The pale is a copper and molybdenum deposit located in the province of San Juan, Argentina. It is located between 3,600 to 4,200 meters above sea level, and is approximately five kilometers from the international limit with Chile. He is currently operated by Switzerland Glencore, who proposes to develop an open-pit mine to extract copper ore and process it by flotation. Before I had been owned by Xstrata. The closest community to El Pachón is Barreal, in the department of Calingasta, 170 km from the project.

Back are currently the comparisons that had been made with Easter- Lama, in volume of investment and by its characteristics of Binational Project, when it was planned that facilities for transport and filtering copper would be installed in the Coquimbo, Chile region. A few years ago, Xstrata Copper had raised exporting the concentrate via Chile, by a Pacific port, but in 2014 the GLENCORE company decided to reduce the scale and concentrate all the infrastructure in Argentina. Based on this re-evaluation of the project, Glencore has declared being working on the completion of the environmental impact report.

Between 2015 and 2016, it came to the Light the conflict between Pachón and Antofagasta Minerals (Luksic Group), which exploits the mine the slabs, on the Chilean side of the border limit. According to transcended in the media, Pachón denounced that Pelambre placed waste from his mining activity in Argentine territory, concessioned to Pachon, which could have caused environmental pollution. It would be 50 million tons of material on an area of ​​51 or 52 hectares, placed in Argentine territory by the mining that operates on the Chilean side. For his part, the skirts stated that he fulfilled all the requirements that the Chilean authorities demanded, and that had been pointed out that the Bootado was totally in Chilean territory. Finally, the province of San Juan intervened in the conflict, due to the environmental damage that could have caused the waste discharged.

In the growing socio-environmental conflict by megamineric projects in Argentina , In the first decade of the 21st century, Pachón was highlighted as one of the great projects that could be developed in the country, at first, by its binational character, assimilated it to Easter Lama. Even with the smallest scale, one of the largest projects in Argentina, of copper exploitation, deposit that was discovered by Minera Aguilar S.A company, in 1964, and since the 1970s is accumulating different attempts to exploitation that does not They have materialized. In addition, this project has been denounced by affecting glaciers.