Bernardo Carrizo inspects rocks with ore inside Rodesia mine, a small copper mine, in the area of "Inca de Oro" (Inca Gold) town, near Copiapo city, north of Santiago, Chile, December 16, 2015. As copper prices have slid to a more than six-year low, miners laboring away at the countless smaller mines that pock mark the Atacama desert are finding the buckets of ore they spend all day digging from the ground are fetching less and less money. For Bernardo Carrizo, a union head for small-scale miners, government aid is crucial. "We still haven't stopped but we're swimming upstream," he said. "And what's coming doesn't look good because the trend (for copper prices) is lower." Picture taken December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado