Panama to Patagonia

WATERWAYS AND RAILWAYS

Importance of River System—Existing Lines of Railroads—Pan-American Links—Lease of State Roads to Peruvian Corporation of London—Unfulfilled Stipulations—Law for Guaranty of Capital Invested in New Enterprises—Routes from Amazon to the Pacific—National Policy for their Construction—Central Highway, Callao to Iquitos—The Pichis—Railroad and Navigation—Surveys in Northern Peru—Comparative Distances—Experiences with First Projects—Future Building Contemporaneous with Panama Canal.

NEITHER the economic future of Peru nor the prospect of realizing the national aspirations can be understood without turning to the map and studying the waterways and the railways. The Marañon, having its source in Lake Lauricocha within the inner slope of the Central Cordilleras, flows in a northwesterly direction till about south latitude 40°, when it turns abruptly northeast. The Ucayali, receiving its initial waters farther south and east of the eastern range of the great Cordilleras, flows north until it joins the Marañon below Iquitos and the two form the mighty Amazon. Between them flows the Huallaga, smaller than either, yet a great river. It empties into the Marañon. The general parallelism of the Marañon, the Huallaga, and the Ucayali afford alternative routes from the Amazon basin to the Pacific coast. The Huallaga was on the transcontinental trail of the early Spaniards, who crossed the mountains from Pacasmayo to Cajamarca and then continued to Yurimaguas on its banks.

The existing railroad lines of Peru extend from the coast toward the Andes, the only practicable system in the first stages of national development. The second stage is to secure a spine for these disjointed ribs by means of a main trunk line north and south—the Intercontinental or Pan-American idea—and to fill in the lacking links in rail and water transport from the Amazon or trans-Andine region to the Pacific. The intercontinental project contemplates rail connection to the shores of Lake Titicaca, so that ultimately there will be through communication with Buenos Ayres, and also the gradual and necessarily slower plan of joining railroad and water links north to the boundary of Ecuador. All of this will make for mineral development.

The rubber industry of the Iquitos and tributary territory is to Peru what the fur trade of Oregon was to the United States in the period between 1830 and 1850. The populating of the vast inlying country, the trans-Andine slopes and the river basins, means to Peru what the settlement of the Rocky Mountain region extending to the Pacific meant to the people of the United States. If the hardy pioneer class is lacking, and it is, the Peruvian national instinct is not wanting. Enlightened public men are seeking to find expression for it. Immigration, colonization, are the only means. Access, transportation facilities, ways of getting in and out, must precede colonization. Therefore the railway policy. But imperative reasons of state polity require that the development shall converge from the Amazon toward the Pacific instead of from the Continental Divide toward the Atlantic. Hence the inestimable value of the Panama Canal as an incentive, a stimulating cause, an influencing factor in the national advancement. It fixes the Pacific coast as the unchanging goal toward which all Peruvian industrial growth must tend.

It is desirable to have an intelligent grasp of the present railway systems of Peru, their management, and their bases of extension. The total length is about 1,400 miles. Most of them are of the standard gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches, and with few exceptions they are the property of the State. However, substantially all of them are operated by the Peruvian Corporation of London under the sixty-five years’ lease executed by the government in 1891, when the English bondholders assumed the foreign debt and took over the railways in compensation. This was the substance of the contract that relieved Peru from a crushing burden, though it also entailed heavy responsibilities which were viewed with misgivings that afterwards were justified. The contract included huge land grants, a practical monopoly of the guano deposits for a long period, exclusive rights of navigation on Lake Titicaca, and freedom from burdensome taxation.

Some of the provisions in this agreement were very evil for Peru, and some were bad for the bondholders. Always it will be a subject of controversy whether the government or the Peruvian Corporation has been most at fault in the non-fulfilment of the conditions. The disinterested observer must admit that both have been to blame. Both entered on obligations which they could not meet,—the Peruvian government to pay annually £80,000, or approximately $400,000, to the corporation; and the corporation to make important extensions of the railways, particularly toward the Amazon, and to plant colonies. For the latter purpose it received a grant of 1,100,000 hectares, 2,750,000 acres of land, in the fertile Chanchamayo valley.

