No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
From Natives to Foreigners: Bolivian Migration, Discrimination, and Ethnic-Labor Subsidiarity in Chuquicamata During the Guggenheim Ownership (Chile, 1912–1925)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 February 2024
Abstract
The War of the Pacific (1879–1883) between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia marked a turning point in the political and socio-economic development of the Atacama Desert. Formerly part of Bolivia, this area came under the control and jurisdiction of Chile in 1884. This shift in sovereignty substantially altered the tri-national geopolitics, forcing the local Bolivian population to flee. The newly annexed region's rich mineral resources became subject to a mining colonization process. In 1912, the Guggenheim family founded The Chile Exploration Company and began the industrialization of the Chuquicamata copper mine. Located in the heart of the Atacama Desert, this was the world's largest copper mine during the twentieth century. Although the local Bolivian population had fled the Atacama Desert following the war, many returned to work in the Guggenheim mine almost thirty years later. Between 1912 and 1925, 239 Bolivians labeled as foreigners and “Indians” were employed in diverse production stages or subsidiary services. Bureaucratic migratory documents and newspaper archives allow us to quantify and characterize Bolivian migration to Chuquicamata. We argue that an ethnic-labor subsidiarity emerged, a historical process resulting from ethnic discrimination, expressed in the disposition and physical costs of mining work and low wages. While the war altered the mining territory of Atacama, ethnic-labor subsidiarity of the Bolivian workforce sustained the expansion of U.S. capitalism in the Chuquicamata copper mine.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc.
References
Notes
1. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Las edades de la globalización. Geografía, tecnología e instituciones (Bogotá: Deusto, 2021), 194.
2. Mbembe, Achille, Critica de la razón negra. Ensayo sobre el racismo contemporáneo (Barcelona: Castellano: 2016), 124Google Scholar. Quotes in languages other than English have been translated by the authors.
3. Ibid., 76.
4. Halpern, Gerardo, “Neoliberalismo y migración: paraguayos en Argentina en los noventa,” Política y cultura 23 (2005): 67–82Google Scholar.
5. Mann, Thomas J., “Oliver C. Cox and the political economy of racial capitalism,” Dialectical Anthropology 46 (2022): 85–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6. La Verdad, Desde Chuquicamata. Alerta patriotas, August 22, 1919, 1.
7. Finn, Janet L., Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture, and Community from Butte to Chuquicamata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Zapata, Francisco, Los mineros de Chuquicamata. ¿Productores o proletarios? (México City: Colegio de México, 1975)Google Scholar.
8. For other mining cases on Bolivian migration, see Galaz-Mandakovic, Damir and Garcés, Alejandro, “Jornaleros bolivianos en el Cantón Central (1879-1946). El caso de la Oficina Salitrera María,” Estudios Atacameños 67 (2021): e3738CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Galaz-Mandakovic, Damir and Rivera, Francisco, “‘Los chilenos ahí en esa azufrera éramos como un lunar’. Presencia boliviana en la minería del azufre y el bórax en Ollagüe, norte de Chile (1879-1946),” Diálogo Andino 66 (2021): 431–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9. Mendez, Manuel, Galaz-Mandakovic, Damir, and Prieto, Manuel, “Tele-production of Miningscapes in the Open-Pit Era: The Case of Low-Grade Copper, Bingham Canyon, US and Chuquicamata, Chile (1903–1923),” The Extractive Industries and Society 8 (2021): 100830CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10. Macchiavello, Santiago, El problema de la industria del cobre en Chile y sus proyecciones económicas y sociales (Santiago: Cámara Chilena de la Construcción, 1923), 77Google Scholar.
11. Finn, Tracing the Veins.
12. Galaz-Mandakovic, Damir, “Industrialización minera, urbanización e innovación en las relaciones sociales en el sudoeste del altiplano boliviano: el caso de la Compañía Huanchaca de Bolivia (1834-1930),” Estudios Atacameños 52 (2016): 153–75Google Scholar.
13. Chile's first Mining Code came into effect on March 1, 1875.
14. Alejandro Vergara, Principios y sistema del derecho minero: estudio histórico-dogmático (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 1992), 48.
15. Albert Burrage was an American miner known for his philanthropy. He donated significant resources for the construction of the Burrage Hospital for crippled children in Boston. During World War I, he donated money to help the country through the conflagration. The Burrage House, Study Report, Landmarks Commission (Boston, MA, Environment Department, 2000).
