Chuquicamata Copper: A Historic Account of the Atacama

Chuquicamata Copper: A Historic Account of the Atacama Andrew MacKinnon

An Illustrated Story for Design-Philosophy-Architecture with Hélène Frichot

Chuquicamata Copper: A Historic Account of the Atacama Andrew MacKinnon 836149 Semester 1, 2021

Melbourne School of Design Design-Philosophy-Architecture Hélène Frichot 2

Abstract Story Bibliography

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Abstract After a violent eruption from core to porphyry, copper rested silently amongst the rocks for millennia. Animals searched for plants that grew on the land and the Atacameños hunted and gathered both. For centuries Indigenous humans began to collect and smelt copper. In more recent centuries, the Atacama has become a rich source of material wealth. Copper’s cousins, gold and silver, were sought by the Incas and then the Spanish, and saltpetre triggered a war between the Chileans and a Peruvian/Bolivian alliance. These first forays into extraction resulted in increased aridity as timber and llareta was used to fuel fires; Anthropos has already begun to change the environment.

Now, roads and rail criss-cross the salt flats forming an urban network, slurry containing mercury and arsenic fills massive tailing ponds and gigantic open-cut craters visible from space cover the land from Antofagasta to Argentina.

The scale of 21st century copper extraction in the Atacama is powered by the insatiable human need for electronic devices and is wreaking devastation on a delicate ecosystem.

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This illustrated story takes you on a journey through the history of copper’s environment-world, the Atacama, to better understand the entanglement of humans, animals, plants, landscape, capital, and copper. The Atacama, famous for its salt flats, flower blooms, and Mars-like landscape, has been disrupted for far too long. Humans have stigmatised the desert as barren, empty and useless, when it is home to vicuña, guanaco, vizcacha, llama, grey fox and llareta. There is hope that by unpacking the complicated relationships of colonisation, neoextractivism and environmentalism, an appreciation for the diversity and complexity of the enviro-socio-political situation is cultivated. Key issues of colonisation, urbanisation, contamination, complicity, sovereignty, and resource depletion are emphasised to create a space for conversation and new epistemologies around the urgency in ameliorating the intense extractivism occurring in our global neoliberal systems.

Keywords: colonisation; extractivism; urbanisation; sovereignty; ecosystem

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esting amongst the dirt and rocks, Copper is at home. It is a quiet existence apart from the occasional grumble from below or the clap of lightning from above. It enjoys the present, nowhere to be, nowhere to go, nothing to do, just be.

It wasn’t always this way, and it won’t remain this way. Copper’s story began from within the fiery mass of a dying supergiant, until a tug of war between forces ejected an orphaned Copper into the abyss.1 Floating, spinning, accumulating, and condensing, Copper acquired friends and with the help of gravity, forged their complex home.

It did not take six days, and they did not rest.

Attraction, rejection, and noble individualism shaped the neighbourhoods. There were those who dwelt deep within, those high above, but the majority, including Copper, travelled in between.

The trip from the underworld to the surface was by no means simple. Violent ruptures ejected magma, a molten soup of matter, some within the lithosphere, some in the seas and others from volcanoes. Copper found itself in a chamber, waiting for its moment to be transported upwards and outwards by hydrothermal fluids and oozed through veins.2-3 1 Karen Barad, “No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of Spacetimemattering,” in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, eds. Anna Tsing, Swanson Heather, Gan Elaine, and Bubandt Nils (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 103-20, accessed May 28, 2021, http://www. jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1qft070.10.

2 Gary Graffam, Mario Rivera, and Alvaro Carevič, “Ancient Metallurgy in the Atacama: Evidence for Copper Smelting during Chile’s Early Ceramic Period,” Latin American Antiquity 7, no. 2 (1996): 102-04, accessed March 19, 2021. doi:10.2307/971612.

3 “About Copper.” Copper Alliance. Accessed March 4, 2021. https://copperalliance.org/ about-copper/. “Copper.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed March 5, 2021. https://www. britannica.com/science/copper. “Copper.” Royal Society of Chemistry. Accessed March 5, 2021. https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/29/copper.

