Gold mining in Chile

Gold mine in Andacollo,Coquimbo Region.
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Location of the five mines that produces most gold in Chile.[1]

The amount of gold mined in Chile has fluctuated in the 2010–2023 period from a high of 50,852 kg in 2013 to a low of 30,907 kg in 2022.[2] Also in the same period 36% to 72% of the gold produced annualy in Chile was a by-product of copper mining.[2] The share of medium and small-scale mining in gold production in Chile has dropped from an average of 45% for the 2003–2005 period to 9% in 2023.[2]

Most of the economically viable gold deposits in Chile belong to two types of deposits; high-sulfidation epithermal and porphyry type.[3] The bulk of these deposits formed in the last 66 millions years (Cenozoic) in connection to magmatic activity in the Andes.[3] Gold from iron oxide copper gold ore deposits (IOCG), from mesothermal deposits, or of Mesozoic age (formed 66 to 252 million years ago) may in some cases be recurrent geological features but lack often large concentrations to make them profitable.[3] Almost all valuable non-placer gold in Chile occur in the northern half of the country and some deposits are grouped into belts like the Maricunga Gold Belt and El Indio Gold Belt.[3]

Almost no mining of placer gold occurs today.[4] The placer deposits of some areas of difficult access in Patagonia are subject to sporadic small-scale illegal gold mining.[5] A 2019 study found that seven of Chile's ten best placer gold prospects lie around Cordillera de Nahuelbuta.[4]

Largest gold mines in Chile

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Largest gold mines in Chile by production[1]
Mine Type Primary product Kg of gold Year of
production		 Year of
opening		 Projected
year of
closure		 Owners Sources
Collahuasi Open-pit Copper 2,674 2023 1999 2106 Glencore (44%)
Anglo American (44%)
JCR (12%)		 [1][6]
Centinela Open-pit Copper 5,103 2023 2014 2068 Antofagasta plc [1][7]
Escondida Open-pit Copper 5,647 2023 1990 2078 BHP (57.5%)
Rio Tinto (30%)
JECO Corporation (10%)
JECO 2 Ltd (2.5%)		 [1][8]
El Peñón Underground Gold 5,109 2023 1999 2031 Pan American Silver [1][9]
La Coipa Open-pit Gold 4,759 2023 1993 2032 Kinross Gold [1][10]

History

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See also: History of mining in Chile

Incas exploited placer gold in the northern half of Chile prior to the arrival of the Spanish.[11] It has been claimed that the Inca Empire expanded into Diaguita lands because of its mineral wealth. This hypothesis was as of 1988 under dispute.[12] An expansion of this hypothesis is that the Incas would have invaded the relatively well-populated Eastern Diaguita valleys (present-day Argentina) to obtain labour to send to Chilean mining districts.[12] Archaeologists Tom Dillehay and Américo Gordon claim Incan yanakuna extracted gold south of the Incan frontier in free Mapuche territory. Following this thought, the main motive for Incan expansion into Mapuche territory would have been to access gold mines.[13]

Pedro de Valdivia the conquistador that bought much of Chile under Spanish rule and initiated mining on behalf of the Spanish. Pedro Mariño de Lobera records that a common story in Chile at the time of Valdivia's death was that Valdivia had been killed by Mapuches that forced him to drink molten gold.[14]

Early Spaniards extracted gold from placer deposits using indigenous labour.[11] This contributed to cause the Arauco War, as native Mapuches lacked a tradition of forced labour like the Andean mita and largely refused to serve the Spanish.[15] The key area of the Arauco War were the valleys around Cordillera de Nahuelbuta where the Spanish designs for this region was to exploit the placer deposits of gold using unfree Mapuche labour from the nearby and densely populated valleys.[16] Deaths related to mining contributed to a population decline among native Mapuches.[15] Another site of Spanish mining was the city of Villarrica. Here the Spanish mined gold placers and silver.[17] The original site of the city was likely close to modern Pucón.[17] However at some point in the 16th century it is presumed the gold placers were buried by lahars flowing down from nearby Villarrica volcano. This prompted settlers to relocate the city further west at its modern location.[17]

