Imagine a plane flying over northern Chile, from the east to the west. After cresting the Andes, it would continue over the vast coastal desert that dominates the north of the nation. Suddenly, from the monotonous sandy plain of the Atacama, rises pillars of glass and steel. This is Antofagasta, a city that men have fought and died for.

Antofagasta in its modern role serves as the center of the sizable Chilean mining industry, and it has always been a desired jewel of the Andean nations. Originally a Bolivian nitrate mining settlement, the nascent "La Chimba" was the center of a massive Chilean immigration wave in the mid-to-late 1800s.

A lucrative mining town with a large ethnic minority on an international border was, unsurprisingly, a center of conflict. Growing tension between Chile and Bolivia over territorial disputes and a Bolivian tax on Chilean nitrate mining companies would culminate in the 4 year long War of the Pacific. Chile, despite the odds, defeated the combined Bolivian and Peruvian armies over the course of the war, ultimately gaining the resource-rich Bolivian coastline, including the city of Antofagasta.

Now, Antofagasta is the center of one of the world's largest nitrate and copper mining operations, and modern innovations in the field of electrochemistry mean that the mining companies have begun to tap into the region's large lithium reserves. Antofagasta, it would seem, is a city on the rise, and a worthy holder of the title of "La Perla del Norte"-- The Pearl of the North.