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Copper has been lucky to remain in its porphyry, enjoying a long slumber. Proximity to the edge of home has not been as uneventful for all its kin. With the heat removed and the introduction of gases and water, many could no longer remain independent or still. Over millennia, their interdependence was replaced by powerful relationships.4 There were those who joined forces to metamorphosise into beautiful bright coloured minerals, atacamite, bornite, chalcocite, chalcopyrite, cuprite, malachite, and azurite.5 Others were stripped apart and dispersed by the gentle stroke of running water. It was water who became the greatest disturber of the peace. Despite the dryness of the Atacama, water made its presence felt. Geysers of blue, green, and yellow bubbled away, rain pulled sediments down towards the streams and the Loa River dispersed it to the sea.

Floral blooms and patches of llareta are constant reminders of seasonal mists, fogs and ground water.6

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4 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “The Geology of Morals,” in A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), 40.

5 David Fuller, “The production of copper in 6th century Chile’s Chuquicamata mine,” JOM 56 (2004): 62-66, https://doi. org/10.1007/s11837-004-0256-6 6 Pugnaire, Francisco, Jose Morillo, Cristina Armas, Susan Rodríguez‐Echeverría, and Aurora Gaxiola. “Azorella compacta: survival champions in extreme, high‐elevation environments.” Ecosphere 11, 2 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3031

After testing the conditions for five past generations of creatures, the stage was set for the first mammals in the Atacama. The vicuna, guanaco, vizcacha, llama and grey fox. These creatures did not desire Copper, but Homo sapiens were caught by its entrancing green glow. Verdigris, a burst of colour amongst the browns and whites of the salty dirty flats lured the humans. Something set them apart from their fellow animals, curiosity perhaps. It was the Atacameños who discovered that heat could allow them to shape Copper’s form.7 The sharp point of a spear allowed them to fend off predators and hooks could catch fish.8 Despite the new powers Copper had granted the Atacameño, they remained responsible and cared for the lands.9 They crafted curved vessels for water and mud structures for sleeping. They developed comfort, but not permanence. However, news soon arrived from Copper’s northern cousins of a larger greedier group of humans, in search of Gold and Silver. The Incas no longer dwelt with the earthly things, they felt transcendent and followed Sun gods, like those of Copper’s Maker.10

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7 Graffam, Rivera, and Carevič, “Ancient Metallurgy in the Atacama,” 101-13.

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Fuller, “The production of copper,” 66.

9 Juan Javier Rivera Andía and Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, eds. “Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Extractivism, and Turbulences in South America,” in Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 2, accessed March 25, 2021, https://link. springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-31993435-8_1#citeas 10 Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene,” eflux Journal, no. 75 (2016), https:// www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/

The Incas were the first to begin shaping the lands Copper inhabits today. They cut trees and harvested llareta for fire and architecture.

Searched for Gold and Silver and built towns.

They made networks called roads and amalgamated languages, cultures, and people. Copper soon witnessed the meaning of religion, economy, and power. Reciprocity, exchange, and labour as key economic devices meant Copper was fashioned into artisanal objects and military weapons. With the Incas, Copper reached the height of temples and was transported across an empire.

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The arrival of steel-clad men on giant mammals brought the Incan Empire to its knees. The wooden, stone, and bronze weapons were no match for hard steel swords and flying metal bullets. The Spanish Conquistadors called this ancient land the New World.11 They brought old religions, old customs, colonial agendas, and Enlightenment thinking. Their plans involved order, hierarchy, rationalisation, and profit.12 Their greed led to a much more sinister violence.

Copper’s neighbour, Gold and Silver, brought wealth to the Spanish, while Potassium Nitrate gave them the power to take life.13 They invaded and colonised the Atacama and as foreigners, labelled it a resource rather than a home.14

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11 Georges Perec, Species of Space and Other Pieces, trans. John Sturrock (Penguin Classics, 2008 (1974)), 76.

12 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (London: Routledge, 2002).

13 Jeff Desjardins, “How Copper Riches Helped Shape Chile’s Economic Story,” Visual Capitalist, accessed June 6, 2021. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ copper-shape-chile-economic-story/.

14 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “The Smooth and the Striated,” in A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), 474-500.

Like the Incas before them, the Spanish lost their grip on power, and the smaller nations of Peru, Bolivia and Chile carved out their independence.

Cursed with the legacy of greed, violence, and power, these three groups of similar ancestry went to war. Copper’s once peaceful home was now the front line of conflict. Growing populations and growing armies demanded saltpetre for gunpowder and fertiliser, and the Atacama became a valuable commodity. Chile won the war and annexed the Atacama.

