Los pueblos libres de Chuquicamata: su origen y su desarrollo en los albores del ciclo de la Gran Minería del Cobre en Chile (1886-1930)

This article analyzes the three main mining towns that predated and coexisted with the Chuquicamata mine and company town in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: Punta de Rieles, Placilla and Banco Drummond. The urban developments that emerged around copper mines as mining growth exploded in the last decades of the nineteenth century show how unique social dynamics developed in a rapidly restructured productive, labor, and sociocultural environment. Using descriptions of the settlements from the local press and writings from the period, this paper explores the tensions, regulations and resistance that ensued from interactions between the towns, the industrial mine and new company town, and the mining company.