About: Caracoles

Caracoles was a small, but important town dedicated to the mining of the silver resources located in 23°01′S 69°01′W / 23.02°S 69.01°W in the Atacama desert. Its accurate location led to dispute between the Bolivian and the Chilean Governments because the Boundary Treaty of 1866 between Chile and Bolivia ordered that tax incomes from the region between the 23°S and the 25°S should be divided in equal parts. Negotiations led to the Corral-Lindsay agreement, which was not ratified by Bolivia, but later both countries signed the Boundary Treaty of 1874 between Chile and Bolivia which eliminated the "Mutual Benefits Zone" between the 23°S and the 25°S parallels.