The land of precious metals
Despite having been heavily exploited for silver and gold for more than three centuries during European colonization, Latin America still stands out in the production of precious metals. Peru is home to the world’s largest silver reserves, while Mexico ranks sixth. These two countries, together with Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina, made the region responsible for more than half the amount of silver produced worldwide in 2018. Similarly, Peru, Mexico and Brazil all rank amongst the leading gold producing nations.A copper empire
Regardless of its history in precious metals exploitation, in the 21st century Latin America’s metal empire is built out of copper, with eight out of the ten leading mining companies in the region operating primarily in the production of this metal. Chile, the largest copper producer in the world, accounted for 28 percent of global production in 2019, with an output surpassing that of the following top three combined. And the country’s dominance shows no sign of being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic – in the first semester of 2020, the Chilean monthly copper production has been consistently higher than the reported in the previous year.In turn, the global runner-up Peru faces a different story. Although the Peruvian annual copper production has shown a steady increase in the past decade, the country has been hit hard by the coronavirus, with mines being shut down and copper output showing decreases in the first four months of the year, when compared to 2019. In April 2020, the output of even the largest companies were strongly impacted.
