Calingasta (Argentina) (AFP) – The future of Argentina's economy lies buried under the ground at over 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) in the Andes, according to President Javier Milei.
Up here, in a starkly beautiful landscape of snowy peaks and glaciers, excavators are carving huge chunks out of the mountains to mine for copper and other minerals.Aldana Ramirez tries to warm up beside a brasero, a type of local heater, on a freezing night at Los Azules copper project in San Juan province, the epicenter of Milei's mining "revolution."Construction of the mammoth open-pit mine, slated to begin production in 2030, has taken the 27-year-old technician away from her seven-year-old son, who lives down the mountain in her hometown of Villa Calingasta.She misses him but insists "it's worth the sacrifice.""I love this job, I fell in love with it the first time I came up here," she declares above the din of excavators working round the clock.Jobs versus water conservation
A night view of the Andes mountain range taken from the Los Azules copper mining project in the Argentine province of Calingasta © Luis ROBAYO / AFP
Since taking office in 2023, Milei, a free-market radical, has sought to boost mining in a country famous for farming but which also has vast reserves of copper, gold, lithium and uranium."Mining will take place across the Andes, generating hundreds of thousands of jobs," he told parliament in March.Shortly afterward, lawmakers amended the country's glacier protection law to relax restrictions on mining in areas of permafrost, despite fears the new law could endanger crucial water supplies.Canadian company McEwen Copper, automaker Stellantis and mining giant Rio Tinto are investing billions of dollars to develop the sprawling Los Azules mine, which is expected to yield 148,000 tonnes of copper a year over two decades.
