These early operations mined veins such as the Zaragoza and Balmaceda, which were high grade with values up to 10-15% copper, and disregarded the low grade disseminated ore. One attempt was made to process the low grade ore in 1899-1900 by Norman Walker, a partner in La Compañia de Cobres de Antofagasta, but it failed leaving the company deeply in debt. However, mining never really developed satisfactorily in the early days because of the lack of water, the isolation and lack of communications, lack of capital and fluctuations in the copper price. Nevertheless larger mining companies eventually emerged, organised as commercial rather than mining operations to avoid the imperfections of the mining code, and started to buy up and consolidate the small mines and claims. In 1951, a young Che Guevara