The corporation taunted the government that but for its lease of the railways they would have been abandoned and have become nothing more than trails over the mountains. On its part the company was as monumental an exhibition of English incompetence and mismanagement as can be found in foreign lands, where there are so many monuments of incompetence made possible by confiding English investors and dull-witted London directors. When the disagreements with the government got acute, its officers exerted themselves principally to blacken Peruvian credit in London and to keep other capital out. Their success for several years was satisfying to the resentful sentiment of the managers and stockholders, if not profitable to their pocketbooks.

The Peruvian Corporation, not on account of progressiveness of its own, but through the enterprise of the American capitalists who acquired the Cerro de Pasco mines and built the railroad to connect with the line to the coast, and whose industries are furnishing it with traffic, began to earn money. Nominally it represents a capital of $100,000,000. While this capital is inflated, in the new and improving conditions of Peru there is a prospect for earning a reasonable return on the actual value of the leased railways. The corporation and the government have reconciled some of their differences, and the remaining ones may be compromised and the coöperation which is so essential be secured.

I have noted that the physical feature of the Peruvian railway lines is their general direction from the coast straight to the Andes, and that the policy of the government is to supply them with a backbone by filling in links along the intercontinental location and to extend the transcontinental outshoots so as to secure the through rail and water outlet from the Amazon to the Pacific. Definite measures of legislation have been adopted in furtherance of these plans. The law passed in 1904 with the purpose of encouraging foreign capital, set aside the proceeds of the tobacco tax to the amount of $1,000,000 annually after 1905 as a guaranty for capital invested in railway building. The returns do not indicate that the income from tobacco will reach this amount for some years, yet the value of the legislation in establishing a fixed railway fund is very great.

The government took energetic measures, and the extension of the existing line from Oroya to Huancayo was assured, as also the one from Sicuani to Cuzco. That leaves between 300 and 400 miles to be built across savagely broken country from Huancayo to Cuzco, in which the engineering difficulties are serious. But while it is ultimate rather than immediate, the closing up of this section is inevitable, and though the local traffic will not pay the government can afford to aid the enterprise just as the United States government helped the transcontinental lines by subsidies and bonds. The impetus given to railway building in Bolivia which insures through connection from Lake Titicaca to the border of Argentina makes it imperative that Peru, for strategic reasons of the greatest significance, shall reach Titicaca in time to become linked with the general system.

The extension of the line from Oroya south to Huancayo, the first dozen miles of which was coincident with the other railway construction, insures the progress of a very rich section. Well-populated valleys rich in agricultural products are traversed, while mineral veins, especially copper and coal, are tapped. The famous quicksilver mines of Huancavelica are in this zone. The region as a whole, from the variety of its climate, offers encouraging prospects for immigration. The valley of Jauja is one of the most inviting fields for irrigation that is to be found within the limits of Peru.

Routes from the Amazon to the Pacific are many. The one which promises the earliest realization is that known as the Pichis, or the central highway. When the contract was made with the Peruvian Corporation, this was one of the proposed extensions in which the greatest faith was felt, and the enormous land grant was chiefly to insure its construction. Disappointment at the failure to carry forward this line was one of the causes of the resentment of the government toward the corporation and of the friction that followed. The surveys and explorations of Arana, Werthemann, Tucker, Wolfe, Barandiaran, Father Sala, Carlos Perez, and others, showed the feasibility of navigation from Iquitos to the Pichis, a total distance of 900 to 1,000 miles according to the river courses followed. Navigation was established. Then came the greater problem of climbing the clinging eyebrow of the Eastern Cordilleras through untried passes and scaling mountain walls to the puna, or table-land.

