Cerro de Pasco, Peru: Routine, Resentment, and Departure

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — September 10, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

January and February

After Christmas, the plateau settled into routine.

There was no television — only shortwave radio. Armed Forces Radio carried programs like Gunsmoke. Audio storytelling replaced screens.

One afternoon, a group of us demolished a stack of cinder blocks at a construction site and attempted to reassemble the broken pieces to conceal what we had done. The damage was obvious. I admitted my role. My father’s response was brief and controlled.

Street pigs roamed parts of town — large, semi-wild animals. One local handyman used crutches after losing both feet to a pig attack years earlier. That fact circulated without embellishment.

Peruvian children sometimes approached the fence line to practice English. I nodded through Spanish I did not understand.

During a partial solar eclipse, company leadership predicted panic among the local population. None occurred. People darkened glass and observed calmly.

A planned trip to Lima was canceled when my father’s leave was revoked. Other children assumed I had invented the story of the trip. I cried — not for the trip, but for the accusation.

Easter 1967

Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967, included a compound-wide egg hunt. One egg wrapped in aluminum foil carried a special prize. Another child wrapped an egg in shiny Dial soap packaging, creating confusion.

Later, in the clubhouse theater, a showing of The Time Travelers deteriorated into an egg-throwing fight. Within minutes, the room was covered in shells and yolk. The theater was closed to children for a month.

The ban was accepted.

Leaving Cerro

Shortly after Easter, our time ended.

Unlike our arrival, the company did not ship our belongings home. We sold most of what we owned in a rummage-style sale — furniture, toys, the record player.

I sold my pop gun to an older man.

We traveled down to Lima for a short stay while contracts were finalized. We watched early Japanese animation dubbed in Spanish. We ate American-style fried chicken and oversized banana splits.

Then we flew to Miami — wearing jackets in tropical heat — and from there to Chicago. My father remained behind temporarily to complete his contract.

Years later, the mining corporation that sustained the compound would be nationalized. The colony ended.

For six months, we had lived at 14,000 feet in a place that believed itself permanent.

It was not.