With the Cristo Redentor closed, the question resurfaces: what does the Pehuenche still need to be ready for heavy cargo?

The Cristo Redentor Integrated System closed again on Monday, August 24, due to a new snow and wind storm in the high mountains, just five days after reopening on August 18 following 34 consecutive days of closure, the longest shutdown of the winter. According to official projections, the closure could extend until August 31. Each day of closure costs a stranded truck more than USD 400 per day, according to estimates released during the previous blockade.

It is in this context —a corridor that shuts down and reopens in increasingly short cycles, right in the middle of peak traffic season— that the underlying question resurfaces: what does the Pehuenche Pass actually need to operate as a heavy cargo corridor?

Mendoza's Undersecretary of Commerce, Industry and Logistics, Alberto Marengo, had already been cautious about the scope of that alternative: if the Pehuenche were enabled tomorrow for general cargo, it would capture just 2% of the traffic currently processed by the Cristo Redentor System, with a ceiling of 10% even in the most favorable scenario. But that general traffic assessment conceals another question, the one that has truly been driving the official agenda in recent months: what corridor does the mining industry that is about to scale up in southern Cuyo actually need? And there the math changes.

Alberto Marengo took part in a logistics and mining panel at the Fourth Economic Sciences Conference.

The mining magnet that shifts the goalposts

Three projects are maturing almost simultaneously with the discussion over the pass's commercial enabling. The largest is Vicuña, the copper district owned by BHP and Lundin Mining in San Juan that integrates the Josemaría and Filo del Sol deposits: it obtained RIGI approval in June 2026, with an initial investment of USD 9.7 billion that could scale up to USD 18 billion over a decade, and construction of the district begins in the first quarter of 2027. In Malargüe, Potasio Río Colorado considers its proximity to the Pehuenche a strategic advantage for exporting to the Pacific and Asian markets, while the province negotiates financing with Brazil to reactivate it. Governor Alfredo Cornejo himself explicitly mentioned, in a presentation in Chile, the copper and lithium developments in Malargüe and the Hierro Indio project as direct beneficiaries of this route, given its lower altitude and reduced exposure to the winter closures that plague Cristo Redentor.

Provincial studies handled by Marengo's Undersecretariat have already put a number on that advantage: cargo originating between parallels 34 and 36 —which include southern Mendoza—, as well as southern Brazil and Patagonia, could save between USD 460 and 600 per trip by using the Pehuenche instead of diverting to Bahía Blanca or north through Cristo Redentor. For a mining operation set to move thousands of trips per year for decades —Vicuña projects more than 70 years of operational life— that differential is a competitiveness factor, not a minor detail.

What is already underway, and what is not

The corridor is currently only enabled for tourism, ballast transport and hazardous cargo. Turning it into a route fit for large-scale mining requires resolving several fronts, and negotiations show uneven progress.

The most concrete development is the bridge solution proposed by Marengo: Malargüe does not have its own dry port, but San Rafael has one enabled by ARCA and already operating. The short-term idea being handled by the Undersecretariat is to channel through there the cargo coming down Route 188 —San Rafael, Pehuenche— while real infrastructure is built in Malargüe. It's a pragmatic solution that doesn't require new construction to start moving cargo.

The problem is that this same Route 188 is only paved as far as General Alvear; from there to Malargüe it is a dirt track, as the official himself acknowledged. It is the weakest physical link in the entire scheme: without that stretch, neither the San Rafael dry port nor the Pehuenche are useful for sustained heavy traffic.

On the customs side, the Las Loicas Border Center —the Argentine crossing to Chile— operates with open-air booths, limited service capacity and, until early 2026, without a robust power grid: it depends on local generation. In May there was a provincial technical inspection to advance a project to expand and modernize the center, but to date it remains a project, not executed work.

The comparison with Chile leaves Argentine infrastructure looking poor. While basic shortcomings are still being discussed at Las Loicas, the Municipality of San Clemente, in the Maule Region, has already launched a technical diagnostic study and standardization proposal for the Pehuenche Border Complex, which assesses architecture, electrical installations and safety conditions in order to plan concrete improvements. Chile is prioritizing on an already consolidated base; Argentina is still negotiating the basics.

On the institutional front, the Malargüe Chamber of Commerce and Industry presented to the Deliberative Councils of southern Mendoza, in a survey dating from early 2026, three concrete requests: enabling customs with a dry port (partially resolved via San Rafael), improving road connectivity toward Las Loicas, and sustaining active commitment from municipal executives. On the binational technical front, the Cristo Redentor-Pehuenche Integrated System has a new general coordinator, Dardo Reyes, replacing Justo Báscolo.

And there is one detail that puts all of the above into perspective: the Undersecretariat itself made any infrastructure investment conditional on first having demand data. "Investments must be based on concrete data," said Marengo, referring to the ongoing studies to determine how much cargo could actually flow through the Pehuenche before deciding, for example, whether a dedicated weighing scale is justified.

The meeting that could unlock everything: the September Committee in Malargüe

The next real checkpoint is institutional. Governor Alfredo Cornejo announced that, if conditions allow, a new edition of the Pehuenche Pass Border Committee will be held in Malargüe in September, the binational forum that Mendoza and the Maule Region resumed this year after nearly a decade without formally meeting. The immediate precedent was the September 2025 meeting in Talca, where the forum was reactivated and the first lines of action on border operations, transit facilitation and economic integration were defined.