Feb. 25--REPORTING FROM COTABAMBAS, Peru. -- When the Chinese took over the Las Bambas copper mine here in the Andes Mountains in 2014, Beto Chahuayllo at first barely noticed the change.
He kept on painting buildings at the mine, a job he'd been doing for four years in hopes of saving enough to leave his village and his dirt-floor hut and move his family to nearby Cuzco, where the houses have electricity and his children could attend a better school.
The new owners, a conglomerate of Chinese state-owned companies, bought the mine while it was still under construction, paying $5.85 billion to the Swiss firm that had started developing it.
The Peruvian government welcomed the new investors, predicting that Las Bambas -- a gray gash across the mountains set to be second biggest copper mining operation in the world -- would boost Peru's gross domestic product by 1.4% once production began.
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The deal was part of China's dramatic expansion into Latin America over the last decade, a relationship that has brought enormous benefits to both sides. But China's investments in the region have increasingly met resistance from the people whose voices register least in the global economy.
One day, in the nearby provincial capital of Tambobamba, graffiti appeared on a white construction barrier. In bold red letters, somebody wrote: "Say no to the Chinese."
It was an early sign of the trouble that would soon engulf the communities around the mine. The protests against it would eventually cost Chahuayllo his life.
