Antofagasta, región-commodity por excelencia, la más emblemática del modelo exportador, determina en gran medida los equilibrios macro económicos y partidas relevantes del presupuesto de la nación, incluidas las asignadas a seguridad nacional y políticas sociales. Chile depende tanto del cobre como de Antofagasta: la sustentabilidad económica del país y sus regiones está estrechamente vinculada al mercado del cobre y a los territorios subnacionales que lo producen. Si el país es vulnerable frente a las crisis y precios internacionales de ese recurso, Antofagasta lo es en extremo: el cobre, la mayor ventaja comparativa del país – no siempre la más competitiva- es a la vez, y en consecuencia, el mayor “talón de Aquiles” de Chile y sus regiones mineras.Antofagasta, a commodity region by excellence, as well as the most representative of the model based on export, plays a significant role in defining macroeconomic balance, along with some of the most relevant items in the national budget, including national and social security. Chile relies as much on copper as it does on Antofagasta: the country's economic sustainability is tightly linked to the copper market and the territories where said metal is produced. If the country is vulnerable to the resource's fluctuation in price, Antofagasta reflects this dependency to the extreme. Antofagasta, the most global city in Chile, capital of the second largest regional economy in the country, which register the second highest international investment and is the most important in the export and per capita income, is the one that shows the largest gap between its income poverty (4%) and its multidimensional poverty (20.7%). This fact confirms that economic growth does not translate into development: the mining cluster strategy has failed in the generation of a social cluster.