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I have some interests in environmental histories among other topics in places I’d prefer to live and more than a few years ago I had a chance to visit Butte Montana. Its socialist hall still stands as does its one-block Chinatown. There is a book which I am still waiting for delivery (a used paperback is cheaper than Kindle) that came to my attention because of its use of semiotics, the science of signs, as well as doing a comparative analysis between two highly separated sites.
Greimas Square explaining the concept of Trust and Betrayal in Butte, Montana. The concept is in Janet Finn's book “Tracing the Veins” This tale of two cities—Butte, Montana, and Chuquicamata, Chile—traces the relationship of capitalism and community across cultural, national, and geographic boundaries. This was made by a student from a conetxt in the book.
It’s an easy comparison between failure and success of mining towns but it does remain an interesting contrast with shared features of mineral extraction and labor exploitation. The transformation of industries in the context of climate change requires a broader understanding of impacts, remediation, and sustainability.
…parallel processes involving distinctive constructions of community, class, and gender in the two widely separated but intimately related sites.
This tale of two cities—Butte, Montana, and Chuquicamata, Chile—traces the relationship of capitalism and community across cultural, national, and geographic boundaries.
This tale of two cities—Butte, Montana, and Chuquicamata, Chile—traces the relationship of capitalism and community across cultural, national, and geographic boundaries. Combining social history with ethnography, Janet Finn shows how the development of copper mining set in motion parallel processes involving distinctive constructions of community, class, and gender in the two widely separated but intimately related sites. While the rich veins of copper in the Rockies and the Andes flowed for the giant Anaconda Company, the miners and their families in both places struggled to make a life as well as a living for themselves. Miner's consumption, a popular name for silicosis, provides a powerful metaphor for the danger, wasting, and loss that penetrated mining life. Finn explores themes of privation and privilege, trust and betrayal, and offers a new model for community studies that links local culture and global capitalism.
The first stop of the tour bus was the most surprising for me: the Chuquicamata office where the guide provides an introduction to the mine is in the middle of a ghost town. The original Chuquicamata town, which housed all mine workers and their families from early in the mine’s development, was abandoned in 2007. Health and safety concerns over the high levels of dust from the mine and gasses from the smelting plant caused Codelco to relocate all families. Today the entire town stands abandoned, with boarded up buildings, fading signs, and wind blowing through the empty streets. As the town was only relatively recently abandoned, and because it is still on mining company property, it has suffered very little decay and vandalism. Although it is not possible to enter any of the buildings, even wandering the streets offers an evocative insight into the harsh realities of life here. fromheretonowhere.com/…
the abandoned children’s playground next to the former school
Chuquicamata, or “Chuqui” as it is more familiarly known, is by excavated volume the largest open pit copper mine in the world, located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama at above sea level, northeast of Antofagasta and north of the capital, Santiago.
By the late 1950s, the three largest copper mines in Chile were Chuquicamata,El Salvador mine, andEl Teniente. Chuquicamata and El Salvador were owned and operated by theAnaconda Copper Company. These mines were mainly self-contained and self-sustaining settlements. They were complete with their own cities to house the workers, their own water and electrical plants, schools, stores,railways, and even in certain cases their own police forces.
It wasn’t just Allende who confiscated Anaconda’s big operation there. The Chilean parliament overwhelmingly voted to do so even though just a third of the members were in Allende’s party. (MB) (Thanks!)
In 1971, Chile's newly elected Socialist presidentSalvador Allendeconfiscated the Chuquicamata mine from Anaconda.[19]:108Anaconda lost two-thirds of its copper production. Two years later, the US-backed military government thatoverthrewthe Communist-backed Allende paid a compensation of $250 million (or $1.4 billion today) to Anaconda.
Established in 1864 as amining campin the northernRocky Mountainson theContinental Divide, Butte experienced rapid development in the late-nineteenth century, and was Montana's first major industrial city.[5]In its heyday between the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it was one of the largest copperboomtownsin theAmerican West. Employment opportunities in the mines attracted surges of Asian and European immigrants, particularly theIrish;[6]as of 2017, Butte has the largest population ofIrish Americansper capita of any city in the United States.[7]
The mines attracted workers fromCornwall(England),[12]Ireland, Wales, Lebanon, Canada, Finland, Austria, Italy, China,Montenegro, Mexico, and more.[13]In the ethnic neighborhoods, young men formed gangs to protect their territory and socialize into adult life, including the Irish of Dublin Gulch, the Eastern Europeans of the McQueen Addition, and the Italians of Meaderville.[14]
The Berkeley Pit is a former open pitcoppermine located in Butte, Montana, United States. It is 1 mi (1,600 m) long by 1⁄2 mi (800 m) wide with an approximate depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is heavily acidic (2.5 pH level), about the acidity of Coca-Cola, lemon juice,[1] or gastric acid. As a result, the pit is laden with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals that leach from the rock, including copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.[1]
The Berkeley Pit is currently one of the largestSuperfundsites. The water, with dissolved oxygen, allowspyriteand sulfide minerals in the ore and wall rocks to decay, releasingacid. The acidic water in the pit carries a heavy load of dissolved heavy metals. A water treatment plant has been operating since October 2019.
Aside from the obvious negative visual, environmental, and aesthetic impacts that must be overcome, open-pit mining disturbs the geography continuity of the urban form by disrupting transportation, utility, and infrastructure networks. For urban planners, this can be an epic challenge that must involve input and feedback from geologists; mining, civil, and environmental engineers; water resource professionals; landscape architects; and many other disciplines. Without involving all stakeholders, the challenges may overpower any and all efforts to coexist with such an enormous land use as an open-pit mine.
The mine was opened in 1955 and operated by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, and later by the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), until its closure on Earth Day in 1982. When the pit was closed, the water pumps in the nearby Kelley Mine, 3,800 ft (1,200 m) below the surface, were turned off, and groundwater from the surrounding aquifers began to slowly fill the Berkeley Pit, rising at about the rate of 1 ft (300 mm) a month.[1] Since its closure, the water level in the pit has risen to within 150 ft (46 m) of the natural water table. en.wikipedia.org/…
Greg Palast also wrote about mining and Chile that resembles not a few issues of global mineral extraction.
“It’s absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.”
The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation’s banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion. Pinochet sold off the state banks – at a 40% discount from book value – and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers – then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways. The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded that Governments should not hinder the logic of the market.
By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Reagan/Thatcher. New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of – cover the children’s ears – a large dose of socialism.
To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Socialist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatized, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper. For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “It’s absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 – Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation.
In a former auction house on U.S. Highway 2 in Columbia Falls, White Raven Winery co-owner Dan Murphy is making wines that most people have never heard of out of Montana-grown grapes. https://t.co/ZsasHxtuud
