-
Once the granary of the world, tomorrow a mining power? According to its president Javier Milei, the future of Argentina is partly being played out at an altitude of 3,500 m, in the Andes, where the pharaonic Los Azules project heralds a copper revolution.
-
The RIGI, an incentive regime for large investments adopted in 2024, has already attracted more than $20 billion in potential investments. Mining exports jumped 27% in 2025 and could triple by 2030.
-
But the boom is not coming without concerns: threatened glaciers, water management, past contamination – and the question asked by a simple pump attendant in the valley: “Either I protect the water or I eat.”
Par Tomás Viola (AFP) — Calingasta, Argentine
Aldana Ramirez, a 27-year-old mining technician, only sees her seven-year-old boy every two weeks, when she goes back down to 1,500 m to Villa Calingasta, her village of 2,700 inhabitants. “But the sacrifice is worth it (…) this work, I love it! From the first time I went up there, I fell in love with it.”she tells AFP while supervising the excavators which drill 24 hours a day, creating an incessant background sound.
His work is Los Azules, exploration for a copper mine in the province of San Juan (west, 1,400 km from Buenos Aires). A mammoth project: kilometers of tracks for machines and trucks dug into the mountainside, in a setting of rocky immensity, between covered glaciers and piles of snow. Nearly $3 billion in investment from McEwen Copper (Canada), associated with Stellantis and Rio Tinto/Nuton, for planned production, after 2030, of 148,000 tonnes per year over 20 years.
“Revolution minière”
It is a flagship of the mining revolution, the mantra of Javier Milei, president since the end of 2023: “Mining will spread throughout the Cordillera, generating hundreds of thousands of jobsâ€he proclaimed in March in Parliament. The vehicle is the RIGI, the Incentive Regime for Large Investments, adopted in 2024, which aims to reward large investments of foreign capital with tax, customs or exchange advantages for 30 years.
To date, nearly 40 projects have been presented, 16 approved, for more than $20 billion in potential investments. The largest share in the mining sector, followed by hydrocarbons. In 2025, Argentina’s mining exports increased by 27% to reach $6 billion, driven by gold and lithium, of which it is the world’s fifth largest producer. According to Central Bank projections, this total could triple by 2030, or even quintuple within ten years.
Michael Meding, general director of Los Azules, assures AFP that he RIGI “sent very important signals to investors internationally”. For the economist Nicolas Gadano, “Argentina’s export matrix is transforming” with the growth of the mining and hydrocarbons sector, through which the country with a traditionally agricultural DNA wants to remedy its chronic lack of dollars.
“Argentina’s export matrix is changing. » Nicolas Gadano, économiste.
Half of planned mining exports are linked to copper, strategic for construction, the energy transition, and the development of artificial intelligence. Argentina has hardly produced any since 2018, but has enough reserves to be in the top 10 in the world – far from number 1 Chile, a neighbor that Milei cites as an example. In Calingasta, near the Chilean border, the impact on employment is real: number of inhabitants of the agglomeration have a job directly or indirectly linked to mining activity.
Read also: Javier Milei’s Argentina, antechamber of European liberalism?
Transformation territoriale
The mining boom does not come without concerns for the environment. The final well at Los Azules should cover the equivalent of 840 football fields, and plunge more than 300 m deep – roughly the Eiffel Tower. It will be necessary to remove – moving is an option being studied – a vega, a sort of high-altitude oasis with vegetation gypsy moth, which serves as a habitat for small local fauna and as a water regulator.
And even if Los Azules promises to be carbon neutral in 2038 and claims an extraction method that uses little water, the long-term impact is questionable. Especially since Parliament has just reformed the so-called Glacier law, which now gives greater flexibility to the provinces to authorize mining projects.
“People have to choose: either I protect the water or I eat”resigns Alejandro, gas station attendant at Jachal in the valley. Where we have not forgotten the contamination in 2015 of three local watercourses, by the leak of a million liters of cyanide solution from a Barrick Gold mine. Without being opposed to mining activity, Alejandro considers “that there are not enough controls” from the state.
“People have to choose: either I protect the water or I eat. » Alejandro, gas station attendant in Jachal, in the Andean valley.
But up there in Los Azules, where cumbia helps one forget the icy wind, Andres Carrizo, a 27-year-old drill operator, hopes above all that “All this will continue, so that we all have work and can develop.”.
Read also: The battle for critical minerals is in full swing
Read also: “Don’t count on us”: Javier Milei’s vision of the world