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Copper had enjoyed witnessing this tumultuous time and had been given opportunity to create art, music, fashion, sculpture, building ornamentation and weapons. Nevertheless, Copper and humans were about to become more entangled than ever. For Copper has always been gifted with the ability to pass its electrons. It’s metallic structure allows its electrons to flow freely like water in a stream. Copper had kept this secret, until some clever humans discovered the ability to create and transport electricity as a current.

Gold and Silver could do the same, as with most metals, but Copper was abundant, affordable, and efficient. The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of partnership with Copper as networks of roads became networks of electricity and networks of information. The American’s drive for innovation during the two European Wars led to Copper’s integration into most post-war technologies. Capitalism was their mantra, and Chile and much of Latin America was their source of capital.

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For centuries, the site of Copper’s extraction from porphyry was Chuquicamata. After Chile’s independence, a mineral rush brought hundreds to camp and lay claim to new veins. Over time, these camps began to merge, with the smaller ill placed ones being submerged, blown up or dismantled when the hungry mine decided to gobble them up. The town of Chuquicamata, roughly translating to ‘tip of the spear’ in Atacameño, was eventually consolidated under US control by the Guggenheim’s Chilex Company.15 Americans maintained control of the mine’s capital through Anaconda Copper and developed their technology. Copper’s environment and the miners were not cared for by the Americans but remained essential for electricity and capital production.16

15 Chuquicamata was brought under Chilex Company ownership in 1915. Louise Egan, “Chile Company Town Goes Dust to Dust,” The Washington Post, published February 1, 2004, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/01/ chile-company-town-goes-dust-to-dust/5abc884e-5143-48ff-8fd0-87a70ad1d6e8/.

16 “Cold efficiency and impotent resentment go hand in hand in the big mine, linked in spite of the hatred by the common necessity to live, on the one hand, and to speculate on the other… we will see whether one day, some miner will take up his pick in pleasure and go and poison his lungs with a conscious joy.” Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey, trans. Aleida Guevara March (Ocean Press, 2003 (1992)), 72.

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Copper was present on his bike, but also in his mind, when Ernesto Che Guevara visited the port city of Antofagasta and Chuquicamata mine on his famous motorcycle tour of Latin America.17 He critiqued the abuse and murder of the proletariat and the terrible conditions created by the mine.18 He foreshadowed the rise of Marxist President Salvador Allende and suggested the task of removing American influence in the mining industry as a nearly impossible task. When Allende was eventually elected President of Chile, he nationalised the mine.19 Related or not, he was subsequently assassinated during Augusto Pinochet’s US backed coup.20 While the mine remained nationalised, Pinochet compensated the ‘Gringos’ for their loss and made himself a tidy sum.21 Pinochet’s murderous dictatorship ushered in an era of corruption and neoliberal policy that has paved the way for contemporary extractivism and ecological devastation.

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17 Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries.

18 Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries, 72-78.

19 Desjardins, “How Copper Riches Helped Shape Chile’s Economic Story.”

20 Salvador Allende was elected in 1970.

He nationalised Chile’s mines in 1971 and state-run company Codelco assumed control.

Allende was assassinated during Pinochet’s coup was in 1973. Pinochet dictatorship brought neoliberal policy to Chile, but Codelco still maintained mining operations.

Lindsay Masters, “Free Market Environmentalism: Desalination as a Solution to Limited Water Resources in Northern Chile’s Mining Industry,” Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy 23, 1 (2012): 266, access March 24, 2021, https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/ colenvlp23&id=259&men_tab=srchresults.

21 “The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quantity of dollars the United States has invested and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests appear threatened.” Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries, 78.

Chuquicamata, still mined by Codelco, National Copper Corporation of Chile, is the largest open cut mine of Copper.22 Copper’s quiet underground home is now a gigantic hole in the earth’s crust. Chuquicamata alone was not enough to feed the modern humans insatiable desire for Copper. Codelco are now joined by BHP, Barrick, Freeport-McMoRan, Antofagasta PLC, Lundin, and Rio Tinto.23 These are not Empires like the Incan or Spanish, but they come with the same desires and have more power than some small countries.24 They are not driven by Sun Gods or the Christian God, but through the capitalist delusion of continual and infinite growth.

