El Soldado, located in Central Chile 120 km northwest of Santiago, is the largest (>200 Mt @ 1.4 % Cu) of the known copper manto-type deposits in central Chile. El Soldado is a copper manto-type deposit that is regionally strata-bound within volcanic rocks of the Lower Cretaceous Lo Prado Formation. Locally, the mineralisation is discordant with the strata and controlled by trachytic (rhyodacite) feeders, trachytic flows and fault intersections. The orebodies are irregular in shape and size, and show an outer pyrite-rich halo, followed inwards by chalcopyritic zones and a bornite-chalcocite core. The mineralisation is mainly primary and is discordant with the host strata. Although structurally controlled and discordant at the scale of the mine, it is regionally strata-bound within shallow marine, bimodal calc-alkaline basalt - rhyodacite (extrusive- intrusive) rocks of the Lower Cretaceous Lo Prado Formation, which also contains marine carbonaceous shale and volcaniclastic sandstones. It is generally acknowledged that hydrothermal sulphide base metal deposits in the Andes obtained their metals and sulfur from calc-alkaline magmatic systems. Several structurally-controlled orebody clusters occur within an area of ca. 2000 x 800 m, 600 m vertical, in a dilational fault jog within a large NS orogen parallel (sinistral) strikeslip shear fault system that was active in the Cretaceous. The orebodies are zoned with pyrite in outer halos or envelopes, followed inwards by zones w ........

Currently, the deposit is exploited in an open pit, at an average height of 1,000 meters above sea level. The El Soldado pit is of a hillside type, very different from the ones we commonly know in the shape of an amphitheater.

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