San Marcos University in Lima, Peru, the oldest university in the Americas, announced this week that it will establish a Professional School of Railway Engineering, in collaboration with China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group (CREEC), the core company of China Railway, which not only designs and builds railroads, but also multiple scientific institutes specializing in rail development. The University reported the announcement on its Facebook page under the bold title: “The Railroad Revolution Begins at San Marcos University!.” It will be Peru’s first rail engineering school. A railroad R&D institute is also under discussion, which would be located in the science city which San Marcos University has begun to build in Chancay, Peru, where the new deepwater port is now functioning.
Details of San Marcos-CREEC collaboration on this project were worked out at a June 23 meeting at the University, chaired by Rector Dr. Jeri Ramón Ruffner and Hao Xinwei from the CREEC. Joining them were several other representatives of the CREEC, the deans or representatives of other departments at the university, and the head of the San Marcos Foundation Luis Vasquez Medina. Vasquez Medina, who is also a long-time associate of EIR and the Schiller Institute, has worked for and promoted the necessity of such a railroad program for many years.
Chancay Port, built by China’s COSCO company, and its next logical step, construction of South America’s first transcontinental railroad (the “bioceanic,” as it is called in the region) linking the Atlantic coast of Brazil to Peru’s Chancay Port on the Pacific, and from there to ports up and down the Pacific coast of the continent, has opened the door to full-set industrial development in Peru. Dr. Ramón Ruffner reported after the meeting, that San Marcos is also planning to establish Schools of Logistics and Port Engineering and Nuclear Energy and Mechatronics, among others.
She explained that the railway engineering school had been ready to be established in 2023, but had been postponed for “a series of reasons.” (Not said, but probably due to nationwide political turmoil.) Now, “we believe that it is time for it to come out strongly, because the country needs many railway lines to move its products from the coast, the highlands and the jungle, for the benefit of the country’s people.” The CREEC, with its knowledge and experience in this area, will be a “strategic ally” in developing the curriculum of the Railway Engineering program.
“This is a vision for the future, which is why we want the School of Railway Engineering to be created as soon as possible,” she added. The plan is for the school to accept students by the next admission cycle in 2026, in order to “cover the requirements needed for the various railway projects to be developed in Peru in the coming years.”