Neoliberalism guides them, and crude individualism and an invisible market drives them. Copper does not care whether it rests in the ground, or travels around its earthly home, but the environment where it is found can be detrimentally damaged in the process of its removal. Mines need electricity, water, and access. The addition of Lithium and Salt to the list of nearby commodities results in a complex network of roads, train lines, powerlines, and pipes that crisscross Copper’s home.25-26 The urbanisation of the Atacama affects the surviving Atacameños, wildlife, and plants more than it does Copper and its kin.27

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22 Codelco. Accessed June 6, 2021, https://www.codelco.com/.

23 “Copper.” BHP. Accessed March 4, 2021. https://www.bhp.com/our-businesses/ our-commodities/copper/.

24 Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies, trans.

Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton, (London: The Athlone Press, 2000 (1989)), 47.

25 Amit Katwala, “The devastating environmental impact of technological progress,” Wired, accessed March 19, 2021, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ lithium-copper-mining-atacama-desert.

26 David Maisel, “Desolation Desert,” 2020. https://davidmaisel.com/works/ desolation-desert/ 27 Rivera Andía and Ødegaard, eds.

“Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Extractivism,” 2.

The Atacama is diverse with salt flats, flower blooms, Mars-like landscape and unique inhabitants but is becoming a striated urbanised wasteland.28 Copper cannot be blamed; however, its shiny conductivity has beguiled human beings to carry out atrocities that have affected the wild.29 Little copper bullets lie on the battlefields, roads leave tire imprints on salt, mercury and arsenic slurry fills massive tailing ponds, ten cubic kilometre pits reach down to every vein, and old iPhones sit in landfill.30 Contamination of air, water and soil has led indigenous leader Sonya Ramos to lead protests and walks to save the home of her people.31 The transnational companies mining Copper and Lithium claim to be doing their best to protect and preserve the environment, but their technological changes and greenwashed media only hides the realities of neoextractivism.32-33 Scientists have proposed the Anthropocene, but the indigenous fight for sovereignty and environmental protection makes terms such as Capitalocene or Chalkoscene seem more appropriate.34 While all humans are complicit in their shared dilemma of climate change, there are those who carry more blame.

28

Deleuze and Guattari, “The Smooth and the Striated,” 474-500.

29 William Cronon ed., “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1995), 69-90, accessed 24 March, 2021, https://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Trouble_with_ Wilderness_Main.html.

30 Athena Carkovic et al., “Active and Legacy Mining in an Arid Urban Environment: Challenges and Perspectives for Copiapó, Northern Chile,” Environmental Geochemistry and Health 38, 4(2016): 1001–14. doi:10.1007/s10653-016-9793-5.

31 “Will green technology kill Chile’s deserts?” The Guardian, February 18, 2020, Video, 11:55, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2020/feb/18/ will-green-technology-kill-chiles-deserts-video 32 Elsa Hoover, “The Temporary Logics of Extraction: Tracing Architecture’s (Neo)Colonial Deployment at Three Scales,” in The Avery Review 31 (2018), https://www.averyreview.com/ issues/31/logics-of-extraction.

33 Sally Babidge and Paola Bolados,“Neoextractivism and Indigenous Water Ritual in Salar de Atacama, Chile.” Latin American Perspectives 45, no. 5 (2018): 170-85, https://doi. org/10.1177/0094582X18782673.

34 Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking.”

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Images by David Maisel, “Desolation Desert,” 2020.

35 “Telmatobius dankoi.” IUCN Red List. Accessed April 14, 2021. https://www. iucnredlist.org/species/57335/79813594 36 Sabrina Imbler, “Saving the World’s Last 14 Loa Water Frogs,” Atlas Obscura, accessed April 14, 2021. https://www.atlasobscura. com/articles/last-water-frogs-rescued 37 In 1981, Chile revised its Water Code to be in line with its other Neoliberal Policies.

F.M. Camacho, “Competing rationalities in water conflict: Mining and the indigenous community in Chiu Chiu, El Loa Province, northern Chile,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 33 (2012): 93-107, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-9493.2012.00451.x 38 Gabrielle Hecht, “Residual governance choreographs violence in the Anthropocene,” Feral Atlas, accessed March 19, 2021, https:// feralatlas.supdigital.org/poster/residual-governance-choreographs-violence-in-the-anthropocene.

39 Water usage has increased by ~1020m3/s in both Copper and Lithium industries. Reports show ground water and surface water extraction continues to rise, but companies have added desalination to their sources to make a case for environmental sustainability.

