almost half a century ago in the Bolivian time mines. In Bolivia, Nash describes

how in the 70’s, loans from the Interamerican Development Bank were used to reorganize tin

mines in Bolivia by privatizing and mechanizing the state-owned mines. As a result, several

hundred women lost their employment to machines. That being said, a distinction is worth

making for Nueva Morococha in the face of one of the largest copper mines in the world: the

scale and intensity of unemployment are unprecedented given the region’s historical context of

proletarianization and its structural dependence on mining. A sharp drop in labor demand from

the Toromocho project thus inevitably produces a pool of reserved labor whose past knowledge

and skills were undervalued and delegitimized for further exploitation under (sub)contracting

systems, a theme the following subsection will address. In the backdrop of all of this precarity,

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Chinalco strategically emphasizes employment rather than unemployment and depicts racialized

local people as greedy, ungrateful and irrational beneficiaries of “development.”

When people left for Nueva Morococha, they took with them the tangible essentials such

as furniture, kitchen appliances, and clothing. They also carried memories of their childhood,

stories of the neighborhood, cultures and life in Antigua Morococha, a place that is about to be

consumed entirely by the mine. Therefore, although the new town was designed and built to be

modern and urban, nothing like the “backward” and “underdeveloped” Antigua Morococha, it is

unsurprising that local residents still perceive it as a mining town and maintain a proud mining

identity. This is also evident in Nueva Morococha’s emblem: a combination of a piece of copper

and a hard hat with searchlight in the front, signifying histories of underground tunnel mining

when light was essential. Beyond the emblem’s symbolic, affective attachment to mining,

inhabitants face a real and urgent need for wage labor in the mines in order to live in the newly

created town. Work in the mines is all that they know, with experiences that only partially adapt

to the new labor built around (sub)contracting. Their affective ties to mining are the same ones

captured by Chinalco with grand promises of employment to expedite the resettlement project.

Resettled families’ expectations of wages, working conditions, and health care moved with them,

along with their memories to the new town, drawn around the spectacular rise of the Toromocho

project. All interviewees for this study recall promises of direct payroll jobs made by either

Social Capital Group or Chinalco. Meanwhile, all of them complained that they were just “empty

words” and “lies.” It is true that despite a prosperous post-resettlement pledged by Chinalco, the

outcome is obvious with open-pit mining – many residents lost stable employment when they

were moved to Nueva Morococha. While some managed to secure new jobs, they were only

hired as temporary workers on short-term contracts in construction or securitization. Pay was

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minimal and welfare benefits negligible. An opposite trend emerges here. Instead of encouraging

workers to remain longer in mines, as with CPC’s stabilization effort in the 20th century,

Chinalco has no intention of retaining an unskilled workforce in the face of open pit

development.

Alvaro Barrenechea Chavez is the Corporate Affairs Manager for Chinalco. According to

him, as of June 2019, there were roughly 1,167 people either contracted directly by Chinalco or

subcontracted by its contractors from the project’s direct and indirect influence areas, including

Nueva Morococha, Yauli, La Oroya and other adjacent towns. Among them, 750 were said to

come from Nueva Morococha. When asked how many of the 750 were under Chinalco’s payroll

through direct employment, Alvaro did not share further information. Therefore, it was quite

possible that many worked as short-term subcontractors under precarious conditions. As of 2019,

there were 3834 living in Nueva Morococha28, of which 2,581 were between the age of 20 to 64

(Nueva Morococha Clinic 2019). Even if we assume every one of the 750 employees Alvaro

mentioned were directly contracted under long-term conditions, that was still less than a 30%

employment rate. Chinalco frames the problem not as the number of jobs it could offer, but

rather as the greedy, insatiable nature of local people as individuals. After showing me the

employment numbers generated by Chinalco, Alvaro expressed his concern that even if more

jobs were provided, local people would keep asking, because

…the problem is that they feel they deserve more. I don't think it is

rational because they are much better off than in the old days. For example, there

is a person, her name is Rita Vicuna… She used to have a very small restaurant

with two tables (in the old town) and now she has 7 trucks, SEVEN! They provide

services to Chinalco and mining companies…She's very successful and she still

complains that Chicago does not comply with these commitments (of providing

jobs to everyone and other communal needs)

28 The population of Antigua Morococha was roughly 5,000 before resettlement.

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What Alvaro did not realize, or did not say, was that an individual’s success does not

correspond to collective welfare. While it might be true that Rita was doing better economically,

her complaints against Chinalco went beyond personal gain to collective care, a culture that was

persistent in Morococha with close communal ties and strong waves of unionization throughout

its history. What is obvious here is an unjust depiction that turns concerned citizens to ungrateful

beneficiaries of development brought by Chinalco. The tendency to mistreat, even dehumanize

local residents also speaks to the overall argument that for Chinalco, locals only hold economic

value in their flexible and disposable bodies, not their qualitative humanity.

An upgrade to open pit mining coupled with automation innovations already render local

residents vulnerable to a slumping demand for labor in the Toromocho project. The intensity and

scale of this devastation are exacerbated by the town’s mining foundation and its history of

proletarianization. Mining monopolized all aspects of the economy in Antigua Morococha for

the twentieth century. A resource-based single industrial structure made local people overtly

reliant on mining operations, both directly and indirectly. A mining centered economic structure

subjugates people of the entire town, not just a few families, to threats of market crash, economic

restructuring or industrial upgrade related to technological advancement. What this means is if

Antigua Morococha had a more diversified economic structure in which residents also worked in

manufacturing, advertising or other industries, the upgrade to open-pit mining would not have

been this calamitous because a portion of the population would be able to sustain their

livelihoods.29 In other words, the nature of Antigua Morococha as a mining camp renders its

residents vulnerable to open pit mine – both on individual level and on the municipality scale.

This is by no means to blame the town’s history or residents themselves for the suffering. As I

29 However, considering the political economy of mining for Peru and specifically for the Central Andes, a more

diversified and balanced economy seems to be hard to reach.

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have shown with the history of proletarianization in Central Peru, dependency of Antigua

Morococha on mining was forcefully engineered by means of land acquisition and systems of

labor stabilization. With previous dispossession from their ways of living on subsistence

agriculture, their social relations and their land, residents of Morococha are already living

precariously as wage labor. Besides, a lack of strong state presence in mining communities in

Peru is worth interrogating. Whereas some residents feel that the state has lost its control to

foreign capital, others believe the state collaborates with foreign corporations to prioritize

national interests instead of local needs. Instead of confronting the difficulty of unemployment

and ameliorating its negative impacts, Chinalco eschewed its responsibility by blaming local

people as ungrateful, greedy and irrational beings that kept asking and were never satisfied.

Meanwhile, knowing the nature of open-pit mining and its scarce demand for labor, it

deliberately deceived local people with job prospects to accelerate its resettlement project so as

to kick off the operation, a blunt accumulation by dispossession!

