The Cordillera de la Costa is constructed from a block-faulted Paleogene landscape. The range is cut by canyons and bordered by a high cliff and a zone of marine terraces. To the east the longitudinal depression is infilled by Neogene deposits which were laid-down over the Paleogene surface and have since been locally structurally disturbed. In the Andes stratovolcanoes rise above the Andean plateau and are surrounded by internal drainage basins. In northernmost Chile subsidence of the submarine continental margin has been complemented by uplift of the Andes. Ingestion of sial and sima in the trench area seems to have led to magma production, and there has been an eastward movement in both igneous and structural events. The present plate motions have produced a compressive tectonism, but local distension has occurred at the edge of the continental plate. The longitudinal depression is believed to be a tectonically neutral zone west of the eastward-dipping reverse faulting of the Andean region. Wave-action on a subsiding coast is considered responsible for carving the high cliff, whereas littoral terraces reflect a recent zonally-atypical uplift phase. N-S strike-slip faulting is attributed to ancient plate-closure patterns. Problematic approximately E-W faults could reflect the adjustment of the continental margin to the stresses generated during recent relative plate motions. Early Tertiary erosion produced a Paleogene pediplain. The resulting large quantities of Paleogene sediment are considered to have been subducted during plate convergence. Tectonic movements formed the longitudinal depression and other smaller basins in the late Oligocene. Towards the south, Neogene planation has eroded the Paleogene pediplain, although major pediplanation and aggradation had everywhere ceased by the Upper Miocene when canyon formation commenced. Ignimbritic eruption waned in the Upper Miocene, and gave way to andesitic stratovolcano production that modified the Altiplano internal drainage. Post-Miocene capture of some of this drainage has occurred by headward erosion along Andean flank channels. Canyons across the coastal mountains were established at about the same time, although some of the long channels in the south are of greater antiquity.