16. Harvey O'Connor, The Guggenheims. The Making of an American Dynasty (New York: Covici-Friede, 1937).
17. The Chile Exploration Company was created as a subsidiary. For this reason it appeared in official documents as an entity controlled by another company, the Chile Copper Company, also created in 1912, in Maine, United States. The Chile Exploration Company operated in Chuquicamata, but to the world the owner of the mine (the front man) was the holding company Electrolytic Copper, whose shares and capital market were traded on Wall Street. It should be noted that in 1916, the name Guggenheim & Sons was replaced by Guggenheim Bros. This change was made in the United States and was due to a family dispute over the future distribution of profits. Thomas O'Brien, “Rich Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Guggenheim in Chile,” Business History Review 63 (1989): 122–59.
18. Chile Copper Company, First Annual Report of the Chile Copper Company (New York, 1916).
19. Damir Galaz-Mandakovic, “Inclusions, transformations et asymétries du capitalisme minier sur la côte d'Atacama: les dérives de la production thermoélectrique à Tocopilla (Chili) 1914-2015” (PhD diss., Universidad Católica del Norte, Université Rennes 2, 2017).
20. Mendez, Galaz-Mandakovic, and Prieto, “Tele-Production of Miningscapes.”
21. O'Brien, “Rich Beyond the Dreams of Avarice.”
22. Eulogio Gutiérrez and Marcial Figueroa, Chuquicamata: su grandeza y sus dolores (Santiago: Cervantes Printing, 1920), 20.
23. Mohave County Miner, A Mountain of Copper, May 9, 1914, 1.
24. Ibid.
25. Norwich Bulletin, American Millions Developing Chilean Mines, November 20, 1915, 6.
26. Helen Delpar, The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican: Cultural Relations Between the United States and Mexico, 1920-1935 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1992).
27. Josh DeWind, Peasants Become Miners: The Evolution of Industrial Mining Systems in Peru, 1902-1974 (New York: Garland Publisher, 1987).
28. Ibid.
29. June Nash, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Carmen Salazar-Soler, Anthropologie des mineurs des Andes: dans les entrailles de la terre (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002).
30. Elizabeth Dore, The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis (Boulder, CO: Routledge, 1988), 3.
31. Ibid.
32. Oficina Central de Estadística en Santiago, Sesto Censo Jeneral de la población de Chile levantado el 26 de noviembre de 1885 y compilado por la Oficina Central de Estadística en Santiago (Valparaíso, 1889). Oficina Central de Estadística, Sétimo censo jeneral de la población de Chile levantado el 28 de noviembre de 1895 (Valparaíso, 1900). Comisión Central del Censo, Censo de la República de Chile levantado el 28 de noviembre de 1907 (Santiago, 1908). Dirección General de Estadísticas, IX Censo de Población de la República de Chile levantado el 15 de diciembre de 1920 (Santiago, 1925). Dirección General de Estadísticas, Resultados del X Censo de Población efectuado el 27 de noviembre de 1930 y estadísticas comparativas con censos anteriores (Santiago, 1931).
33. Galaz-Mandakovic, “Inclusions, transformations et asymétries du capitalisme minier sur la côte d'Atacama.”
34. Oficina Central de Estadística, Sétimo censo general.
35. Comisión Central del Censo, Censo de la República de Chile.
36. Dirección General de Estadísticas, IX censo de población; Macchiavello, El problema de la industria del cobre en Chile, 160.
37. El Mercurio, La 1° División del Ejército. La visita de inspección practicada por el inspector general Jorge Boonen, March 27, 1920, 15.
38. Alejandro Garcés, Jorge Moraga, Marcelo Maureira, and Adrián Saavedra, “Desbordando la Puna de Atacama. Movilidad, economías y etnicidad (1950 al presente),” Cahiers des Amériques Latines 92 (2019): 49–69; Damir Galaz-Mandakovic and Francisco Rivera, “Bolivian Migration and Ethnic Subsidiarity in Chilean Sulphur and Borax High-Altitude Mining (1888–1946),” History and Anthropology 34 (2023): 234–59.
39. Carlos Mesa Gisbert, José de Mesa, and Teresa Gisbert, Historia de Bolivia (La Paz: Editorial Gisbert y Cia, 2007).
40. Rosario Henríques, “Análisis de los niveles de vida y desigualdad en la ciudad de Cochabamba durante el primer siglo republicano, 1825-1925” (PhD diss., UNED, 2015); Galaz-Mandakovic, “Industrialización minera, urbanización e innovación”; Gustavo Rodríguez, “Estado nacional, mercado interior y élites regionales: los casos de Cochabamba y Santa Cruz en Bolivia, (1880-1930),” Andes 2–3 (1990): 11–32.
41. To exemplify this situation, in La Paz, the cost of the flour produced in Cochabamba was 25.6 percent more expensive than the flour that came from Antofagasta and 17.6 percent more expensive than the flour that came from Mollendo, Peru. The production of tocuyos and diverse cereals also lost their markets. Henríques, “Análisis de los niveles de vida,” 42.