3.2 (Sub)contracting System

Systems of (sub)contracting30 are common in mining. The enganche system can be

understood as the earliest form of contracting. It used advance payment or loan to recruit, or

force if they could not repay on time, peasants to work in mines. Indeed, the name enganchador

for a labor recruiter was then replaced by contratista, contractor (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979, 64).

With a quite successful process of proletarianization in Central Peru, the increasingly more

expensive enganche system gradually lost its attraction in the 40’s (Dewind 1975). New

contracting networks were then developed partly in response to the 1945 Peruvian labor

30 Contract is established directly with Chinalco. Contractors are often well-established companies providing

specific services for the mining industry. Subcontracting work refers to jobs provided by Chinalco’s contractor.

They are often short-term and underpaid.

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legislation which required permanent employment after a 90-day trial period as well as sound

social welfare packages for miners and their families. These new laws not only implied

additional costs for currently employed miners but also entailed unexpected future expenditure

on additional housing, education and health care. By contracting short-term laborers, mining

corporations would save substantially. First off, payments for contractors were usually lower and

there is no need to worry about providing housing or other benefits. In addition, with less

permanent labor, potential labor unrest could be minimized and smooth production in mines

could be thus secured. As previously mentioned, industrialization and mechanization of mining

began in the 1930’s in Peru, requiring skilled labor and special equipment even though

operations remained labor-intensive. Some services and machines would only be used for a short

period of time, therefore, contracting proved to be more cost efficient.

The trend of (sub)contracting intensified exponentially when Chinalco switched to open-

pit mining as it demands highly specialized services and machineries. Consequences of this

intensification are acute for the existing pool of reserved labor first formed through the historical

process of proletarianization in the twentieth century and then enlarged due to the sharp

reduction in stable employment a result of an open pit. What waits ahead are cruel exploitation

when their labor is needed as well as ruthless abandonment and endless waiting when no longer

desirable. The town is then turned into a reservoir of cheap, flexible labor, whom Chinalco and

its contractors can hire and dispose at will to extract to their fullest. In a nutshell, no matter what

form the (sub)contracting system takes and is named, it functions under similar logics to offload

mining companies’ responsibility and to assist accumulation of wealth through exploitation.

Although subcontracting existed in Antigua Morococha with underground tunnel mining,

automation and the transition to open pit mine enlarged the already existing (sub)contracting

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networks under neoliberal capitalism in Nueva Morococha, which lead to dispossessions of labor

manifested in labor flexibilization and disposability. A few interdependent features deserve

attention here. The most pronounced feature of (sub)contracting is its temporality with contracts

ranging from an average of a few months to one to two years. Short-term contractors are also

paid less with no guaranteed social benefits such as health insurance. In addition, availability of

subcontract work depends on specific needs from the mine and its operation. Therefore, it is

highly unpredictable in nature and relies on the flexibilization of workers. Lastly, subcontracting

work often requires fewer professional skills and/or experiences – one justification for lower

wage – and workers have to constantly adapt to different projects and working environments

from construction to transportation to maintenance.

The project director of the resettlement at Social Capital Group, Bill Flores, provided an

excellent example of the temporality of subcontracting work. Bill started working on this project

with Peru Copper Inc. back in 2005, long before Chinalco’s acquisition of Toromocho. With a

college degree in communications from Huancayo, he had ample experience working with

various stakeholders such as the municipality, governments at different levels and local

communities. For Bill, it was more than common to hire contractors, who then go out to

subcontract locals, to perform specific projects for a short period, such as road construction from

May to August or plant maintenance from February to April. While duties performed by

mechanical engineers or heavy mining truck drivers were essential for the mine’s daily

operation, road construction or plant maintenance were only needed once in a while and thus not

worth long-term investments. The temporality of contracting projects also helps explain

fluctuations in labor demand. For example, according to Bill, 12,000 people were employed

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during the construction of Nueva Morococha and the Toromocho mine. The number drastically

decreased after the completion of the new town in 2012 and the mine’s operation in 2013.

Chinalco’s own statistics also reflect fluctuations in subcontracting work. Between

September and November in 2018, 384 people from the project’s direct and indirect influence

areas, worked as subcontractors for 30 of Chinalco’s contractors. With the project’s expansion

from January 1 to May 1, 2019, 42 contractors hired a total of 1524 workers, nearly a 4-fold

increase. One new contractor Chinalco hired is China Communications Construction Company

(CCCC).31 CCCC started its operation in May 2019 to build a construction plant for Chinalco.

According to Alvarez Pérez, a restaurant owner who provides food services to Chinalco’s

contractors, the number of CCCC subcontractors increased from 60 in the beginning of May, to

100 in two weeks and eventually reached 160 in a month by mid-June. Besides his restaurant,

there were two more in town that served CCCC workers. Alvarez’s restaurant had two contracts

with CCCC. The first one started on May 15th, 2019, when the construction started off, and

lasted for a month until June 18th. He then drafted and signed a new contract with CCCC which

would last for half a year until December 18th, expecting an influx of workers in the near future.

Although numbers provided by Alvarez varied slightly compared to the official statistics, they

both tell a similar story which points at the fluctuations in employment in town. Another

interesting fluctuation worth attention to was the change in contractors themselves. According to

the same statistics provided by Chinalco, from September to November 2018, 30 companies

were providing services for Chinalco’s operations. That number went up to 42 from January to

May 2019. However, a closer look at the companies revealed that only 16 out 30 companies were

31 According to Diálogo Chino (June 2020), CCCC is currently has over 50 large-scale contracts across Latin

America, including the Bogotá subway system, the Maya Train in Mexico, the São Luís Port in Brazil, the

expansion of French Guyana’s international airport, Jamaica's North-South Highway, and a bridge across the

Panama Canal, among dozens of others.

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kept, a reduction of nearly half. In other words, 14 companies contracted by Chinalco from

September to November 2018 either got replaced by other firms or their services were no longer

needed in the mine. Consequently, one could argue, like those who live a precarious life as wage

laborers, contractors, while they seem to have more agency and capital, are also subjugated to

capitalist exploitation under the highly unpredictable (sub)contracting system.

