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The hottest industry is fish meal, which earned a record $149 million in foreign exchange last year, and for the first time made Peru the world's No. 1 fishing nation. Some 155 fish-meal plants now operate along the coast. In the north-coast town of Chimbote, the population has exploded from 5,000 to 150,000 in the past 20 years. New taxis clog the city's streets, and neon signs wink brightly all night; hi-fi shops blare out cha chas; Indian mopsters sip beer and lethal-looking, yellow-green "Inca Kolas" and fill up vacant walls with "Vivan los Beatles!"
The Incas and conquistadores mined mainly gold and silver. Now Peru produces everything from antimony to zinc, and the U.S. companies that do the bulk of the mining are in the mood to expand. Marcona Mining Co. plans to triple the capacity of its $20 million iron-ore pelletizing plant on Peru's southern coast; Southern Peru Copper Corp. is investing $16 million for improvements; and the king of the mountain, Cerro de Pasco Corp., has just earmarked $18 million to expand its $270 million mining complex. Next month General Motors will open a $5,000,000 assembly plant outside Lima, the first of 15 automakers, including Chrysler and Ford, that intend to settle in Peru.
Aid & Inflation. The biggest foreign investment, however, is still in the form of U.S. aid. Last year the country was granted a record $86.8 million in Alianza help, four times the 1960 aid package. Belaúnde still impatiently complains of all the delays and red tape in disbursing funds. "Peru is being studied to death," he recently told U.S. officials. "We have pre-surveys, pre-pre-surveys, pre-investment surveys, pre-pre-investment surveys. Committees of experts study us. Everybody studies us, and in spite of all these studies, Peru is moving ahead."
Belaunde sometimes suspects that the U.S. drags its feet just a little because of his bitter wrangle with International Petroleum Co., the Standard Oil of New Jersey affiliate that operates Peru's richest oilfield on the north coast near the Ecuadorian border. Shortly after his election in 1963, Belaúnde yielded to nationalist demands and canceled I.P.C.'s 39-year-old concession. He has yet to reach a settlement. Peru's anti-Yanquis demand outright expropriation. Belaúnde's better sense tells him that the government could not run the field profitably. "Around here," says one I.P.C. executive, "they still think we're bastards. But we're efficient, low-cost bastards." Last week, according to I.P.C., Belaúnde was proposing what amounts to a 90-10 profit split, and that, says the company, is "just not worth the trouble."