Here's the beginning of Chapter 2 - just a start.
Chapter 2 Antofagasta
A true testament to the force of human development,
Antofagasta stands on the edge of the Pacific in northern Chile a bright, multicolored, almost toy-like, modern,
busy major port city.
There's every reason that centuries of Spanish
suppression of the indigenous Inca peoples would have rendered the area even drier and more desperate than life's resources allow, yet the synthesis of the Inca spirit and the industry
the colonization brought had instead worked effectively to distill incredible wealth from the minerals of the
region over much of the last century.
The sun god continues to smile down on this
bustling desert city.
The average annual rainfall in Antofagasta is on the order of one millimeter (0.04 in). This is like a small cup of water thrown over your head once a year! Some weather stations in the Atacama Desert, the reported "driest place in the world", have never received rain.
Here, under the shade of a palm at a sidewalk cafe, Miguelito sat with a cool green bottle of cerveza contemplating its effect on the aridity of the region. "Maybe Carlos has new aire acondicionado in his villa but I have this cold beer in mine" he thought.
Miguel worked with his brother on their fishing boat as their father and his father and as many generations as you could count had worked. Even through the centuries of mining copper and silver, his family had forgone the dream of mineral riches and set their sails to the open sea and its bounty of fish. They had managed to stay more or less free and independent with their fishing skills and tools, but they could not do much better than feed and clothe themselves and their children. They had their songs. Miguel also played a good enough guitar to make the stars glow with a special magic over the sands of the beach at night near their little house. Indeed, the smell of frying fish over an open fire and the music from Miguel's guitar was more than enough for most men to call it a life altogether worthwhile. Add cold beer and you touched heaven.
Carlos, his brother in law, was a geologist at "Chuqui" the largest open pit copper mine in the world. Actually, he was a technician with an associates degree in chemistry, but he worked for a team of geologists and considered himself a geologist since most of his work consisted of sampling and analyzing different ores for copper content. This was an extremely valuable skill when you consider that a third or more of Chile's foreign trade is composed of processed copper ore. It is virtually and actually pumped out of mines like the Chuquicamata to the port of Antofagasta and into ships headed for Europe and the East, not so differently than the Spanish shipped silver and gold back to Spain for so many many years. Perhaps, still following the same ancient dreams that provided the ships for Columbus, it might have been that since most of the mines had been nationalized by Chile, this time, the wealth would be divided in a more equitable fashion.
.
Miguel worked with his brother on their fishing boat as their father and his father and as many generations as you could count had worked. Even through the centuries of mining copper and silver, his family had forgone the dream of mineral riches and set their sails to the open sea and its bounty of fish. They had managed to stay more or less free and independent with their fishing skills and tools, but they could not do much better than feed and clothe themselves and their children. They had their songs. Miguel also played a good enough guitar to make the stars glow with a special magic over the sands of the beach at night near their little house. Indeed, the smell of frying fish over an open fire and the music from Miguel's guitar was more than enough for most men to call it a life altogether worthwhile. Add cold beer and you touched heaven.
Carlos, his brother in law, was a geologist at "Chuqui" the largest open pit copper mine in the world. Actually, he was a technician with an associates degree in chemistry, but he worked for a team of geologists and considered himself a geologist since most of his work consisted of sampling and analyzing different ores for copper content. This was an extremely valuable skill when you consider that a third or more of Chile's foreign trade is composed of processed copper ore. It is virtually and actually pumped out of mines like the Chuquicamata to the port of Antofagasta and into ships headed for Europe and the East, not so differently than the Spanish shipped silver and gold back to Spain for so many many years. Perhaps, still following the same ancient dreams that provided the ships for Columbus, it might have been that since most of the mines had been nationalized by Chile, this time, the wealth would be divided in a more equitable fashion.
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