Figure 8 Numbers of subcontractors hired by Chinalco’s contractors in the project’s direct and indirect influence

areas, July 2019

Chinalco’s Corporate Affairs Manager, Alvaro, not only presented similar reasoning for

contracting and subcontracting work, he also critiqued the popular understanding, or

misunderstanding, according to him, of (sub)contracting work as short term and thus temporary

with fluctuating workforce. “…the basis is that we are a mining company…not a project

company…not a construction company…not a catering company. We use those services

regularly, along the life of the mine (which was estimated to be 36 years). So this is not short

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term.” Since economical contracting services were essential to mining operations and profit

maximization, the system of contracting and subcontracting was obviously stable and long-term

from the perspective of Chinalco. For Alvaro, there existed a mutually beneficial co-existence

between Chinalco and its contractors, which would ultimately benefit hundreds of subcontracted

workers. While one might find his justification convincing at first glance, it would prove to be

untenable when scaled down to the individual level. Whereas for Chinalco, contractor services

were indispensable and thus always required, individuals who worked as subcontractors could

never help but worry about their next job as they were expendable. In other words, the common

phenomenon of waiting for jobs in Nueva Morococha is not a one-time event but rather a

recurring state of being for many who live a precariously dispossessed life under

(sub)contracting systems. Alvaro’s understanding of (sub)contracting, situated on a macro

corporate scale, forcefully demonstrated his negligence, if not ignorance, over the ways in which

individuals’ lives were structurally rendered precarious.

Availability of temporary (sub)contracting work is highly erratic as it depends on specific

needs from the mine which can be quite unpredictable. Therefore, flexibilization of workers

becomes essential for stable operations in mine to further capitalist accumulation. Mandatory yet

highly uncertain, waiting is a form of labor flexibilization. In many ways, it has become a norm

for many young men in Nueva Morococha. The phenomenon of waiting demonstrates ways in

which local livelihoods are structured into webs of capital accumulation. Seemingly peaceful at

glance, waiting is extremely violent because one is exploited by capital by the mere act of

waiting. The whole process of getting employed in the subcontracting system usually takes up to

two weeks but can be months given the unpredictable nature of subcontracting work that depends

on flexible and desperate workers. Not only do they have to wait, they also have to be physically

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present for each step because subcontracting work is often short-term and demands immediate

start. This requirement not only disciplines the to-be-employed young men but also puts them

into a precarious situation because instead of earning money, they have to spend savings on

meals and other necessities for basic survival while waiting. Those from nearby cities even have

to pay for lodging and/or transportation while enduring being away from families for an

uncertain period of time. In addition, the process of waiting makes it difficult for these young

men to look for other employment since they were physically trapped in Nueva Morococha. In

the end, waiting itself is social reproduction (in the sense that it preserves/sustains labor) and

waiting is also for social reproduction. One is exploited while waiting and one will be exploited

in mines when the waiting ends.

The formation of a pool of reserved cheap labor can be argued to be both intentional and

unintentional at the same time. It is unintentional or inevitable when unemployment is

understood through the lens of technological advancements. However, it can also be interpreted

as an intentional move when almost only (sub)contracting work is made available to local

people. By making stable payroll jobs unavailable to locals, Chinalco demonstrates its

underestimation of and disbelief in local capacity/eligibility to perform certain tasks. It renders

local ways of knowing and doing worthless to deliberately form a pool of reserved cheap labor

for future exploitation through (sub)contracting dispossession.

Chinalco has stable long-term contractors whose services are indispensable for the mine’s

daily operation, as well as short-term contractors who work on temporary projects. While its

long-term contractors also tend to have more permanent employees for stability, the short-term

contractors prefer subcontracting local workers to offload cost by avoiding employment benefits

required by the state. Depending on the company and the kind of job one is seeking in this

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expansive assemblage of contracting and subcontracting, the process differs drastically. Those

who are seeking jobs in Nueva Morococha mostly, if not only, have access to the most

exploitative and insecure employment opportunities. These jobs are often posted on the

information board outside of the Community Relations office in Nueva Morococha. However, to

work directly with Chinalco, one has to apply online through its official portal since it is where

most, if not all, Chinalco employment opportunities are announced. It is also possible to find a

few job vacancies posted by Chinalco’s contractors on the website. One commonality of jobs

posted on Chinalco’s official website is that those positions require high levels of training and

years of experience. In other words, job vacancies published on Chinalco’s website are specific

ones that cater to the highly educated community in metropolitan Lima and other major cities.

Those posted outside of Chinalco’s office in Nueva Morococha exclusively target less skilled

and underqualified workers with temporary contracts. While direct postings in town makes

employment more accessible and the application process more convenient, one could argue the

spatial difference of job postings revealed Chinalco’s disbelief in local Morocochans’ capacity to

work in the mine as skilled labors, or its intention to exploit them as cheap, flexible and

disposable labor.

From January to March 2020 there were 11 employment opportunities published on

Chinalco’s official website. Among them, 7 were directly with Chinalco, and 4 with its

contractors. Specifically, Chinalco was hiring 1 Electrical Technician, 1 Dispatch Administration

Analyst, 3 Mining Truck Operators, 1 Senior Mechanical Construction Engineer and 1

Metallurgical Engineer; its contractors were looking for 1 Mine lubricator truck operator (SKF of

Peru), 1 Laboratory Analyst (SGS of Peru), 1 Cargo Operator (Exsa SA) and one Junior Help

Desk Support staff (CANVIA). Although employment information can also be found at

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Chinalco’s Community Relations office in Nueva Morococha, none of the above 11 jobs were

posted there. These jobs require specific training in highly technical fields, years of experience,

and sometimes conversational English. Meanwhile, when I visited Chinalco’s office in Nueva

Morococha back in July 2019, there were six job announcements posted by four different

contractors: ICSK -COSAPI, SODEXO, ADDES PERU and HAUG SA. ICSK -COSAPI,

or Ingeniería y Construcción Sigdo Koppers SA (ICSK), at that time was looking to hire 20

workers with positions ranging from mounting officer to assembly operator, from minibus

drivers to assistant of general services. It specifically stated that for the 5 minibus drivers and 5

van drivers, 3 years of experiences with zero accident rate was required. HUAG SA, on the other

hand, was looking to employ 85 people for 8 different types of work. There was an evident

contrast between the types of job posted on Chinalco’s official website and Nueva Morococha’s

job board: while one required technical training and professional experience, the other asked for

fewer skills. They also differed drastically in demand. Chinalco posted 11 payroll openings in

two months and the job board had over 100 temporary subcontract positions in less than two

weeks. By making solely subcontracting work accessible to the local community, Chinalco and

some of its contractors already predetermined locals’ capacity to perform certain tasks in mines.

What has been transformed along with the transition to open pit mining are also corporations’

calculation system and evaluation standards. Obviously, for Chinalco and its contractors, Nueva

Morococha and other impacted areas serve as a reservoir of cheap, flexible labor, whom they can

hire and dispose at will to extract to their fullest.

Chinalco’s rationalization and justification for (sub)contracting, its unpredictable nature

which required flexibilization of labor, as well as the spatialization of job announcements

together demonstrate forcefully that on top of a harsh reduction in employment opportunities and

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the formation of the labor reserve, local people are further exploited by capitalism through

(sub)contracting. In the process of capitalist accumulation, their labor and bodies are seen as

disposable and replaceable at any time. However, similar to Nash’s (1993) observation in the

Bolivian tin mine, a sense of exploitation by mining corporations coexists along with residents’

awareness of their complete dependence on the job as the only means of making a living.

