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The Chuquicamata mine in northern Chile

Photo: Michala Garrison / NASA Earth Observatory

People have dug up to a kilometer deep in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The Chuquicamata mine is one of the largest open copper mines on the planet. Chile is at the forefront of global copper production, with more than a quarter of the world's total production coming from there.

The mining of the raw material has a downside, as shown in an image from the NASA satellite “Landsat 9” from the beginning of January 2024; it leaves clear traces in the landscape. Among other things, large amounts of mining waste are generated. When digging, debris is created. This rock contains little copper and is therefore not usable. It towers northwest of the pit. A few kilometers to the southeast you can see brighter, shimmering ponds in which residual liquid from the ore processing process is stored.

Mummy bears witness to a long tradition

The search for raw materials in Chuquicamata has a long tradition. As early as the 6th century, the ore attracted people who came to the desert in the hope of wealth. This is evidenced by the discovery of a well-preserved mummy that researchers were able to date to the year 550. It is apparently an indigenous miner.

Driven by new technologies and money from the US industrialist family Guggenheim, ore mining expanded at the beginning of the 20th century. The workers dug deeper and deeper until the mine eventually even consumed the settlement of the same name.

City had to move

For decades, numerous miners had lived in the nearby small town of Chuquicamata. During the heyday of the settlement in the 1950s, visitors from many countries came to the desert camp. The revolutionary Che Guevara also stopped in Chuquicamata during his motorcycle tour in 1951.

As the mine grew, so did the amount of exhaust gases and dust, and life in Chuquicamata became increasingly uncomfortable. After long negotiations with the residents, the city began to be evacuated in 2004, and the remaining approximately 2,500 residents were gradually relocated to Calama, 15 kilometers away.

»The fact that my birthplace is slowly being buried is painful. “But if we don’t allow it, the mine cannot continue to exist,” a union activist told the Washington Post at the time.

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