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The Chilean Exploration Company, a subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, had been operating the copper mines at Chuquicamata since 1905. Together with the Braden Copper Company and Anden Copper Mining, these three North American companies controlled 95 per cent of copper mining. As copper was the country’s most important source of foreign exchange, the nationalisation of the copper mines became one of the most important political tasks. In 1971, Salvador Allende nationalised the copper industry, a measure that even the military junta was unable to reverse following its coup. - Book: Picture 171 - Chile - 1976

The copper mines of Chuquicamata, situated at 2,800 metres in the Puna de Atacama. The reserves of copper ore in this, the world’s largest open-cast copper mine, are estimated at around one billion tonnes. - Book: Picture 169 - Chile - 1976

Chuquicamata is the world’s largest open-cast copper mine and is situated in the heart of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The mine’s enormous pit is more than 4 kilometres long, 3 kilometres wide and over 1,000 metres deep. – The photograph shows the extracted ore being smelted at extremely high temperatures and processed into pure copper at the adjacent Chuquicamata copper smelter (Fundición). – Chile – 1976

The huge copper smelter and industrial facilities at the Chuquicamata copper mine in the Chilean Atacama Desert. In the foreground, settling ponds (thickening tanks) and extensive processing areas can be seen, whilst in the background, smoking chimneys and the barren slopes of the desert mountains rise up. Chuquicamata (often called ‘Chuqui’) belongs to the Chilean state-owned mining company Codelco and has shaped global copper production for over a century. – Chile – 1976