VOL. 09 | ISSUE 2 | Summer 2026
Copper at
Their Core
Six Generations of the Benavidez Family
Have Helped Shape Chino and Freeport
“My mother was born in space,” Danny Benavidez will tell you with a grin.
It’s one heck of an icebreaker for Morenci’s Projects Integration Manager, and a sly reference to the fact that Santa Rita, New Mexico – the town in which his mother was born – once existed hundreds of feet above modern-day Chino’s open pit.
Danny views it not only as a testament to the transformative power of mining, but also his family’s deep roots at the operation where he spent part of his career.
Across Freeport’s operations are countless multi-generational families who have helped build the company from the ground up – or down, as it were. The Benavidez family at Chino is just one of those families, its tenure with the company stretching back more than a century, as far back as the mine itself.
It began in 1912, when Victor Benavidez sent his oldest son to Hurley, New Mexico, to look for work. Traveling for days on horseback, Lorenzo arrived, was hired on at the Chino Copper Company, and reported back that more jobs were available. With a large family to support, Victor followed with his wife and some of their children, traveling by covered wagon through winter conditions so that he and his son Manuel could begin work at Chino alongside Lorenzo.
And the rest, as they say, is history – a history the family continues to write.
“Show up. That’s the biggest key to success out here. The world needs what we provide, so if you show up every day, do your job and really put in the work, there’s always going to be opportunities – the company will make sure of that.”
GARY BENAVIDEZ | SUPPORT EQUIPMENT OPERATOR II-CHINO
From the bottom up
Going strong for six generations now, several members of the family still work at Chino today. Gary Benavidez, Support Equipment Operator II-Chino, one of those members, said that sort of longevity comes down to two words.
“Show up,” Gary said. “That’s the biggest key to success out here. The world needs what we provide, so if you show up every day, do your job and really put in the work, there’s always going to be opportunities – the company will make sure of that.”
His own career reflects that approach. Gary joined Chino’s utility crew in 2018 and steadily worked his way through the company’s line of progression, advancing to Truck Driver Trainee, Truck Driver I, and Truck Driver II before making the jump to being an equipment operator. And every step of the way, he said, the company provided the training and support needed to turn his experience into advancement.
For James Benavidez, Maintenance Supervisor-Chino, those are the sort of stories he hears all the time about his family, and each one makes him proud.
His late father, David “Larry” Benavidez, rose from a role in security to Senior Supervisor of Drilling and Blasting, and James followed if not the same path at least a similar trajectory. A self-described “tire man at heart,” James worked a little bit of everything – from driving to leaching – before becoming a supervisor, working his way from the bottom up, like so many others in his family.
“There’s a lot of pride in our family name,” James said. “But knowing that reputation was earned makes you work harder, because you don’t want to be the one who takes away from it. You want to add to it, the same way all those before you did.”
Built before, carried after
That idea – that reputation is built through effort and maintained through accountability – is something Danny Benavidez also came to understand.
Danny fully admits that when he started as a surveyor and draftsman nearly 30 years ago, he thought it was a job like any other – a way to support his family, just like Victor Benavidez sought so long ago. However, that all changed the moment his father-in-law asked him not about his salary or benefits but about the color of his hard hat.
The question was simple, but the answer meant everything.
In that moment, Danny said, he realized that he was being seen at work as something his family had rarely been afforded: an equal. Shielded from many of the obstacles earlier generations faced, Danny now was stepping through doors they worked to open and into spaces to which they never had access.
From becoming a surveyor with a white hard hat to a superintendent in the corner office to a manager at one of the company’s most important mines, Danny now recognizes each triumph in his career as a triumph for all those who came before, and a reminder that progress – like great companies – is built over time.
“Freeport has a long history,” Danny said. “And that history belongs just as much to the people who have been a part of it, the people who have put in the work generation after generation, the people who have copper at their core.”
