A struggle in the dust

Almost every child suffers from lead poisoning in a Peruvian town where a Missouri company reigns

Marina Walker Guevara
Adelante Staff
Photos by Lara Shipley
Translated by Emily Dulcan

The close proximity of the plant to the town makes La Oroya a dangerous place to live. Contaminants emitted from the smoke stack and around the plant fall on the streets like dust. Residents complain of burning in their throats, nose and eyes.

In La Oroya, Peru, the children play soccer in the streets. Like so many other children, as they run behind the ball and kick it toward the goal they dream of playing alongside Maradona or Ronaldo, two of Latin America’s most popular players. But they tell me that when the “smoke” appears, their mothers make them come inside -- quickly -- and close the windows and doors behind them.

In La Oroya, the women wash the same clothes two or three times in a row because the white dust that flies through the air settles in the fabric of shirts and sheets hanging out to dry. Especially early in the morning, the dust is inescapable.

In La Oroya, the people’s eyes are shot with red, and the air burns the lungs and throat.

I can’t breathe in La Oroya, whose neighborhoods cluster in the hills of the Andes, more than 12,000 feet above sea level. The asthma I thought no longer affected me now hits me every time I climb the city's steep stairways.
I feel confined within the narrow, labyrinthine streets as I try to get the lay of the land. Skinny dogs eat the food scraps thrown by market vendors into the gutters. Farther away, children wait in a line on the sidewalk to wash their hands with water from a plastic jug held by two women.

“If I don't wash my hands before eating my fruit, then I eat lead,” says Brayam Rosas, a 7-year-old boy, as he smiles innocently and shows me his white palms.

The explanation lies in the antediluvian metallic structure in the heart of La Oroya. For 83 years, the metallurgic complex of the town -- the largest of its kind in Peru and one of the largest in South America -- has determined the destiny of the city.

Mishell Barzola Ccanto coughs while sister Rosario Puchoc Ccanto helps put on her shoes. At 6 years old, Mishell is undersized and close in weight to her 18 month-old baby brother. Slow growth and loss of appetite are common symptoms of lead poisoning.

The “smoke” is actually a combination of lead, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, and other contaminants, which the smelter emits into the atmosphere in quantities that are rarely seen in the first world.

Doe Run Co. -- an American company with its headquarters in Missouri -- bought the metallurgical complex from the Peruvian government in 1997 and committed to an environmental clean-up program. A law recently enacted by the Peruvian government would allow the company to delay environmental clean-up in La Oroya for up to four years past the original contracted clean-up date of 2007.

The American company's management says they inherited an environmental disaster from the Peruvian government, and they need the extra time to fix it. Otherwise, they will leave Peru, they threatened last year.

Inside the Doe Run lead refinery, metal reaches a purity of 99 percent. The bars of lead that are made are shipped to the United States, Europe and Brazil, among other destinations.

Meanwhile, recent studies show that 99.9 percent of children younger than 7 in La Oroya Antigua, the closest neighborhood to the smelter, have average lead levels three times higher than what the World Health Organization deems acceptable.

Experts say the presence of lead in the body damages physical and neurological development, especially in children.

The approximately 18,000 children who live in La Oroya constantly inhale and ingest lead. When they play marbles on the dirt roads, the wind blows lead dust in their faces. At home, their mothers beat the toxic dust out of furniture and wipe it off the window sills only to find it has settled again, just hours later, in the same places.

“When you touch the wall with your finger, your finger comes away black,” Armida García says as she runs her index finger across one of the wooden tables at the restaurant she manages. Her son, Manuelito, had such high levels of lead in his body that the company took over his care, providing him with special foods and vitamins. His health improved, but the lead in his blood still far exceeds what is considered acceptable in the United States.

Mishell admires a doll given to her by Doe Run for Christmas. The girl has four times more lead than what is considered acceptable in the United States, and her family of six lives in a one-room home. Mishell’s mother is growing increasingly concerned about her child’s health but says that without the smelter the town would vanish.

Armida isn’t afraid to say that Doe Run should clean up the town quickly. The company is doing just that in Herculaneum, Mo., under the supervision of the Environmental Protection Agency and local government officials. But in La Oroya there aren't many people who are willing to talk about these things because the majority of families depend, either directly or indirectly, on the company for their survival.

The U.S. business’s mark is everywhere in this city of 33,000 souls. The walls of the public schools, the metallurgy union building and the police station are all painted white and green -- the corporate colors of Doe Run. As I walk in the market, I listen to the radio commercials, paid for by the company, that promote its reforestation programs. The T-shirts of the children who play in the plazas, where the company has planted flowers and painted the benches, sport the phrase “Doe Run Peru.” The children get electric robots and Barbie dolls for Christmas, compliments of Doe Run.

“Parents see the joy in the faces of their children, and they bow their heads,” says Teodosia, a nurse who asked me not to reveal her identity. “They do it (submit themselves on behalf of their children) for a cup of chocolate or for a toy,” she says.

The tragedy of lead poisoning, experts explain, is that you can’t see its effects right away. It is a slow and silent venom.

In La Oroya, however, arguments in favor of health and a clean environment never trump the argument of economic necessity. Here it is taken for granted that fathers work in the smelter and that many mothers supplement household incomes by washing the clothes of the wives of smelter engineers.

A view of the metallurgic complex, town and mountains, damaged by 83 years of contamination.

When all is said and done, the locals say they have become used to burning eyes and throats, the acrid smell and the smoke. Their ears have adapted to the dull, metallic sound of the train that enters and leaves the smelter to carry freight cars full of lead and other metals to sell in the United States, Europe and Brazil.

Inside the smelter I see stamped containers that read, “Destination: Zurich.” My guide tells me the boxes contain bars of gold, each worth $150,000. I can’t help thinking that four of these bars are equivalent to the total annual budget of La Oroya, where one third of the families don’t have clean drinking water or indoor plumbing, and where the health center doesn’t have an ambulance.

At age 7, Brayam Rosas doesn't know anything about corporate interests, environmental justice rights or popular protest. For him, the smelter’s smokestack is a symbol of his town and the place where his grandpa, Ermenegildo, worked for many years. Some day Brayam would like to be a metallurgic worker too.

Nor does Brayam really understand why he is the tiniest child in his class or how that fact relates to the lead study conducted two years ago, which left his mother sleepless for days on end. “I'm small,” he tells me with a grin, his right hand resting on his head. “My mom gives me vitamins so I can grow.”

Back in the dusty, narrow streets of the city, women wearing colorful Andean dresses and carrying babies on their backs weave among the modern pick-up trucks driven by smelter engineers. Young women stop me in the street and offer to work for me as maids.

I leave La Oroya and Latin America with more questions than answers. I see parallels between the harsh reality at the southern end of the continent and the problems Latinos face when they cross the Rio Grande to try their luck in the United States. The choice is always unfair: family or work, health or economic progress.

Maybe La Oroya will one day be a city with clear skies, like those in the pictures submitted by students in the school drawing contests organized by Doe Run. Maybe Brayam Rosas and Manuelito García will get medical treatment to counteract the effects of lead poisoning. And when they’re big they’ll buy gifts for their own children at Christmas.

Or maybe not.

Marina Walker Guevara has been the Spanish managing editor of Adelante! for the past two years. In February, she and photographer Lara Shipley spent a month in Peru reporting on the impact of lead mining on the people of La Oroya. She graduates this month and will remain in the United States working as a journalist.