42. Gustavo Rodríguez, Capitalismo, modernización y resistencia popular 1825-1952 (La Paz, 2014).
43. Rodríguez, “Estado nacional, mercado interior y élites regionales.”
44. Henríques, “Análisis de los niveles de vida.”
45. Rodríguez, “Estado nacional, mercado interior y élites regionales.”
46. Biblioteca y Archivo Histórico de la Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional de Bolivia, Lei del 23 de enero de 1918.
47. Rodríguez, “Estado nacional, mercado interior y élites regionales.”
48. Héctor Sheriff, Política económica, crecimiento y bienestar en Bolivia (1950-1990) (Montevideo, 1992), 3.
49. DeWind, Peasants Become Miners.
50. Carmen Salazar-Soler, Anthropologie des mineurs des Andes, 8.
51. June Nash, We eat the mines and the mines eat us.
52. Eugenio Garcés, “Las ciudades del cobre. Del campamento de montaña al hotel minero como variaciones de la company town,” Revista Eure 29 (2003): 131–48.
53. Loreta Tellería, Indios y soldados en Bolivia. Movimientos indígenas, discurso y represión militar en la primera mitad del siglo XX (La Paz, 2012), 36.
54. Ibid.
55. Discrimination was not new in northern Chile. From the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese migrants were also regarded with disdain. According to Tinsmann: “The ceremony's expressions of Chinese nationalism affirmed Chinese racial solidarity and masculine hierarchy in the context of a Latin American war that defined nation in racial terms and a labor system that subjugated Chinese men based on race.” Heidi Tinsman, “Rebel Coolies, Citizen Warriors, and Sworn Brothers: The Chinese Loyalty Oath and Alliance with Chile in the War of the Pacific,” Hispanic American Historical Review 98 (2018), 439–69. See also Damir Galaz-Mandakovic and Jorge Moraga, “Migración china en Tocopilla. Heterogeneidad relacional y transformaciones internas (Chile, 1884-1960),” Rumbos TS 16 (2021): 85–128.
56. Hernán Vidal, Mitología militar chilena. Surrealismo desde el superego (Minneapolis, MN: Institute for the Study of Ideologies 1989), 30.
57. Ibid., 34.
58. El Abecé, Los peones bolivianos y la pampa calichosa, February 19, 1924, 3.
59. Ibid.
60. Gutiérrez and Figueroa, Chuquicamata, 180.
61. Ibid.
62. El Abecé, La vida en el mineral de Chuquicamata, June 13, 1920, 2.
63. El Abecé, De Chuquicamata. Una petición atendible al señor gerente de la Chile Exploration, May 11, 1923, 3.
64. Ibid.
65. La Verdad, Desde Chuquicamata. Alerta patriotas, August 22, 1919, 1.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid. Since August 1919, a new immigration law in Chile began requiring passports from Bolivians. La Verdad, Aviso N°15. Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia, August 29, 1919, 1.
68. Macchiavello, El problema de la industria del cobre en Chile, 158.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ricardo Latcham, Chuquicamata. Estado Yankee (visión de la montaña roja) (Santiago, 1926), 146.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 116.
74. Ángela Vergara, “Ciudades privadas. La vida de los trabajadores del cobre,” in Historia de la vida privada en Chile Tomo III, eds. Rafael Sagredo and Cristhian Gazmuri (Santiago, 2007), 86.
75. Gutiérrez and Figueroa, Chuquicamata, 160.
76. Lilian E. Joyce, Chile Today and Tomorrow (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 185.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Alejo Gutiérrez-Viñuales, Alejo. “Chuquicamata: patrimonio industrial de la minería del cobre en Chile,” Apuntes 21 (2008): 74–91.
80. Latcham, Chuquicamata, 148.
81. Ibid., 134.
82. Ibid.
83. Marcial Figueroa, Chuquicamata: la tumba del chileno (Antofagasta, 1928), 202.
84. Gustavo Tapia, Chuquicamata, historia con nostalgia. Reportaje de investigación (Antofagasta, 2001), 107.
85. Diego Vergara, Chuquicamata Un estado dentro de otro Estado (Santiago, 1923), 40.
86. Thomas M. Klubock, “Nationalism, Race, and the Politics of Imperialism: Workers and North American Capital in the Chilean Copper Industry,” in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 240.