During the initial stage of proletarianization in Central Peru, seasonal work was preferred

by peasants who saw wage labor in mines as an additional contribution to a farming-based

livelihood instead of essential for survival. Although underpaid and temporary, the work was

predictable as they would only leave for mines when no labor was needed for harvest. Since their

lives were never solely dependent on wages, they always had the ability to return to their

farmland and communities. It almost seems that the current situation of (sub)contracting partly

resembles the seasonal work performed by peasants in the 20’s and 30’s in its temporariness.

However, for locals of Nueva Morococha, rather than voluntarily choosing this way of life, they

were forced into this precarious situation of dependency with no other alternatives.

4. From Structural Dependency to Corporate Social Responsibility

Structural dependency was necessary for the Cerro de Pasco Corporation to stabilize its

workforce and safeguard the labor-intensive mining operations. However, the historically

produced dependency of miners on mining corporations has now become an obstacle for

Chinalco to maximize its profit. This is largely because Chinalco, after switching to open-pit

mining, demands fewer employees with more professional skills, implying that most of its

workers no longer come from nearby towns or villages but are from places outside of Morococha

such as Lima and Huancayo. Since these cities are better equipped with public services such as

education and health care, families are unlikely to move all the way to Central Peru. Plus, with

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contemporary mining practices adopting new labor management (depending on their rank,

workers often work consecutively for two/three weeks and get a week off), miners live in mining

camps when they are working and leave for home when they are on vacation. Therefore, it’s

unnecessary for Chinalco itself to provide comprehensive services in Nueva Morococha, as CPC

did in the past, to stabilize and maintain its workforce.32

However, due to the lasting legacy of structural dependency, many employees and

(sub)contracted workers from nearby regions still remember the days when mining corporations

were in charge of every aspect of their lives and thus consider Chinalco an obligated provider.

Because it is no longer cost efficient to maintain structural dependency, Chinalco slowly

reformulated and rebranded the previously expansive corporate benefits into limited Corporate

Social Responsibility (CSR), now presented as an additional benevolent contribution instead of a

mining corporation’s obligations to its workers. This transition to CSR did not take place in a

vacuum but reflected a general trend of the mining industry under an increasingly neoliberal Peru

where Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is encouraged by the government as a symbol of

social justice (Gonzalez-Vicente 2013). Whereas some scholars conceive CSR as a tool to

manage mining related social and environmental conflicts through concepts such as local

participation and transparency (see Li 2015, 2016 and Gamu and Dauvergne 2019), in the case of

Chinalco and Nueva Morococha, I argue that Corporate Social Responsibility functions more as

a tool to slowly undo the historically produced structural dependency. This is achieved by

selectively continuing some of the previously established services while terminating others,

overall an attempt to persuade local residents that Chinalco still contributes to local development.

32 This does not mean Chinalco no longer provides any benefits to its employees. In fact, Chinalco employees

receive great social welfare packages in terms of insurance, health care and technical trainings. But the difference is

while these services used to be provided through company-owned institutions in the mining area (to cater to its

localized workforce), now they are subcontracted to well-established private businesses in Lima or Huancayo.

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“Dependency” as used in this chapter refers to an expansive system of control and

particular ways of living. Back in the days of the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, Kruijt and

Vellinga (1979, 69) saw the company as a totalizing force because miners and their families were

wholly dependent on CPC from “income, recreation, education, housing, transport, nourishment,

communication and contact with the outside world.” According to Kruijt and Vellinga (1979, 68-

77), CPC workers lived in concentrated mining camps, travelled to mines in CPC vehicles on

CPC owned roads, dined at CPC restaurants, shopped at CPC stores and consumed food

produced on CPC farms. Their children were entitled to free education in CPC schools and their

immediate family and even other dependents were eligible for medical care and life insurance.

Cerro de Pasco Corporation had company hospitals in La Oroya with emergency rooms and first

aid posts in each encampment. Their medical teams were even specialized in treating

occupational diseases related to mining such as scoliosis. Overall, there was a full-fledged

dependency of miners and their families on CPC in every single aspect of their life. Although

Kruijt and Vellinga (1979) were describing CPC operations in general and it is hard to know how

much of that applies to Morococha, based on interviews conducted with locals, it seems true that

provisions by mining corporations, even those after CPC, played a significant role in their daily

lives. This is not a unique case, however. In fact, mining corporations often take on roles of

primary providers of public services, employment, and other essential necessities for their

employees and sometimes even for nearby towns. This is especially true in countries where

extractive industry is the pillar of national economy, such as Peru and many other Latin

American countries. As demonstrated earlier, the Cerro de Pasco Corporation used these benefits

to stabilize its workforce as well as attract future employees.

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The long-established structural dependency was slowly transformed with Chinalco’s

arrival in 2008: contrary to mining corporations’ comprehensive supplies of services to families

in Antigua Morococha, Chinalco only acted as “a strategic partner of the state” in the new town

(Interviews with Chinalco staff 2019). After Chinalco had financed the design and construction

of Nueva Morococha, the corporation swiftly transferred property titles to each household and

the local municipality. In Nueva Morococha, Chinalco owns no company stores nor mining

camps and various local ministries are in charge of health, education and other public affairs.

During interviews conducted with Chinalco staff in both Nueva Morococha and Lima, they all

presented Chinalco as a partner willing to work with the Peruvian state but simultaneously

stressed and distinguished its role as a private corporation.

This message was delivered clearly by Alberto Ortega, a staff member of Chinalco’s

community relations branch stationed in Nueva Morococha. With a degree in Law, Alberto

started his career in 2008 working for Vargas Pareja Abogados & Consultores,33 a Peruvian law

firm hired by Chinalco to acquire legal property titles in Antigua Morococha. When the

resettlement process officially began in 2012, he was retained and incorporated into Chinalco’s

community relations office. According to him, Chinalco mainly contributed to local development

through its corporate social responsibility initiative. The corporation focuses on four fields of

action: education, health, productive development, and strengthening of social organizations. In

the case of health and education, it collaborates with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of

Education by providing financial support and logistical collaborations. Chinalco also offers

33Vargas Pareja Abogados & Consultores is a legal firm based in Lima, Peru. Its clients include mining giants such

as Volcan, Antamina, Rio Tinto and Chinalco. It is quite common to find the same contractors for large mining

company operating across Peru and in Latin America. Although each mining company might have different origins

of investment (nationality of capital), they all contract the same construction companies, legal firms, consulting

agencies and so on. I call this a chain of knowledge production of the natural resource complex. In other words, the

way mining operations carry out has less to do with where the capital is from than already the established industry

standards.

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scholarships to local students and training workshops. When it comes to productive development

and social organizations, Chinalco provides free vaccinations for livestock and tries to increase

local income through commerce, trade, and leadership workshops. During our interview, Alberto

kept emphasizing that Chinalco worked with local authorities but did not act on behalf of the

government. Quite the opposite, the corporation tried to distance itself from the town’s

management. According to Alvaro, Chinalco was expecting to slowly hand over its water

management to the local municipality to reduce its operational cost in response to the

corporation’s internal audit.

