This paper examines the challenges and resistance encountered in the management of tailings deposits in dams and ravines within the Andacollo mining district following the La Ligua earthquake of March 1965. The aim is to analyze the difficulties faced by Eduardo Frei’s developmentalist state in managing mine tailings, focusing on the relationship between small-scale mining entrepreneurs—beneficiaries of Frei’s mining policies—and a state responding to an environmental disaster. It also examines the actions of the pirquineros (small-scale miners), who constituted the workforce of the small-scale mining sector, in response to the measures implemented following the catastrophe.
