The World We Live In (1956)

the world we live come along with us through a strange yet familiar world will see peoples of many lands the places they live the things they do all apart of the world we live in [Music] imagine a country 100 miles wide and 2,600 miles long it would extend from San Francisco to New York or along the Pacific coast it would stretch from Alaska to the middle of lower California the top part like the Aleutians would be cold foggy with heavy rainfall over 200 inches a year the central part like much of California would be warm lush and fertile with moderate rainfall the lower part drier even in lower California would be a desert in South America where weather conditions are reversed this imaginary land turned upside down becomes the country of Chile the northern third of Chile hemmed in between the coastal ranges and the Andes contains the Atacama Desert one of the world's driest and most barren regions [Music] for years on end no rain whatever falls on much of this rolling plateau through countless miles of desolate country no plants grow not even cactus most of the Atacama is a sterile wasteland without birds animals or even insects now a small patch of green appears in the desert it is no ASUS from the snow of the high Andes flows the tiny lower river bringing life to a few hundred yards of land on each side of the stream this oasis of Chu Chu was once a resting place on the great Inca Road south long ago the Yama's were the Indians only domesticated animals but the Spaniards brought sheep which managed to live on the scanty father even the trees are artificially planted in the Indian village of choo-choo Yatta a dried fungus from the mountain slopes is their common fuel a woman of Indian ancestry uses it to roast mutton her ancestors probably lived here in lisanna an ancient Indian fortress in ruins today on the River Lowa Almagro and Pedro Valdivia Spanish explorers may have stopped here before the white man came the Indians worked desert mines silver and copper which Spanish fortune seekers later found and developed the primitive mining methods the Spaniards introduced four centuries ago are still used in many sections of the desert even today the prospector has a lonely life but occasionally is at the desert town of and Akoya it is enlivened by a fiesta the annual Christmas celebration of the miners is in honor of the Virgin of and Akoya whose image tradition says was found near a rich silver vein not far off [Music] a poet perched on stilts so as to be seen and heard by all to claims his tragic verses of love and the desert and the life of the solitary miner but the ways of the old prospectors are gradually disappearing today large-scale operation and modern machinery have made Chile the second copper mining country of the world at chuquicamata an open-pit mine 9,000 feet above the sea is the largest single deposit of copper ore ever discovered for years the North American owners have sent here their best Chilean and American technicians to pour tons of dynamite into the drill hole and blast out copper valued at five hundred million dollars in 20 years [Music] Pedro Valdivia and the early Spaniards never dreamed of such wealth millions of tons of it under their feet they were searching for only the pure or relatively pure gold and silver and copper where this is low-grade copper ore and only with large-scale refining equipment and foreign capital invested in 100 million dollar Lots can it be made a paying proposition or you need giant shovel electric railroad and miles of track [Music] you need half-mile-long conveyor belts which carry the or two great tanks called leaching vats where dilute sulphuric acid treats 10,000 tonnes of ore at one time through a labyrinth of pipes the copper is pulled off in solution and changed into solid copper sheets in one of the great electrolytic plants of the world [Music] Melda down these plates become the purest red metal purer than anything that early explorers ever saw a good share of all profits from chuquicamata and other copper mines owned by north american corporations goes to the chilean government and helps considerably in balancing the national budget besides copper Chile has iron ore the Iron Mountain at El Topo in the southern desert contains the only large deposits in all of South America except those in Brazil most of the ore is shipped north to the United States but some is smelled it into pig iron in central Chile the government has ambitious plans for building up an iron and steel industry far more important to Chile than iron ore is nitrate saltpeter or nitrate of soda here in the sterile desert is the world's greatest natural source of fertilizer explosives and iodine scientists disagree over how the nitrate beds were formed but we know they remain today because in the dry desert there was no water to wash them away from 1860 to 1917 Chile's economic prosperity could almost be measured by the world nitrate markets during many years eighty percent of all our exports was one product nitrate of soda once mined and washed by hand today the nitrate under the new Guggenheim process is treated as rapidly and efficiently as copper the pinkish raw or called caliche is put into solution in a leaching vet one byproduct is iodine almost a world monopoly of Chile then comes heat treatment and finally in a barn light cooling plant the molten white liquid is shot skyward when it hits the floor it is crystallized into countless tiny white pellets like Phoebe shot the refine nitrate two million tons or more each year is shipped in bulk to the Pacific one hundred miles away or dispatched in hundred pound sacks to be used as fertilizer by many a farmer in the United States and by progressive farmers in Chile itself isolated in the desert each great nitrate camp has learned to take care of its own needs even the foundries and machine shops and repairing locomotives the sons of illiterate miners are now expert electricians and mechanics because of their training here here we begin to see what the mineral resources of the desert mean to Chile they mean more than just the availability of nitrate to be used as fertilizer in this splendid nitrate part just outside of alpha right so more than vina del mar Chile's Palm Beach with its casino its world-famed O'Higgins hotel and wide sandy beaches more than the beautiful Santiago racetrack where thoroughbreds attract large and responsive crowd more than all this the wealth of the desert means school modern well-built school swimming pools and fine playground hospitals with modern equipment and well-trained staff universities with able faculty an extensive public housing development and government buildings Santiago has become a world cultural center today one of the most advanced countries of the Western Hemisphere Chile has even greater plans for social and industrial progress and the mineral resources of the desert will help to make this possible [Music]