Parts of the interviews with Alberto and Alvaro reminded me of the conversation I had

with Alan Dabbs, CEO of Social Capital Group. All of them had emphasized the importance as

well as the difficulty of “managing community expectations,” especially that of a mining

community (Interview with Alan Dabbs 2019). For them, Chinalco as a wealthy transnational

mining corporation meant there would be more “unreasonable” expectations from a community

that capitalized on the opportunity of foreign investment. Therefore, the key for Chinalco is to be

clear with the community that “there is a limit in what a private company can do for them.”

(Interview with Alan Dabbs July 2019). Moreover, he stressed the importance of framing

Chinalco’s contribution to the local community as additional benevolent gifts from a socially

responsible corporation rather than something that workers automatically deserve.

The transition from structural dependency to the framework of Corporate Social

Responsibility under Chinalco is not uncommon when contextualized in Peru where the

neoliberal state advocated for it as a framework of social justice (Gonzalez-Vicente 2013; Li

2015; Gamu and Dauvergne 2019). However, the adoption of CSR does not necessarily mean a

complete break from structural dependency for all mining corporations. For example, in 1992, an

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executive decree was passed to demand Shougang to transfer its water and electricity control to

the local municipality of Marcona in the Ica Department. However, sixteen years later in 2008,

the corporation still controlled local supplies of water and electricity and owned most of its land,

leading Rosales, then mayor of Marcona, to call the town “a Chinese colony” (Gonzalez-Vicente

2013). In other words, structural dependency still remains important for mining corporations that

rely on labor-intensive operations or recruit most of their workforces from nearby regions.

Li (2015) and Gamu and Dauvergne (2019) theorize Corporate Social Responsibility as a

management mechanism that emerged in response to mining related social and environmental

conflicts under a neoliberal model of extraction. The discourse of Corporate Social

Responsibility advocates operational transparency, public participation, prior consultation and

environmental monitoring as solutions to mining related conflicts. For Li (2015), these

recommendations can be attributed to a list of commonly identified causes behind mining

conflicts, such as a lack of transparency and local participation, weak environmental regulations

and enforcement, and inadequate processes of consultation. However, she is skeptical about CSR

and distinguishes responsibility from accountability. Li (2015) defines accountability as

“corporate obligations to answer to both citizens and the state” and responsibility as a

noncompulsory initiative. She argues that through ideas of participation and transparency, CSR

incorporates citizens, state institutions and NGOs into “participatory forms of environmental

monitoring, management and audit,” thus offloading its accountability (187). Similarly, Gamu

and Dauvergne (2019) argue that the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility is deeply

embedded in legitimizing the violence of capitalism instead of transforming the destructive

system of extraction by addressing its root cause. They understand CSR as “a central pillar of the

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counter-mobilization infrastructure of the global mining industry” (959), functioning as a tool to

manage social conflicts.

Although both arguments of Li (2015) and Gamu and Dauvergne (2019) are productive

to understand what the discourse of CSR actually does on the ground, they do not explain well

the case of a pro-mining Nueva Morococha where social and environmental conflicts are much

more subtle and manifested in different forms. Given the region’s long-established history of

mining and structural dependency, I argue that Corporate Social Responsibility adopted by

Chinalco serve quite different interests than managing social conflicts. Specifically, Chinalco’s

framing of its selectively preserved services as Corporate Social Responsibility is beneficial in

three ways: 1) it saves a tremendous amount of operational costs by rejecting its role as a

primary provider in Nueva Morococha; 2) it cultivates an image of a socially responsible

corporation that cares about local development, and 3) it avoids a sudden and complete break

from structural dependency of the past to prevent potential social conflicts. Overall, assuming the

role of “a strategic partner of the state” under the discourse of Corporate Social Responsibility

allows Chinalco to rationalize and legitimize its decreasing involvement and contribution to the

community of Nueva Morococha.

5.Conclusion

This chapter has charted two processes of dispossession. First is the historical

dispossession of land that unfolded gradually over the twentieth century but with roots that can

be traced back to Spanish colonialism and imperialism. This process was facilitated by

transforming self-sufficient subsistence farmers into wage laborers dependent on the mining

industry. The creation of a reserved pool of industrial proletariat was crucial for capitalist

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accumulation, especially back then when mines weren’t highly mechanized and thus were in

high demand of labor. However, as capitalist development was sustained, expanded and renewed

with constant technological innovations, spatial fixes, and times of crises, a reformulated form of

dispossession emerged in Morococha when Chinalco proceeded with open pit mining in 2008.

This led to technological dispossession of both labor and land. Since the previous chapter already

detailed the spatial destruction of Antigua Morococha and its social relations, this chapter

focused more on the ways in which wage labor is rendered replaceable by machines or made

“surplus” to capital. The already existing pool of reserved labor, created historically as a result of

proletarianization, is now further exploited as flexible and disposable cheap labor under the

expansive (sub)contracting system. Wage labor, initially created to turn raw materials into

profitable commodities by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, is no longer desirable for Chinalco

due to its cost inefficiency in the age of highly automated machines. Hence, wage labor is now

more of a curse than a blessing.

Although these two periods of dispossession were examined separately for analytical

clarity, they are in fact recursive and interdependent processes. For example, land was

dispossessed during both periods, though in slightly different ways and for different purposes.

During the process of proletarianization, farmland was deliberately taken away to transform

peasants into industrial proletariats who would then become dependent on selling their labor

rather than farming their land. In the current phase, the land of Antigua Morochoca is also

dispossessed, but this is less about labor than the minerals lying beneath the town and its land.

Therefore, for local residents, what was lost was not their physical access to Antigua Morococha

but the material and social conditions on which they formed a community and maintained their

ways of being. In other words, land was dispossessed to create labor in the past but raw

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materials now. In addition, technological advancement changed wage labor from preferable and

indispensable in the past to undesirable and superfluous now. That being said, it is worth

pointing out that regardless of what is dispossessed, land or labor, and what is created, labor or

raw materials, both dispossessions are driven by the capitalist drive for wealth accumulation as

land (minerals underneath) and labor are indispensable ingredients for capitalist production.

This leads me to argue that if a complete dependency was essential for the Cerro de Pasco

Corporation to stabilize its labor-intensive mining operations in the past, then what Chinalco

aims to accomplish now is to disqualify and exterminate this historically produced dependency

because paternalizing no longer serves the corporation’s interests of profit maximization in the

face of open pit mining. For Chinalco, investing in infrastructures (housing units, hospitals or

schools) and social services (education and health care) does not prove to be cost-efficient when

those who are entitled to such benefits are few in number and usually reside in metropolitan

areas away from the mining town. As a result, Chinalco slowly reformulated and rebranded

corporate benefits that were essential into Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), additional

benevolent contribution of the mining corporation rather than foundational services to stabilizing

the workforce and thus capitalist exploitation. What CSR aims to accomplish on the ground then

is to downplay workers’ expectations or their taken for granted requirements of corporate

benefits. I understand the attempt to undo the historically produced dependency as another form

of dispossession of labor in response to technological advancements in an increasingly

neoliberalized Peru.

