What gives?
……..the Atacama desert has the world’s largest natural supply of sodium nitrate, which was mined on a large scale until the early 1940s, and rich deposits of copper and other minerals. The Atacama economy is declining as reserves of these minerals are depleted ……….
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Notes:
The standard references seem to indicate that mining (the only plausible industry on this scale) is on the decline in the region. This is not consistent with such large scale new construction.