Plans formed during the term of President Prado in 1879 were inaugurated by President Caceres, and under the administration of General Pierola in 1896 the government undertook to open communication from the terminus of the present road at Oroya to the Pichis. The central highway was laid out and made passable for man and beast. “The mule path grows to a trodden road”—but not in the Andes. For much of the distance the highway meant only a trail, yet a way was opened chiefly through the genius of the Peruvian engineer, Joaquin Capelo. It was enormously expensive, especially since, on account of the controversies with the Peruvian Corporation, the government made a detour to avoid crossing the lands granted to that company, and by pushing straight up the steepest mountain-sides ignored the engineering basis of road-making.

The history of the central highway has been written by Señor Capelo and other Peruvians. It is a brilliant chapter in hardy enterprise. Like so many State projects, the full benefits were not reaped immediately, and much costly engineering work was allowed to fall into disuse. But in spite of misuse and disuse the achievement stands out that the Pichis road was opened and communication with the Amazon established. This helped to preserve and strengthen the national spirit when the territorial integrity was threatened by the abortive movements for the separation of Iquitos and the Department of Loreto.

The methods of locomotion employed and the means of following the central highway from Lima to Iquitos are given below:

ITINERARY FROM LIMA TO IQUITOS

In English terms the distance is 1,265 miles. The return journey requires five days more, as it is upstream from Iquitos to Port Bermudez. Variations of this route are possible. With a through railway from Lima to Port Bermudez, Victoria, or other navigable point, and the improved navigation which will follow, the time will be ten days. A telegraph line extends from Lima to Bermudez, and an irregular postal service is carried on with Iquitos. Under present conditions the traveller who makes the entire trip is rare, and there is no through traffic. Officials who may be ordered from Lima to the Department of Loreto prefer to make the trip by steamer from Callao to Panama, 1,570 miles, by rail and steamer to New York, 2,030 miles, by steamer from New York to Para at the mouth of the Amazon, 3,000 miles, and up the Amazon, 2,300 miles, to Iquitos. A journey of 8,900 miles in order to cover a distance of less than 1,300 miles is the most graphic illustration that can be given of the compelling force of through rail and water communication on the part of Peru with its Amazonian territory. It also is an example of the prospective advantage of traffic by the Panama Canal route, since the productive and undeveloped region of the Ucayali basin rivers is nearer to the Pacific than to the sources of the Amazon.

The route traversed by the central highway with some modifications is feasible for a railway. The government recognized this, and under the authority conferred by the law of 1904 put surveyors in the field to determine which is the most practicable and cheapest in the engineering sense of several alternative routes. The reasonable belief is that the distance to be covered need not exceed 250 miles, at a maximum cost of $10,000,000. The calculation made by Monsieur A. Plane, the representative of French commercial societies who studied the region with a view to determining the prospective capacity of the rubber production, was $13,000,000.[9] But this was a general estimate and not an engineering reconnaissance. While it would not pay at once as a commercial proposition, he believed that the government would be justified in undertaking it. Some of the estimates have been as low as $7,500,000. Unquestionably the Peruvian government can afford, though not in a short period, to spend $10,000,000 or $11,000,000 to secure this connection to the forest regions and the development of the rubber and other resources which lie there. The rich Chanchamayo valley is within the zone of productive tropical agriculture and offers an incentive to colonization. The settlement of the boundary dispute with Brazil regarding the frontier territory is a further motive for securing transportation facilities for that portion of the region which may be conceded to Peru, and for improving the unsatisfactory navigation of the Ucayali and its tributaries.

When the government took measures for bringing the Pichis line within the sphere of early realization, representatives of the northern Departments sought to secure similar advantages for their localities which had been reconnoitred by Von Hassel and other explorers. Various surveys were ordered, and concessions in force were amplified.

A project related to the central highway is that which contemplates prolonging the short spur of railway which runs from Chimbote so that it will reach Recuay, 137 miles from the coast, and then some point on the Cerro de Pasco line. The mineral deposits which exist along this proposed route include anthracite coal, and are exceedingly rich, but heretofore they have not been alluring enough to draw the full amount of the capital needed for the railroad construction. When the central highway is converted into a railroad, the connection of Cerro de Pasco with Recuay will be more easily secured, and the Amazon region and the Ucayali basin may obtain an outlet to the seaboard through Chimbote as well as through Callao. Another route which has received official sanction is from Cerro de Pasco to Huanuco and beyond, following the course of the river Huallaga along the Pan-American location.