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V

CONCLUSION: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES

This master’s thesis has been written in conversation with scholars on the phenomenon of

global China, and specifically on the particularity of Chinese state capital’s encompassing

imperatives. I have argued that it is more productive to investigate what Chinese capital, both

state and private, actually does on the ground than engaging in discursive and abstract

discussions of a presumably “neocolonial or imperial Chinese empire.” By recognizing and

treating Chinese state outbound investment as what it is, a type of capital, I have demonstrated

that Chinalco’s investment in the Toromocho project first follows capitalist logics of investment

diversification and profit maximization (chapter 2). The project’s subsequent materialization

depended on capitalist commodification and abstraction of space that enabled spatial destruction

of Antigua Morococha, and on a dialectic production of an alienating and deterritorial Nueva

Morococha that furthers capitalist accumulation (chapter 3). Lastly, Chinalco’s mining operation

relies on the flexibilization and casualization of outsourced, disposable labor under a

(sub)contracting system which was developed at the convergence of global standardization of

production technology in open pit mining (chapter 4).

With the previous three chapters centering the “logic of capital,” this conclusion turns to

Chinalco’s embodiment of the “logic of state,” For Lee (2017) and Gonzalez-Vicente (2012),

Beijing’s encompassing geoeconomic and geopolitical interests will force SOEs to make

compromises that are beneficial for local and national development. However, in the case of

Chinalco’s operation in Central Peru, Chinese state capital generated negligible opportunities and

alternatives for the local community. Here I briefly discuss why Chinalco as state capital has

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failed Nueva Morococha despite possibilities it afforded in Zambia in copper mining. Then the

chapter transitions to describe localized resistance in Nueva Morococha, as well as the possibly

insurmountable challenges that wait ahead.

1.Advantageous Chinese State Capital in Central Peru?

Based on William H Swell Jr’s theorization of “eventful capitalism,” Lee (2017) argues

that “global China” should be analyzed as “an event” that, although it follows capitalism’s

expansive and self-reinforcing logics, “belongs to a rare subclass of happenings that may

transform structure” (10). The possibility of transformation is embedded in capitalism’s

historical contingency as well as its structural tendency. Thus, eventfulness can be understood as

constrained contingency, unexpected openings spotted in capitalism’s seemingly determined

trajectories. Interestingly, Swell (2014) also see capitalism itself as an “epochal phenomenon,” a

historically specific and temporal form that may be approaching its end.

In the Specter of Global China, Lee (2017) demonstrated the “eventfulness” of Chinese

state capital in copper mining in Zambia. Under the political and electoral pressure of resource

nationalism in Zambia, the Chinese state mining company not only built a Special Economic

Zone (SEZ) free of charge but also granted permanent employment to its subcontractors, a rare

case against the global trend of labor casualization. In addition, when multinational mining

corporations used massive layoffs as a coping mechanism in the face of the devastating 2007/8

global financial crisis, the Chinese state mining corporation expanded its portfolio to refrain from

retrenching labor, as a result of both pressure from a Zambian government that feared the labor

movement and the SOE’s “producer mentality” that saw both use value and exchange value of

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copper. Hence, Lee argues that the “political synergy between state and society” is the key to

leverage Chinese state capital for development (158).

Unfortunately, it seems Chinese state capital in the form of Chinalco’s investment in

Toromocho did not generate positive changes but rather made life much harder to sustain. I argue

this is because Chinalco’s investment follows primarily the logic of capital due to a lack of

“political synergy between state and society.” Indeed, the Peruvian state conceives of the

creation and maintenance of a good business climate as its quintessential task under neoliberal

reform, rather than gaining legitimacy by achieving local development. Consequently, it is not

that Chinalco’s state capital cannot be leveraged to promote local development but that the

neoliberal Peruvian state measures developmental success by means of aggregated data at the

national level rather than by qualitative standards of local life (González-Vicente 2013;

Bebbington and Bebbington 2011).

When considering Yeung and Liu’s (2008) argument that Chinese foreign direct

investment should be viewed as institutionally mediated interactions between different nation-

states that extend beyond the profit motive and economic efficiency, one could argue that the

Peruvian government is agentive enough to secure advantageous deals through state level

negotiations that failed local communities. According to the Belt and Road Initiative website, the

Peruvian government had requested Chinalco to fulfill the promise made by Peru Copper Inc. to

build the Kingsmill Tunnel Water Treatment Plant. Based on information provided by

Chinalco’s official website, for more than 70 years until 2010, highly contaminated water had

been discharged at a rate of 1100 liters per second into the Yauli River. The tunnel, located 500

meters underground, served for the drainage of underground mines in the area. After the

completion of The Kingsmill Tunnel Water Treatment Plant, water that will be discharged into

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the Yauli River from the mines will have a pH 7 instead of 2, meaning it will no longer

contaminate the surrounding groundwater. Pablo Castaneda, one of the electrical engineers who

started working for Chinalco on this project in 2009, considers this water treatment plant a

milestone of Chinalco because the improvement in water quality will benefit agricultural

production and animal husbandry in the Mantaro Valley.

While this case speaks to the advantages of Chinese state capital in making contributions

to local development as well as the agency of the Peruvian state, what seems to be necessary for

the government might not be so for local residents: no one interviewed for this study had

mentioned the water treatment plant since almost none of them rely on agriculture or animal

husbandry to make a living. Additionally, as I have demonstrated in the previous three chapters,

future prospects and chances of survival are bleak in the face of a completely demolished old

town, an alienating and abstract resettlement and scant employment opportunity. Due to a lack of

“political synergy” between the Peruvian government and the community of Nueva Morococha,

the state capital of Chinalco was not leveraged successfully for local development.

2.Alternatives: Localized Resistance or Global Coalition?

Lefebvre (1991) and Gordillo (2014) are both concerned about the ways in which people

live with spatial alienation and destruction. Although their accounts of everyday experience are

often despondent, they both identify small pockets of resistance and positive moments of

remaking a better future. For Lefebvre (1991, 1995), the inherent contradictions of capitalist

sociospatiality imply that a total domination of everyday life in the new town can never be fully

materialized. The preexisting social relations and spatial practices will always persist and resist

by remaking the space that cannot reduced to total homogenization or assimilation. Similarly, for

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Gordillo (2014), explorations of the afterlife of rubble are equally crucial to the examination of

its creation through destruction. The moment when something is destroyed, possibilities of

reassembling and reconfiguring something novel, alternative and liberatory emerge. As Gordillo

has documented in his monograph, for indigenous people freed from Spanish slavery in the

Argentine Chao, rubble marks a new political beginning of “rebuilding new places under better

collective conditions” (84).