While of less importance than gold districts in the south, the Spanish also carried out mining operations in Central Chile. There the whole economy was oriented towards mining. As indigenous populations in Central Chile declined to about 30% of their 1540s numbers towards the end of the 16th century and gold deposits became depleted, the Spanish of Central Chile begun to focus on livestock operations.[18]

Mining activity declined in the late 16th century as the richest placer deposits, which are usually the most shallow, became exhausted.[11] The decline was aggravated by the collapse of the Spanish cities in the south following the battle of Curalaba (1598) which meant for the Spaniards the loss of both the main gold districts and the largest indigenous labour sources.[19] Gold mining became a taboo among Mapuches in colonial times, and gold mining often prohibited under the death penalty.[20] Compared to the 16th and 18th centuries, Chilean mining activity in the 17th century was very limited.[21] Gold production totaled as little as 350 kg over the whole century.[11] Chile exported minor amounts of copper to the rest of the Viceroyalty of Peru in the 17th century.[22] But Chile saw an unprecedented revival of its mining activity in the 18th century, with annual gold production rising from 400 to 1000 kg over the course of the century.[23] Gold, silver and copper from Chilean mining begun to be exported directly to Spain via the Straits of Magellan and Buenos Aires in the 18th century.[24]

In 1879 an expedition led by Chilean Navy officer Ramón Serrano Montaner discovered gold in some watercourses of western Tierra del Fuego.[25][26] In 1880–1881 enterprises and mining camps at the gold fields discovered by Montaner's expedition were established.[27] The Tierra del Fuego gold rush was triggered in 1884 when the French steamship Arctique ran aground on the northern coast of Cape Virgenes, in Argentina near the border with Chile.[25][27] The gold rush reached the Chilean islands south of Beagle Channel so that by 1893 over one thousand men, most of them Dalmatians, lived there. However, by 1894 gold extraction begun to decline in these islands and deposits became gradually depleted.[25][28] A number of enterprises formed in the 1900s to extract gold from the islands south of Beagle Channel ended with meager results.[28]

At the turn of the century back-and-forth implementation and removal of the gold standard in Chile caused concurrent periods of upswing and decline of gold mining in Chile.[29]

The devastating consequences of the Great Depression in Chile in the labour market led to a revival of gold ming in Cordón Baquedano by Chilote and Croatian pirquineros in the 1930s.[30]

