Chinalco builds new homes for Peruvian mining families
Residents in old mountain town make way for huge open-pit copper project
The Andean mining town of Morococha has moved.
One day a little more than two years ago, lorries arrived and professional movers entered each home to wrap furniture and haul it away. They put pets in special cages and provided hot food to residents until they could resettle.
The mining families left their decrepit mining town – a hodgepodge of shanties made from clapboards and zinc corrugated roofing, open sewers and roaming pigs – and moved five miles to a newly built town called Nueva Morococha, or New Morococha.
The company behind the relocation, Aluminum Corp of China (Chinalco), which obtained a concession for a huge open-pit copper mine in 2008, had little choice but to move Morococha.
Over the planned 36-year life of the mine, earth movers will chew into mountainsides, and the pit will expand and undermine the town. Rather than negotiate piecemeal with individual owners, the company decided to build a town of 1,050 homes and move Morococha in its entirety.
Today, the new town looks taken from a picture book, with tidy row houses, parks, illuminated streets and playgrounds.