However, writing from Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1960’s, David Harvey (1996) focuses

less on localized everyday struggles under capitalist expansion and directs his analysis to a larger

scale at which global political economy reconfigures place and space. He finds the political use

of place-based resistance limited in the fight against global capitalism. In other words, for

Harvey, the overthrow of destructive capitalism cannot be materialized through “militant

particularism” (1996, 306). Later in his 2007 essay on “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,”

Harvey states more explicitly what he conceives as the alternative to all types of linked

destruction ranging from the classic forms of accumulation by dispossession to environmental

degradation to imperial domination. For him, to address the deepening of uneven geographic

development under neoliberal capitalism, political and social struggles across time and space

should collaborate through a resurgence of mass movements at a global scale that seek

“egalitarian political demands…economic justice, fair trade. and greater economic security and

democratization” (42). This proposition does not counter his previous argument on the

limitations of localized struggles built on the particularities of certain places, but rather enhances

it by presenting both local resistance and global movement as necessary with only the latter

being truly transformative.

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I find both scales of analysis convincing and necessary in the case of Nueva Morococha.

It is extremely important to follow Lefebvre (1991) and Gordillo (2014) by attending to the ways

in which local residents cope with and reconfigure a post-resettlement life, because they allow us

to see pockets of humanity, solidarity and strength that still persist in Nueva Morococha. At 6

PM on June 28th, 2019, I participated as an observer during the June meeting of the Association

of Ex-Owners of Antigua Morococha. About 10 people attended the meeting, all previous house

owners who sold their properties to Chinalco. The meeting started with briefings of the dialogue

table that took place a day ago in Huancayo and then proceeded with ex-owners expressing their

thoughts on next possible steps or concerns over employment. Towards the end of the meeting,

Marcus Reyes, representative of the association, informed everyone about the hardships that

Martin Peña, who was then present, and his family were going through. Martin, in his mid-fifties,

was currently unemployed and had a sick parent at home whom he needed to constantly take care

of. Life had been extremely difficult for them to cope with, therefore, Marcus proposed those

with means to donate some cash or groceries if possible. Then those who were present started

discussing how much donation is appropriate or what groceries to buy. Understanding the

implications of giving money to the local community while conducting research, I went ahead

and gave all I had at that time, which was 30 soles.34 One person was in charge of taking notes

on who had donated and the amount of donation, and the sum was given to Martin right after the

meeting ended. This seemingly insignificant half an hour forcefully demonstrated that although

everyone there was facing difficulties in one way or another, communal ties fostered back in

34 As stated in the consent form, participation in this study was completely voluntary and would not be compensated

with cash. However, the researcher would pay for meals and/or drinks when interviews were held in cafes or

restaurants or offer them later if conducted in private settings. When interviewees took the initiative to reach out to

ask for help, I tried my best to provide things such as groceries and a small amount of cash.

140

Antigua Morococha still stood strong in the resettlement despite the overwhelming sense of

alienation and transformation of everyday life.

In addition, during my short stay in Nueva Morococha, I could always see neighbors

setting up a volleyball court by tying the nets to utility poles on both sides of the street and

occupying that public space for personal use. When there was traffic, they would stop the game

to let sedans pass under the net, and if vehicles were too big to pass, such as minivans or trucks,

they would untie one side of the nets to let the car through and retie it afterwards to resume the

game. The appropriation of public space, namely the streets, for private purposes, such as

volleyball games, can be interpreted as an act of resistance in which locals were actively

remaking the space and affording it new meaning. I also witnessed several fiestas organized by

the municipality and the local elementary school in an effort to continue traditions of Antigua

Morococha in the resettlement as well as to build a community. Although it was almost

impossible to start businesses without a house in the commercial area or close to schools, some

residents put up makeshift restaurants around the corner or became street vendors. All these

small acts can be understood as acts of survival and resistance, forceful assertions of possibilities

of a new life.

In order to address geographically uneven development, in which neoliberal capitalism is

the fundamental problem, I argue in agreement with Harvey (1996, 2007) that Nueva Morococha

needs to forge connections with movements for economic justice across time and space. This

could imply residents of Nueva Morococha building movements with other communities

impacted by mining or by Chinese foreign investments in Peru, across Latin America or even

globally. It can also mean to foster collaborations with Bangladeshi women working in the

textile industry, Chinese peasants who are forced off their land for urban real estate development,

141

or Native Americans who have been protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Even more,

it can be about standing in solidarity with movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me Too,

Climate Strike and Zapatistas as problems are always intersectional. Nevertheless, however

exciting and necessary this may sound, I have a hard time imagining it happening. How can

alliances be built between Chinese peasants, Peruvian miners and African American youth in real

life? And how do we attend to questions of literal survival without losing sight of the bigger

picture?

The emphasis on transnational struggle does not seem to provide much hope or answer in

the case of Nueva Morococha. Firstly, local residents’ focus on pressing issues of survival make

establishing these connections exceptionally difficult, especially when there is a lack of

resources. In addition, as a pro-mining community, Nueva Morococha receives negligible help

from NGOs at all levels, which are often the key to building national and international alliances.

Julia Cuadros, executive director at CooperAcción, a Lima-based Peruvian NGO that aims to

foster development alternatives to extractivism, made it explicit that within the organization’s

limited funding and capacity, CooperAcción prioritizes communities that are against mining

activities (Interview with Julia Cuadros, June 2019). The preference for centering questions of

dispossession over labor exploitation is a shift Bebbington et al. (2008) have observed in the

Andes. Gonzalez-Vicente’s (2013) study of Shougang’s investment in Marcona provides an

empirical example of the transformation. Specifically, he noted, “…the historical compromise

with “exploitation” narratives granted Marcona inhabitants robust connections with national

movements that focus on labor, but deprived them of links with stronger national and

international activist networks concerned with environmental and ‘dispossession’ issues. This

limited Marcona’s social movements’ leverage in local- and national- struggles” (54).

142

Moreover, even when the case of Nueva Morococha attracts outside attention and obtains

professional assistance, there are disconnects between what locals think should be the priority

and what others believe are alternatives. Seeking employment in the fifties and sixties might

seem an odd act against contemporary standards of labor recruitment, which in Peru set the

retirement age at 65 for both men and women. However, for those living in the Andes, there is

no such thing as retirement since they work until they are physically unable to perform certain

tasks. Cesar Reyna, former legal consultant to the Broad Front for the Defense and Development

of the Interests of Morococha (FADDIM), noted similarly, “… people from Morococha feel

useless if they don’t work. They work as long as they are alive…” (Interview with Cesar Reyna,

June 2019). However, Cesar also critiqued this mentality as medieval and outdated, arguing that

“they should follow the steps of a new era by adapting to contemporary practices…instead of

just keep asking for jobs.” Therefore, while Cesar has been extremely helpful by offering legal

assistance to the local community, with expertise that is exogenous to local ways of being, Cesar

focused too narrowly on the technical solutions to questions of dispossession and cared less

about local livelihoods. Furthermore, although Chinalco’s adoption of international standards of

labor recruitment seems to be an improvement to workers’ safety by rejecting those with

scoliosis or are overaged, it ultimately, whether intentional or not, hurts local people by denying

them employment.