The locality of Andacollo, near the port of Coquimbo, was subject to gold rush in the early 1930s when there was a large inflow of gold miners exploiting local placer deposits.[29] While gold mining declined in the late 1930s, around 1935 Andacollo produced as much as 43% of all placer gold of Chile causing a shortage of water needed for processing.[29]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g "The five largest gold mines in operation in Chile". Mining Technology. 2024-06-18. Retrieved 2025-05-12.
  2. ^ a b c Cifras actualizadas de la minería (Report) (in Spanish). Consejo Minero. 2025-03-01. p. 31.{{cite report}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  3. ^ a b c d Cabello, José. "Gold deposits in Chile". Andean Geology. 48 (1): 1–23.
  4. ^ a b Jara, J. Joaquín; Moreno, Francisco; Jara, Raúl; Dubournais, Francisco; Mata, Rodrigo; Peters, David; Marquardt, Carlos; Lagos, Gustavo (2019). "Ranking of Placer Gold Prospects in Chile Through Analytic Hierarchy Process". Natural Resources Research. 28 (3): 813–832. Bibcode:2019NRR....28..813J. doi:10.1007/s11053-018-9420-5. S2CID 169899273.
  5. ^ Scholvin, Sören; Atienza, Miguel. "La formalización de la pequeña minería en Chile: logros y desafíos de la Empresa Nacional de Minería (ENAMI)". Investigaciones Geográficas (in Spanish). 66: 1–13.
  6. ^ "Collahuasi". Consejo Minero (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2 June 2017. Retrieved 2025-04-11.
  7. ^ "Centinela". Consejo Minero (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-05-15.
  8. ^ "Minera Escondida". Consejo Minero (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-04-11.
  9. ^ "El Peñón". Pan American Silver. Retrieved 2025-05-15.
  10. ^ "La Coipa". Consejo Minero (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-05-15.
  11. ^ a b c d Maksaev, Víctor; Townley, Brian; Palacios, Carlos; Camus, Francisco (2006). "6. Metallic ore deposits". In Moreno, Teresa; Gibbons, Wes (eds.). Geology of Chile. Geological Society of London. pp. 179–180. ISBN 9781862392199.
  12. ^ a b Lorandi, A.M. (1988). "Los diaguitas y el tawantinsuyu: Una hipótesis de conflicto". In Dillehay, Tom; Netherly, Patricia (eds.). La frontera del estado Inca (in Spanish). pp. 197–214.
  13. ^ Dillehay, T.; Gordon, A. (1988). "La actividad prehispánica y su influencia en la Araucanía". In Dillehay, Tom; Netherly, Patricia (eds.). La frontera del estado Inca (in Spanish). pp. 183–196.
  14. ^ Mariño de Lobera, Pedro (1960). "XLIII". Crónica del Reino de Chile (in Spanish). ...hicieron con él muchas fiestas por burla y escarnio, y por remate trajeron una olla de oro ardiendo y se la presentaron, diciéndole: pues tan amigo eres de oro, hártate agora dél, y para que lo tengas más guardado, abre la boca y bebe aqueste que viene fundido, y diciendo esto lo hicieron como lo dijeron, dándoselo a beber por fuerza, teniendo por fin de su muerte lo que tuvo por fin de su entrada en Chile
  15. ^ a b Bengoa, José (2003). Historia de los antiguos mapuches del sur (in Spanish). Santiago: Catalonia. pp. 252–253. ISBN 956-8303-02-2.
  16. ^ Zavala C., José Manuel (2014). "The Spanish-Araucanian World of the Purén and Lumaco Valley in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries". In Dillehay, Tom (ed.). The Teleoscopic Polity. Springer. pp. 55–73. ISBN 978-3-319-03128-6.
  17. ^ a b c Petit-Breuilh 2004, pp. 48–49.
  18. ^ Contreras Cruces, Hugo (2016). "Migraciones locales y asentamiento indígena en las estancias españolas de Chile central, 1580-1650". Historia (in Spanish). 49 (1): 87–110. doi:10.4067/S0717-71942016000100004.
  19. ^ Salazar & Pinto 2002, p. 15.
  20. ^ Payàs Puigarnau, Getrudis; Villena Araya, Belén (2021-12-15). "Indagaciones en torno al significado del oro en la cultura mapuche. Una exploración de fuentes y algo más" [Inquiries on the Meaning of Gold in Mapuche Culture. A review of sources and something more]. Estudios Atacameños (in Spanish). 67. doi:10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2021-0028. S2CID 244279716.
  21. ^ Villalobos et al. 1974, p. 168.
  22. ^ Villalobos, Sergio; Retamal Ávila, Julio; Serrano, Sol (2000). Historia del pueblo Chileno (in Spanish). Vol. 4. p. 154.
  23. ^ Villalobos et al. 1974, pp. 226–227.
  24. ^ Salazar & Pinto 2002, p. 16–17.
  25. ^ a b c Martinic Beros 1973, pp. 55–65
  26. ^ Bascopé Julio, Joaquín (November 2010). "Sentidos coloniales I. El oro y la vida salvaje en Tierra del Fuego, 1880-1914" (PDF). Magallania. 38 (2): 5–26. doi:10.4067/S0718-22442010000200001. ISSN 0718-2244.
  27. ^ a b Martinic Beros, Mateo (2003). "La minería aurífera en la región austral americana (1869-1950)". Historia (in Spanish). 36. doi:10.4067/S0717-71942003003600009 (inactive 1 November 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)
  28. ^ a b Martinic Beros 1973, pp. 65–75
  29. ^ a b c Millán 2006, pp. 13–14.
  30. ^ Saldívar, Juan M. (2020). "Etnografía histórica de la migración croata y chilota en la fiebre del oro en Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego, Chile 1930-1990" [Historical Ethnography of the croatian and chilotes migration in the gold rush of Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego, Chile 1930-1990]. Estudios Atacameños (in Spanish). 66. doi:10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2020-0054.

Bibliography

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