Qualla: Codelco https://qualla.com/codelco en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:08 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Codelco https://qualla.com/codelco Codelco: Introduction https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit Eder Pizarro, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1898, miners at Chuquicamata unearthed something unexpected: a mummified man, dated to around 550 A.D., crushed beneath a rockfall in an ancient shaft. They called him "Copper Man," and his presence proved what the landscape had long suggested -- people have been pulling copper from this stretch of the Atacama Desert for at least fifteen hundred years. Today, the operation that inherited those ancient diggings is Codelco, the National Copper Corporation of Chile, and it is the largest copper mining company on Earth.

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Image: Eder Pizarro | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Codelco: From Foreign Hands to National Treasure https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit Victorddt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Codelco's story is inseparable from the story of Chilean sovereignty over its own mineral wealth. For most of the twentieth century, American corporations controlled Chile's richest copper deposits. The Guggenheim family's Chile Exploration Company began industrial mining at Chuq...

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Image: Victorddt | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-from-foreign-hands-to-national-treasure.mp3 0:06 2 full Codelco: The Pit That Swallowed a City https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit Manxuc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Chuquicamata is the mine that defined Codelco, and its scale defies easy comprehension. For decades it was the world's largest annual copper producer, and it has yielded over 29 million tonnes of copper in total -- far more than any other mine in history. The open pit grew so eno...

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Image: Manxuc | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-the-pit-that-swallowed-a-city.mp3 0:06 3 full Codelco: Underground Empire at El Teniente https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit X20CrMoV121, CC BY-SA 4.0. Seven hundred kilometers to the south, in the Andes east of Rancagua, El Teniente claims to be the largest underground copper mine in the world. The Jesuits knew the orebody in the sixteenth century and operated a small mine called the Socavon de los Jesuitas. American engineer W...

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Image: X20CrMoV121 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-underground-empire-at-el-teniente.mp3 0:06 4 full Codelco: Copper, Lithium, and the Weight of the Future https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit WeHaKa, CC BY-SA 4.0. Codelco faces a paradox common to aging mining giants: its deposits remain vast, but extraction grows harder. Production in 2023 fell to 72 percent of 2004 levels, dragged down by geomechanical instabilities at three major mines. The company is spending billions to transition sur...

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Image: WeHaKa | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-copper-lithium-and-the-weight-of-the-future.mp3 0:06 5 full Codelco: Desert Colossus https://qualla.com/codelco/ Photo credit Javier Rubilar, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the air, Codelco's operations transform the Atacama into a landscape of geometric abstraction. The Chuquicamata pit is a terraced spiral descending into ochre earth, surrounded by tailings ponds and processing facilities that spread across the desert floor like a circuit boa...

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Image: Javier Rubilar | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/k/p/5/codelco-wp/6kp5-codelco-desert-colossus.mp3 0:06 6 full