40 F.M. Camacho, “Chile’s free market water scheme brings scarcity and conflict for Indigenous people,” The Conversation, accessed April 14, 2021. https://theconversation.com/chiles-free-market-water-schemebrings-scarcity-and-conflict-for-indigenouspeople-65499 41 “Rescued endangered Loa water frogs have 200 offspring”. BBC News. Accessed April 14, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-latin-america-54643583

The Atacama has been called a desert, but it is by no means barren, empty, useless, or waterless.

Copper, and the Chuquicamata mine, finds itself within the Loa River’s ecology, comfortably positioned in the middle of the rivers U-shaped catchment. The river is Chile’s longest and has been the main water source for most Atacaman animals and humans. Of all the environmental concerns for Anthropos water is the most urgent.

In a small stream off the river, near the city of Calama, Copper knows of a small microendemic frog, Telmatobius dankoi.35 The Loa River frog is a species that has often been confused with its neighbour, the Hall’s water frog, so herpetologist, Andrés Charrier, and his colleagues went to research the frog, only to discover a muddy pond with fourteen malnourished frogs remaining.36 Water was given a new Code as the Chilean government revised policy to place the liquid within a free market economy, outside of government regulation. Codelco was able to extract as much water as necessary for its operations.37 The frog’s water had vanished, overused by mining, agriculture, and domestic use. Economic, political, social, technological, and architectural ecologies have taken precedence over biological.38 Unfortunately, a pursuit for sustainability in growth is a paradox, only resulting in industries extracting more water from the lands of Copper and Lithium.39-40 The surviving frogs were rescued and the National Zoo of Chile in Santiago bred two hundred offspring.41 These little frogs will remain homeless for now, even with the help of celebrities like Leonardo Di Caprio.

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The exposure of porphyry not only displaced Copper, but even the miners who live in the once bustling town of Chuquicamata. Hospital, stadium, pub, houses, shops, banks, schools, and roads, now lie abandoned. It is a ghost town waiting to become submerged by an ever-encroaching mountain of disregarded soil.42-43 As the levels of Arsenic and Sulphur Dioxide from processing plants had become too dangerous for human lungs, the community were relocated to the nearby city of Calama. A union leader born in Chuquicamata, Grineldo Acuna, laments the loss of his home and awaits compensation from the mining companies that forced his relocation.44-45 The town was expendable and forgotten by the wealthy, and an exclusion zone prevents residents from returning.46 Now the town will return to the ground, like the mummy of Copper Man and the original prospector camps, another layer of history is devoured by the ground.47-48 The fate of the modern man is the same as the ancient.

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42 In its prime during the 1950’s Chuquicamata had a thriving community of 24,000 people. The town is not abandoned and has a 10km exclusion zone to prevent residents from returning.

43 Sebastian Ureta, “Caring for Waste: Handling Tailings in a Chilean Copper Mine,” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 48, no.

8 (August 2016): 1532–48. https://doi. org/10.1177/0308518X16645103.

44 In 2007, the town was closed and the citizens relocated to Calama. Many remain without compensation for their lost homes, jobs and years of investment in the community.

45 Egan, “Chile Company Town Goes Dust to Dust.”

46 Hannah Le Roux and Gabrielle Hecht, “Bad Earth” Accumulation. eflux Journal (August, 2020), accessed May 23, 2021, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/ accumulation/345106/bad-earth/.

47 “Whatever the outcome of the battle, one would do well not to forget the lesson taught by the graveyards of the mines, containing only a small share of the immense number of people devoured by cave-ins, silica and the hellish climate of the mountain.” Guevara, Motorcycle Diaries, 73.

48 The mummified remains of a young indigenous man were discovered at Chuquicamata mine in 1899. Named Copper Man, the remains were dated to around 550AD and had turned a green colour from the copper salts. (Fuller, “The production of copper.”)

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While miners are forced to relocate to new towns and campamentos, Copper goes on a world tour from factories to facades, shipping containers to showrooms, exhibited as wealth gained through extractivist economies. Today, the very same Chuquicamata partnership of Copper and Tin, Bronze, is proudly displayed in the heart of New York City as a monument to Modernity and Capitalism.49 Mies Van Der Rohe’s Seagram Building, one of the International Styles most celebrated skyscrapers lavishly advertises the elegant and beautiful Bronze that does not forget its dark, irresponsible, abusive origins. Bronze is sparse compared to the Concrete, Steel, and Glass, but embodies half of the building’s total energy.50 Copper enjoys its view of the city skyline. In fact, Copper has enjoyed its partnership with many architects, fondly remembering Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlo Scarpa. However, during its journey from solitude, processing, transportation, and application, it recalls its resting place, and the workers who felt reverence for it.51

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49 Kiel Moe, “Down to Earth,” Urban Omnibus, published September 2020, https://urbanomnibus.net/2020/09/ down-to-earth/ 50 Howard T. Odum’s “emergy” method describes a materials total energy and “incorporeal web of relations” from origins to application. 1% of the building’s mass but it contributes to 49% of its emergy. (Moe, “Down to Earth.”)

