CHANCAY, Peru (AP) — On the edge of Peru’s coastal desert, a remote fishing town where a third of all residents have no running water is being transformed into a huge deep-water port to cash in on the inexorable rise of Chinese interest in resource-rich South America.
The megaport of Chancay, a $1.3 billion project majority-owned by the Chinese shipping giant Cosco, is turning this outpost of bobbing fishing boats into an important node of the global economy.
From the presidential palace in Lima, 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the port inauguration ceremony, China’s President Xi Jinping watched a livestream of the ribbon-cutting alongside his Peruvian counterpart, Dina Boluarte, late Thursday.
The leaders’ faces appeared on a giant screen in Chancay, where engineers in bright orange safety vests declared the port operational to the swell of string instruments. Chinese dancers with red dragon-costume heads seemingly burst out of nowhere to prance around the docking station as a crane lowered the first aluminum containers onto a berthed cargo ship.
“Considerable income and enormous job opportunities will be generated for Peru,” Xi said from Lima, where world leaders were preparing to gather for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. “This will generate tangible results for the people of the region.”
But the development — expected to encompass 15 quays and a large industrial park drawing more than $3.5 billion in investment over a decade — has met a skeptical response from impoverished villagers, who say it is depriving them of fishing waters and bringing no economic benefit to locals.
“Our fishing spots no longer exist here. They destroyed them,” said 78-year-old fisherman Julius Caesar — “like the emperor of Rome” — gesturing toward the dockside cranes. “I don’t blame the Chinese for trying to mine this place for all it’s worth. I blame our government for not protecting us.”
The Peruvian government hopes the port will become a strategic transshipment hub for the region, opening a new line connecting South America to Asia and speeding trade across the Pacific for Peru’s blueberries, Brazil’s soybeans and Chile’s copper, among other exports.
Officials cite the port’s potential to generate millions of dollars in revenues and turn coastal cities into so-called special economic zones with tax breaks to lure investment.
“We Peruvians are focused primarily on the well-being of Peruvians,” Foreign Minister Elmer Schialer told The Associated Press.
But many of Chancay’s 60,000 residents are unconvinced. Fishermen returning to port with smaller catches complain that they have already lost out.