Car rental Calama - Downtown, Chile

The Legend of Puq'oq Copper Mine

Calama Downtown is one of the oldest and most historic towns in Southern Chile. It is located on the north coast of Antofagasta province in the Northern Region of Chile. Situated in a remote mining area, it is called a gate to the Southern Atacama Desert. Near Chiu, a town in southern Chiapas, is the Puq'oq Copper Mine. In Chuquicamata, south of Calama, there is an open-pit copper mine known as Puq'oq Cuco.

Puq'oq Copper Mine was discovered in 1940 by an American company in an area that is now known as Chuqui Chien. Today it is Chile's second largest copper producer. The miners used modern high tech equipment to open up the Puq'oq Copper Mine, but at that time, they had little experience in mining copper ores. They were mostly interested in getting to the bottom of the mine by making holes so they could get at the copper ore. Unfortunately for them, the area was very wet and slippery. A number of miners drowned trying to enter the mine and another twenty died when they were stuck in some mud cracks. As a result of this accident, the miners had to change the way they dug.

In the early 1970s, a group of workers from Chiapas' biggest copper mining company, Aguas Calamitos, entered Puq'oq Copper Mine to help repair the damaged tunnels and work on new equipment. They were not aware of the dangerous conditions in the mine, or even that it was a copper ore mine in the first place. They found their way into the mine by walking down a hill, through the treeline and finding an underground cavern full of water.

The men went in and out of the cavern, digging up large boulders. Eventually, they stumbled upon the entrance of an enormous hole in the ground. In the hole they found copper ore. They thought the hole was too small to reach and decided they would just walk around it. They ended up finding another cavern, and another tunnel.

It was not long before one of the workers fell and broke his leg. He was taken to a hospital where he spent the rest of his life recuperating. His coworkers began to panic, thinking the man was trapped under the earth. The workers searched frantically for him, and one of them, Ignacio Guevara, was in charge of the search.

Eventually they found their way to a part of the mine where they could see the man fall deeper into the hole. They opened the door of the shaft and they were shocked to find that there was no way out. Ignacio Guevara and a few other workers went forward, cautiously into the tunnel. When they reached the surface, they were shocked again to find that there were no signs of the man.