Sodium Nitrate -AKA Saltpeter- brought industry and greed to the geographical highlands shared by Chile, PerĂº and Bolivia. At the end of the 19th Century, fortunes were made by foreign investors, and the three countries were pushed to fight each other in a carnage that left deep scars, to protect the wealth of others. The industry was killed by progress at the start of the 20th Century, and what remained struggled to survive. In 1996 the inhabitants of the town of Pedro de Valdivia, founded in 1911, were oficially evacuated due to pollution produced by the plant which they served.