ABSTRACT
At the close of the nineteenth century mineowners, prospectors, and speculators in the central highlands of Peru were predicting a boom in mining. They anticipated the construction of roads, railroads, smelters, and drainage tunnels that promised to overcome the obstacles to the development of the mining region. The precapitalist social relations of highland society, and the rarity of free wage labor that these implied, continued to retard the expansion of the mining industry. The reactivization of the mining industry in the 1890s followed by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation's massive investments contributed to the growing commercialization of highland society. Enganche was incapable of providing an adequate labor force for the mines. The launching of the Cerro de Pasco Corporation in the first decade of the twentieth century marked a watershed in the development of capitalism in Peru. The inauguration of the La Oroya complex represents a milestone in the transition to capitalism in the central highlands of Peru.