51 Copper’s story calls for animism, instilling ideas of memory, learning, relationships and sensitivity. Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose. “Lively Ethnography: Storying Animist Worlds.” Environmental Humanities, 8,1 (2016): 82.

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Copper remains essential to humans as their dependence on electronics grows.52 Humanity’s voracious need for technological devices has powered a century of intense extraction in the Atacama.53 As the skeletons from the dead begin to be phased out, the humans look to renewable energy. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries, all reliant on Copper and Lithium. If humans demand electric cars, electrical devices, lighting, heating, and cooling, they will remain complicit in extractivism. Copper has a large family under the surface, but they are becoming harder and more expensive to find. 54 The economists value Copper at an all-time high, but this is a sign that it has become an elusive necessity.55 Copper is malleable and likes being reused and reborn, allowing full recycling.56 If the human population remained stable, a circular economy could be established.57 However, high amounts of energy are required and the vicious cycle repeats. A constant process, no rest outside the porphyry.

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52 Steffen Böhm and Maria Misoczky, “Environment, extractivism and the delusions of nature as capital,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies, eds.Raza Mir, Hugh Willmott, Michelle (Greenwood. London: Routledge, 2015).

53 20th-21st Century Copper extraction has made Chile an economic powerhouse.

From 80% to 50% of Chiles total export, the nation remains the largest copper exporter to this day.

54 Rivera Andía and Ødegaard, eds.

“Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Extractivism,” 16.

55 Allison Nathan, “Copper is the New Oil,” May 18, 2021, in Exchanges at Goldman Sach, guest Nick Snowdon.

Podcast, MP3 audio, 18:01, https://www. goldmansachs.com/insights/podcasts/episodes/05-18-2021-nick-snowdon.html.

56 If done well, copper can be 100% recyclable.

57 M.L.C.M. Henckens and Ernst Worrell, “Reviewing the availability of copper and nickel for future generations.

The balance between production growth, sustainability and recycling rates,” Journal of Cleaner Production 264 (2020), https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121460.

From supernova to circuit board, Copper has become indifferent to change.58 Heat waves, high pressures, cold snaps and vacuums, Copper can endure them all. Selflessness is perhaps the state it finds itself in. Interconnected and entangled to its home, everywhere, but nowhere. Having witnessed five mass extinctions, Copper recognises the warning signs for large mammals. It watches on as humans push for a technological solution. They seek to control what they cannot, and it will be their demise. But they will not return to simpler times, nor will they relinquish what power they have.59 Change is constant and becoming cannot be stopped. It is a damaged planet for some, but Copper will remain here well after humans have departed, ready to usher in the next lifeforms as the story cycles to its next chapter.60 Copper’s journey with humans has been short but eventful, now the fate of humanity is in their own hands. Can Anthropos learn from their past, their mistakes and their silenced minorities?61 Could they live in a different way without a reliance on Copper and its kin?

58 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “Introduction: Rhizome,” in A Thousand Plateaus, trans.

Brian Massumi, (London: The Athlone Press, 1988), 25.

59 Foucault, The Order of Things.

60 Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2016), accessed April 24, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.

61 Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman Knowledge (Newark: Polity Press, 2019), accessed April 24, 2021, ProQuest Ebook Central.

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Chuquicamata Copper: A Historic Account of the Atacama

After a violent eruption from core to porphyry, copper rested silently amongst the rocks for millennia.

Now, roads and rail criss-cross the salt flats forming an urban network, slurry containing mercury and arsenic fills massive tailing ponds and gigantic opencut craters visible from space cover the land from Antofagasta to Argentina.

This illustrated story takes you on a journey through the history of copper’s environment-world, the Atacama, to better understand the entanglement of humans, animals, plants, landscape, capital, and copper.

An Illustrated Story for Design-Philosophy-Architecture

by Andrew MacKinnon