An American company, the Pacific, which had valuable mining and railway concessions in the North, and which among alternative routes had made engineering reconnaissances for a line from Pacasmayo through to the affluents of the Amazon, secured additional exclusive privileges of navigation and exploitation of the rivers.[10] However, the selection of Paita as the seaport is more probable, and the government authorized a liberal law for this location, though the terms did not carry a financial guaranty. The project of a railway from Paita to the Falls, or Pongo of Manserriche, has captivated the imagination of the explorers and engineers who have reconnoitred this route to the Amazon, and who have foreseen the certainty of an outlet to the Pacific as one result of the Panama Canal. Large vessels navigate the Marañon 425 miles above Iquitos.

The railroad necessary to connect the Pongo de Manserriche or Borja with Piura and Paita would be less than 400 miles. The extension of cotton cultivation in Piura might prove of more utility in securing the railroad than the iron ore deposits, the commercial value of which capitalists may distrust. An advantage of this route is that the engineering difficulties are not serious, and the highest pass to be surmounted is not more than 7,200 feet. By one survey the Marañon is 310 miles from Paita, though this is at a point above the Falls of Manserriche, the power from which it is proposed to utilize for electric traction. The railroad now covers the distance from Paita to Piura, and leaves the following distances along the proposed location:

Whenever this rail connection from Paita to the navigable waters of the Marañon shall be made, Iquitos will be at least 1,000 miles nearer to New York by way of the Pacific and the Panama Canal than by the Amazon and the Atlantic.

Other tentative locations are one from the port of Eten through Jaen to Bellanista on the Marañon, about 240 miles, and from Salaverry via Cajamarca to Balzas on the Marañon, 200 miles. From through Suchiman to the Huallaga River are several trails which make the distance about 185 miles. From Pacasmayo several engineering reconnaissances have been made. One of these through Cajamarca reaches the Marañon at Balzas over a route which is asserted to be only 138 miles in length. Other routes vary from 140 to 150 miles. But it is to be remembered that Balzas is farther than Bellanista above the Falls of Manserriche, that is to say, above the waters of the Marañon open to steam navigation.

It may be that the waiting for the full fruition of the Peruvian waterway and railway projects will be a long one. The public men who are guiding the policy of the nation in the present progressive channels will have their spells of dejection, and the checks, and discouragements will cause periods of doubt. That is the history of most countries in their measures for material development, but it more especially is the history of Spanish-American republics. The Southern Railway, which was to cross the volcanic Cordilleras and reach Lake Titicaca, was long a dream. Then the enterprise took form, was abandoned, reinaugurated, halted, and finally the government pushed a line of rails through the desert to the town of Arequipa. After Arequipa was reached came the longer and more formidable extension to Titicaca. But in time the work was done.

The Central Railway, the Oroya, was a huger task. Henry Meiggs carried it forward, with reckless confidence and superb courage, half-way up the gigantic Cordilleras, and died. Destructive war came. Peru was prostrate amid industrial ruins and political chaos, yet the forces of recuperation were not dead. After years they were vitalized. The Oroya line was pushed through to the mining-region for which it was meant to be the outlet, and there only remains the extension, in the face of lesser engineering and commercial obstacles, to the navigable waters which reach the Amazon. The Southern and the Oroya roads were contracted for in the times of riotous national wealth, the era of the guanos and the nitrates, when the saying “As rich as a Peruvian” was the common way of describing the opulence of the country and its favored classes. They were built extravagantly, as national luxuries.

Future railways can have none of this profuseness. They can be had only by husbanding the revenues; by strict retrenchment, even parsimony; by outrunning at hardly more than a hare’s pace the industrial and commercial development of the country in order that greater growth may follow. But they can be built for sound economic conditions, and patriotic reasons are their basis. If not simultaneous, their construction at least may be contemporaneous with the Panama Canal.