Railway between Rancagua and El Teniente.
Chuquicamata is reached by way of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway. An all-day ride from Antofagasta Port takes the traveller across the flaming nitrate pampas, waterless, without a sign of green, winding upwards until the air is chill and the wind bleak. At sundown, when the station of Calama is approached, the altitude of nearly 8000 feet has been attained. In the distance the lights of the mining camp flicker at a higher level; Calama itself shows a brilliant flare of green, for here is the river Loa and a little modern town with fields and orchards superimposed upon very ancient remains. Gold, pottery, and textiles showing Inca influence have been found in the old cemeteries of Calama.
There is from Calama a small branch line of a few miles running to Punto de Rieles, and some use is made of this to ship merchandise, etc., to and from the Chuquicamata camp: but a private line is projected, and a number of company motor cars traverse the road across the saffron desert between the main line and the mines, ignoring Punto de Rieles as much as possible. That ramshackle village is, indeed, little more than an impudent hanger-on of the big works; practically every little frowsy shack is a saloon or a gambling-den, more than one of the most enterprising brothel-keepers being white ex-employés of the camp. Even were any serious attempt made to operate Chuquicamata as a “dry” camp, the existence of this terminus-village a mile away would counteract these efforts.
The great ore bodies of Chuquicamata lie in a range of low, pale-hued hills rising gently from the shelving, wind-swept, dust-strewn plain; the chief mass of ore is easily attacked by steam shovels placed upon four or five different levels cut along the face of the most accessible slope, a system of light railways carrying the blasted-out rock, often of the beautiful blue and green tints exhibited by copper sulphates, to the plant in a shallow saucer below. Here also are the residential quarters of this isolated camp, where there is neither vegetation nor water, and a dust-laden wind prevails over the cold, widespread territory, bordered only by the snow-crowned peaks of such Andean giants as S. Pedro and S. Pablo.
The Chuquicamata ores are, chiefly, basic sulphates of copper, yielding about 1.7 per cent of the mineral. The present plant has a crushing capacity of 15,000 tons per day, which amount should produce 200 tons of bar copper. As work goes on all day and every day, this production if sustained would produce in twelve months over 70,000 tons of electrolytic copper, a quantity which Chuquicamata has not yet recorded; the mine’s best year so far was that of 1918, when a total of 101,134,000 pounds of electrolytic copper was produced, or about 45,000 tons. The leaching or lixiviation process is employed here: the ores, crushed fairly fine, are soaked in a solution of copper sulphate for 48 hours, during which period the copper in the introduced ore is drawn into the liquid. This, when chlorine has been extracted, is poured into vats through which strong electric currents are passed, causing the copper to be deposited in metallic form upon the copper sheets suspended therein. The sheets and the deposited metal are melted and cast into bars, the process producing a high-grade electrolytic copper bringing top market prices. Eight hundred million tons of low-grade ore are stated to be in sight at Chuquicamata, and a plant capable of turning out 600 tons of bar copper daily is talked of.
Power for operating the Chuquicamata mine, works and camp is derived from Tocopilla, 100 miles distant on the seacoast, where the company’s plant is situated. Transmission lines follow the course of one of the nitrate railways from the port to El Toco, thence running out across the desert, where a highway also extends. Since no fuel exists in this northerly region, nor are there water-falls available, the plant uses petroleum imported from North America to generate the power required.
Chuquicamata employs about 2000 Chilean or Bolivian, with a small sprinkling of Peruvian, workers, housed under conditions which leave something to be desired. Many of the huts are made of sheetiron, with partitions dividing the rooms; the floors are of mud, and an opaque substitute for glass obscures the window space in too many cases. The better-class houses are insufficient for all the native-born workers, and it is not surprising that a degree of discontent has more than once been fomented in the camp. Daily wages run higher here than at El Teniente, averaging over nine Chilean pesos per day as against rather less than eight pesos, but this raised scale does not compensate for the greater cost of living and other disadvantages. Fuel is one of the serious difficulties; coal is almost unknown, and the employé’s womenfolk are seen cooking over a charcoal brazier, or a fire made of an umbelliferous plant from the mountains (llareta), or a few pieces of wood brought from long distances. A great deal is said by the company of the Welfare Work Department: its most striking exemplification is in the big clubhouse which, well equipped and decorated, is however used almost exclusively by the North American officials and their families.
In addition to the two big mining plants at El Teniente and Chuquicamata, the Guggenheim interests in Chile include the old-established smelters at Carrizal and Caldera ports: the latter, in common with all the smelters founded during the last century, took only high-grade ores, the average of the mineral accepted here working out at about 10½ per cent of copper. These works turned out over 5000 tons of copper ingots in 1918, but were closed in 1921, following the slump in prices.
Chuquicamata is operated by the Chile Copper Company, a subsidiary of the Chile Exploration Company; El Teniente is operated by the Braden Copper Company, which is owned by the Kennecott Copper Corporation, one of the Guggenheim creations also controlling Alaskan and Utah copper properties. The Braden Copper Company is stated to have shown a deficit of $1,500,000, United States, in 1919.