The Antofagasta Region is one of Chile's sixteen first-order administrative divisions. The second-largest region of Chile in area, it comprises three provinces, Antofagasta, El Loa and Tocopilla. It is bordered to the north by Tarapacá, by Atacama to the south, and to the east by Bolivia and Argentina. The region's capital is the port city of Antofagasta; another one of its important cities is Calama. The region's main economic activity is copper mining in its giant inland porphyry copper systems.
The War of the Pacific, also known as the Nitrate War and by multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert, the war ended with victory for Chile, which gained a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia.
The Tarapacá Region is one of Chile's 16 first-order administrative divisions. It comprises two provinces, Iquique and Tamarugal. It borders the Chilean Arica y Parinacota Region to the north, Bolivia's Oruro Department and Potosí Department on the east, Chile's Antofagasta Region to the south and the Pacific Ocean to the west. The port city of Iquique is the region's capital.
Chacabuco is one of the many abandoned nitrate or "saltpeter" towns in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Other nitrate towns of the Atacama Desert include Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works. Unlike most of the other ghost towns in the Atacama Desert, Chacabuco became a concentration camp during the Pinochet regime in 1973. To this day, it remains surrounded by approximately 98 lost landmines, left by the Chilean military when Chacabuco was used as a prison camp.
Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works are two former saltpeter refineries located in northern Chile. They were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, as a testament to the historical importance of saltpeter mining in Chile and the culture and social agenda that developed around it in the late 19th century. The works were placed on the World Heritage List in Danger that same year, due to the fragility of the derelict buildings, but was removed in 2019.
Nitratine or nitratite, also known as cubic niter (UK: nitre), soda niter or Chile saltpeter (UK: Chile saltpetre), is a mineral, the naturally occurring form of sodium nitrate, NaNO3. Chemically it is the sodium analogue of saltpeter. Nitratine crystallizes in the trigonal system, but rarely occurs as well-formed crystals. It is isostructural with calcite. It is relatively soft and light with a Mohs hardness of 1.5 to 2 and a specific gravity of 2.24 to 2.29. Its refractive indices are nω = 1.587 and nε = 1.336.
La Tirana is a Chilean town in the commune of Pozo Almonte in El Tamarugal Province, Tarapacá Region. The town lies in an oasis in the middle of the Pampa del Tamarugal, about 72 km inland from the port of Iquique.
The Santa María School massacre was a massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter works (nitrate) miners, along with wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile, on December 21, 1907. The number of victims is undetermined but is estimated to be over 2,000. The massacre occurred during the peak of the nitrate mining era, which coincided with the Parliamentary Period in Chilean political history (1891–1925). With the massacre and an ensuing reign of terror, not only was the strike broken, but the workers' movement was thrown into limbo for over a decade. For decades afterwards, there was official suppression of knowledge of the incident, but in 2007 the government conducted a highly publicized commemoration of its centenary, including an official national day of mourning and the reinterment of the victims' remains.
The Atacama Desert is a desert plateau located on the Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a 1,600-kilometre-long (1,000-mile) strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of 105,000 km2 (41,000 sq mi), which increases to 128,000 km2 (49,000 sq mi) if the barren lower slopes of the Andes are included.
María Elena is a Chilean town and commune in Tocopilla Province, Antofagasta Region. According to the 2012 census, the commune population was 4,593 and has an area of 12,197.2 km2 (4,709 sq mi).
Pulpería was the name given to company stores and dining facilities in parts of South America, notably in the industries that extracted sodium nitrate from caliche deposits between 1850 and 1930 in Northern Chile in the current regions of Tarapaca and Antofagasta. The term was used in the Spanish colonial period in South America.
The Treaty of Defensive Alliance was a secret defense pact between Bolivia and Peru. Signed in the Peruvian capital, Lima, on 6 February 1873, the document was composed of eleven central articles that outlined its necessity and stipulations and one additional article that ordered the treaty to be kept secret until both contracting parties decided otherwise. The signatory states were represented by the Peruvian Foreign Minister José de la Riva-Agüero y Looz Corswaren and the Bolivian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Peru, Juan de la Cruz Benavente.
The Peruvian nitrate monopoly was a state-owned enterprise over the mining and sale of saltpeter created by the government of Peru in 1875 and operated by the Peruvian Nitrate Company. Peru intended for the monopoly to capitalize on the world market's high demand for nitrates, thereby increasing the country's fiscal revenues and supplementing the financial role that guano sales had provided for the nation during the Guano Era (1840s-1860s).
The Boundary Treaty of 1874 between Chile and Bolivia, also called the Treaty of Sucre, was signed in Sucre on August 6, 1874 by the Bolivian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mariano Baptista and the Chilean plenipotentiary minister Carlos Walker Martínez. It superseded the Boundary Treaty of 1866 between Chile and Bolivia, establishing the border between both countries at the 24° South parallel from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern border of Chile.
The Expulsion of Chileans from Bolivia and Peru in 1879 was an ethnic cleansing ordered by of the governments of Bolivia and Peru. The expulsion took place at the beginning of the War of the Pacific (1879–1883) between Chile and Peruvian-Bolivian alliance. Chilean citizens in both nations were ordered to leave within eight days or face internment and confiscation of their property. They were expelled on poorly-built rafts and pontoons at Peruvian ports, or forced to wander through the desert to reach the northernmost positions occupied by the Chilean Army in Antofagasta. The edict was widely popular in Peru and met with little resistance, allowing it to occur quickly.
Humberstone is a ghost town in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Developed for the extraction of saltpeter, it is a Chilean National Monument and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site designated as Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works.
The María Elena nitrate plant is the last nitrate works still in operation in the world. It was initially named Coya Norte, but was renamed María Elena by its founder Elias Anton Cappelen Smith. It is located in the commune of the same name, in Chile, 220 km northeast of Antofagasta. As the population grew from 6700 in 2017 to over 7,000 in 2020 most of whom are workers living near the plant.
The Ferrocarril de Agua Santa was a railway line in the old province of Tarapacá in Chile between 1890 and 1931.
The paradas method was a process to extract nitrate from caliche by leaching. In this method caliche was boiled in water in large pans called "paradas". It was a firewood and labour-intensive process. The paradas method was phased out in the 1850s by a new system invented by Pedro Gamboni which required less fuel and labour.
Calatambo Albarracín, born Freddy Albarracín Iribarren, was a Chilean composer and folklorist identified with the music of northern Chile.