87. Mbembe, Critica de la razón negra, 75.
88. Latcham, Chuquicamata, 116.
89. Tzvetan Todorov, El miedo a los bárbaros. Más allá del choque de civilizaciones (Barcelona, 2016), 77.
90. Gutiérrez and Figueroa, Chuquicamata, 145.
91. Ibid., 133.
92. Viviane Weitzner, “Economía cruda/derecho crudo. Pueblos ancestrales, minería, derecho y violencia en Colombia” (PhD diss, CIESAS Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores, 2018), 364.
93. Álvaro García Linera, Forma valor y forma comunidad. Aproximación teórica-abstracta a los fundamentos civilizatorios que preceden al Ayllu Universal (La Paz: Muela del Diablo Publishers, 2009), 109.
94. Alejandro De Oto, “A propósito de Frantz Fanon. Cuerpos coloniales y representación,” Pléyade Revista de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales 21 (2018): 77.
95. Edward A. Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
96. Vergara, Chuquicamata, 173.
97. Ibid.
98. Jorge Alvear, Chile, nuestro cobre. Chuquicamata, El Salvador, Potrerillos, El Teniente, ENAMI, Mantos Blancos y Andina (Santiago: Lastra, 1975); Zapata, Los mineros de Chuquicamata.
99. Damir Galaz-Mandakovic, “The Guggenheim Process. Innovaciones y contrapuntos de un sistema técnico y de transporte en la industria del salitre en el Departamento de Tocopilla (Chile, 1926-1949),” Revista de Historia 27 (2020): 175–209.
100. Zapata, Los mineros de Chuquicamata.
101. Klubock, “Nationalism, Race, and the Politics of Imperialism,” 240.
102. La Verdad, Desde Chuquicamata. Alerta patriotas, August 22, 1919, 1.
103. El Abecé, La crisis obrera, November 23, 1923, 4.
104. The newspaper El Excelsior commented on November 3, 1919, that the governors of the states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas were working in common agreement to protect Mexican workers recruited by Americans, as these were subjected to deceit, low wages, and changes in contracts: “The government of the State of Sonora had news of the abuses of which numerous workers who left (…) and who went to work in the cotton fields were made victims….” (El Excelsior, En defensa de los trabajadores que salen del país, November 3, 1919, 12). In the Mexican case, entire families migrated, “some farmers have children between twelve and thirteen years old who are starting to work (…) they follow their parents through the mountains and plains, working hard, usually only receiving a remuneration of ten or twelve cents.” (El Excelsior, La emigración de jornaleros, March 23, 1920, 9).
105. El Mercurio, Sobre los enganches de trabajadores para el norte, March 12, 1920, 3.
106. El Mercurio, Informaciones generales, March 12, 1919, 23.
107. El Mercurio, Soldados bolivianos en tierra chilena, March 24, 1922, 16.
108. CBSM, Estatutos y reglamentos del Centro Boliviano de S. M. de Chuquicamata – Chile, fundado el 5 de enero de 1923 (Antofagasta, 1923), 3.
109. Ibid., 6.
110. Ibid., 7.
111. Gutiérrez and Figueroa, Chuquicamata, 133.
112. El Mercurio de Valparaíso, El exantemático ha aparecido. Se presume que el contagio lo han transmitido los indios bolivianos, March 16, 1921, 9.
113. In several cities related to copper exploitation, a series of unions and labor organizations were created. For example, Sindicato Industrial Braden Copper Company, Sección Coya Pangal, founded on September 5, 1928; Sindicato Industrial de Obreros de la Chilex Exploration Company de Potrerillos, founded on December 3, 1932; Sindicato Profesional de Empleados Particulares de Braden Copper Company, Centro de Trabajo Sewell y Mina, founded on June 21, 1937; Sindicato Industrial Obreros de Chile Exploration Company, Sección Antofagasta, founded on August 8, 1941; Sindicato Industrial de Obreros de Chile Exploration Company, Chuquicamata, founded on August 22, 1957. Galaz-Mandakovic, “Inclusions, transformations et asymétries du capitalisme minier sur la côte d'Atacama,” 294.
114. Zapata, Los mineros de Chuquicamata, 21.
115. Klubock, “Nationalism, Race, and the Politics of Imperialism,” 241.
116. Even though salaries increased during this period (1912–1925), Chile underwent an intense inflationary spiral and the steady increase in the prices of basic goods that also mobilized social tensions and conflicts. This inflationary spiral lasted until 1932, when the state implemented a price control. Gabriel Salazar, Movimientos sociales en Chile. Trayectoria histórica y proyección política (Santiago: Uqbar Editores, 2012).
117. El Abecé, Ayer bajaron 278 obreros cesantes de Chuquicamata, April 5, 1921, 7.
118. Galaz-Mandakovic and Rivera, “Bolivian Migration and Ethnic Subsidiarity.”