Last but not the least, while it makes sense that as a pro-mining town, Nueva Morococha

is not the most promising battleground for NGOs, the fact that it is also somehow disconnected

from current waves of labor movements in the country is peculiar, especially considering

Morococha’s history of vigorous unionization. The process of gradual proletarianization that

started at the beginning of the twentieth century helped produced working class consciousness

143

among miners who were well aware of their exploitation and their connections/contributions to

the world economy (Kruijt and Vellinga 1979). Reacting to the horrendous living and working

conditions and extreme labor control in camps, they planned strikes and protests as means of

negotiation for higher wages, better working conditions, and more fair corporate policies.

Antigua Morococha used to be one of the emblematic mining centers for labor mobilization. The

two-year battle from 1929 to 1930 was seen as the most dramatic collaboration between newly

proletarianized peasants in the Andes and newly formed radical groups in Lima by Mallon

(1983). This collaboration emerged after the inundation of several underground mining tunnels

that killed 28 miners and completely destroyed the Morococha lake in September 1928. Jose

Carlos Maríategui,35 then a prominent Marxist theorist and activist, was drawn to this catastrophe

and started to organize social and labor reforms in Central Peruvian Andes while using his

magazines, Amauta and Labor, to spread the word about this tragedy and build national political

alliances. This coincided with the collapse of Wall Street during Black Friday in 1929, which

triggered massive layoffs by CPC in Morococha. Hence, these events culminated in massive

protests and strikes at Morococha, which were brutally repressed by the state police. Meanwhile,

it led to the establishment of La Sociedad Pro Cultura Popula (Society for Popular Culture) in

Morococha36, which though not a union, represented the interests of miners, and was later

incorporated into Confederación General de Trabajadores del Peru (Confederation of Peruvian

Workers) (Castagnola 2013).

According to Kruijt and Vellinga (1979), strikes organized by miners in Morococha

concessions brought up the first systematically formulated list of demands which included

“housing, sanitary in hygienic provisions, medical care, availability of tools, work clothes and

35 Founder of Partido Socialita Peruano (PSP), Peruvian Socialist Party.

36 Mallon (1983, 239) argues it was established in February 2019 instead of post Black Friday in October.

144

fuel for the lamps, safety conditions in the mine, the arbitrary nature of the company's dismissal

policy” (102). Specifically, in terms of wages, in addition to an annual bonus of 8% for every

employee, they requested a 30% wage increase for those working underground and for those not

working underground, the workers wanted their wage to be tied to the New York copper price

index. These requirements clearly demonstrated miners’ clearheaded consciousness of their

exploitation and their rightful role in the global economy.

Since the disconnect of labor movements between the past and the present is beyond the

scope of this thesis. I only offer a potential explanation for this predicament based on my limited

understanding of this situation, which is the convergence between Peru’s neoliberal reform and

Chinalco’s decision for an open pit mine.

At the level of the national political economy, individual and collective labor rights were

severely damaged under Fujimori’s neoliberal reform. In the twentieth century, labor laws in

Peru were witnessing positive transformations. The emergence of labor mobilization in the

1930’s led to what Chapter 4 briefly covered, a comprehensive labor legislation put forward by

the Bustamante government in 1945. This resulted in distinctions between workers (blue collar)

and employees (white collar) and specifically, the legislation protected workers from being

dismissed arbitrarily without compensation and made sure those who worked for more than 90

days become permanent employees. When the military junta of Velasco took power in 1968,

more significant improvements were made in labor laws, including official recognition of unions

as political actors, implementing employment stabilization law which made dismissals of labor

extremely difficult, and establishing a “labor community” that was entitled to shares of property

as well as to participate in the managerial board (Solfrini 2001). However, most of the

improvements were revoked since the neoliberal reform in 1990 under Fujimori. The

145

employment stability law was annihilated, meaning employees can be fired without any reason

(Felices-Luna 2013). Workers’ collective rights to negotiate and strike were increasingly limited

(Fernández-Maldonado 2011). In addition, the conditions under which temporary contractors and

subcontractors can be used were expanded (Loayza 2011). In addition to changes made

specifically related to labor rights, Fujimori also implemented emergency legislation,

antiterrorism laws (responding to Shining Path) and other security decrees to criminalize non-

violent social protests and political dissidents (Felices-Luna 2013). Overall, a thorough

neoliberal reform initiated by Fujimori and continued by his successors made all kinds of social

movements difficult to operate, especially those related to labor in the mining industry.

On the ground in the case of Chinalco, we need to differentiate three types of groups and

analyze them separately: permanently employed Chinalco staff, highly exploited contractors and

subcontractors, and precarious unemployed former miners. Chinalco’s permanent employees

receive a higher salary and better welfare packages than the average industry level, and thus are

in general satisfied. Working for a transnational corporation with a decent reputation and

abundant resources is also a good career investment. Meanwhile although its contractors and

subcontractors might feel unjustly treated, due to the strict spatial control and labor management,

mobilizations amongst themselves are extremely difficult. Those who live in Chinalco’s mining

camps in Tuctu or Tunshuruco are subject to a strict work schedule and their activities are

limited between their working station and the camp. Everything in the camp, from restaurants to

gyms, from dormitories to game rooms, are all under Chinalco’s control. Once their one-week or

two-week shift is completed, they are transported back to their hometowns in Chinalco vehicles

and then picked up again when their vacation is over. Since they come from different places

across the country, ranging from nearby towns to Huancayo to Lima, organization during off-

146

work times seems challenging. As for those who live in Nueva Morococha, because they work

on temporary projects, their lives are also stringently structured. They will be picked up and

transported to the mine in groups after breakfast. Once their shift is over, they will be taken back

to the town for dinner and then to the hostel. They all dine at Chinalco designated restaurants at

scheduled times, and at every meal they have to sign in on the booklet prepared by each

restaurant owner, on which one could find their name, national ID and hometown. Lastly, living

a precarious life under the (sub)contracting system and facing fierce competition for work, newly

unemployed workers are unwilling to challenge Chinalco. After all, as economist Joan Robinson

(1962) famously remarked, “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to

the misery of not being exploited all” (45). The observation of a lack of labor or social

movements in Nueva Morococha as well as its disconnect from broader trends of resistance is a

worthy topic of future research.

147

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