CHILE Special (IK 100th Issue): Introduction English

Industrial culture in Chile at a glance:

Mineral resources, railways and company towns

Authors: Norbert Tempel + Marion Steiner

Chile is richly blessed with mineral resources. Saltpetre, copper, gold, silver, lithium and other valuable minerals have contributed decisively to the country’s prosperity. At the same time, Chile is the country of Company Towns. At the mostly remote extraction sites, these settlements were the common standard for housing miners and their families. This article on the service page Chile of the internet portal of the journal Industriekultur is based on the introductory article of the country focus Chile in issue 3/2022 and provides further references to literature and internet links.

Coveted raw materials established Chile’s place in the world economy. Saltpetre from the Atacama Desert was in great demand worldwide from around 1830 until after the First World War as fertiliser for intensified agriculture and as a basis for explosives and gunpowder. From around 1900, with the rapid development of the electrical industry, copper was in demand from a variety of deposits, and today lithium is also becoming increasingly important for electric mobility. Many of the mining sites were located in remote, deserted areas of the country. On a scale hardly seen anywhere else in the world, the mining companies built company towns in which the required workers were housed, often together with their families. The initially improvised camps grew into veritable small towns whose infrastructure included not only shops, schools, hospitals and cemeteries, but in some cases also sports facilities and cultural institutions such as theatres, cinemas and clubs. The last inhabited Company Town is Maria Elena, near a saltpetre mine that is still active today, in the north of the country. Some preserved examples are presented in the 100th issue of Industrial Culture (No. 3/2022).

Chile – „the longest country in the world“

Chile stretches more than 4,300 km along the Pacific coast of South America, from the Atacama Desert in the north to Patagonia in the south. In the east-west direction, from the coast to the Andes, the extension is mostly barely 180 kilometres. It borders Argentina in the east, Bolivia in the northeast and Peru in the north. The capital Santiago, with six million inhabitants, lies roughly in the middle of the country.

Two parallel mountain ranges, the coastal cordillera with heights of up to 2,000 metres and the high mountains of the Andes with up to 7,000 metres, which merge in the north, shape the landscape. Wide transverse valleys and the Valle Longitudinal („longitudinal valley“) divide the land mass. The country encompasses several climate zones, from the extremely dry Atacama Desert in the north to the humid and cold south. The majority of the population (80 % of a total of 14 million) lives in the climatically favourable central region.

Map of Chile, graphic WKZ

National history, economy and politics

Since the „discovery“ by Columbus in 1492, Spain dominated the South American continent, destroyed the once powerful Inca Empire, colonised, abused and oppressed the indigenous peoples and plundered the precious metals of the region. A viceroyalty was installed in Peru in 1542, which also included large parts of what is now Chile. Apart from Brazil, Spanish is still the lingua franca of the continent.

Chile gained independence in 1818 through General O’Higgins, and the first time a junta took power on 18 September 1810 is celebrated as a National Holiday. Subsequently, Chile developed one of the most stable political systems in South America, dominated by the wealthy classes: Large landowners and merchant bourgeoisie. Valparaíso became a free port and at times more important than the capital Santiago (articles on Valparaíso in Industriekultur issue 3/2022 on pp. 14-15 and the historical city map in the supplement in the centre of the issue). Today, San Antonio is more important as a container port.

Link:

Valparaíso on the world heritage list: whc.unesco.org/en/list/959

Literature on Valparaíso :

Samuel León: Valparaíso sobre rieles – el ferrocarril, los tranvías y los 30 ascensores, Valparaíso 2009

Marion Steiner: Die chilenische Steckdose – kleine Weltgeschichte der deutschen Elektrifizierung von Valparaíso und Santiago, 1880–1920, 2 Bände, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar 2019 (doi.org/10.25643/bauhaus-universitaet.3925)

Marcela Pizzi Kirschbaum: Valparaíso – Port, Railway and Industry – a Cultural Landscape which generated Modernity in need of Preservation; in: Heleni Porfyriou, Marichela Sepe (eds.): Waterfronts revisited, New York 2017, S. 153–161

At the same time, the internal colonisation of the country began, as well as the expansion of the national territory beyond La Serena in the north and Concepciòn in the south. The successive expansion in the south, into the territories of the indigenous peoples, especially into Araucania, the homeland of the Mapuche, was also pushed forward with the instrumentalisation of German settlers, who were recruited mainly in southwestern Germany. They helped decisively to make southern Chile (Valdivia, Osorno, Lago Llanquihue, Puerto Varas, Puerto Montt, Frutillar) farmable.

In the so-called Saltpetre War, Chile conquered the Bolivian province of Antofagasta and the Peruvian province of Tarapacá in 1879-1884 with British support in order to be able to exploit the rich saltpetre deposits there on its own. This still causes tensions with the neighbours Peru and Bolivia today. At that time, saltpetre was a highly profitable export article (see article on Chilean saltpetre in Industriekultur issue 3/2022, p. 18-22). Later, the rich copper deposits came into focus (see articles on the copper mines in Sewell and Chuquicamata in Industriekultur issue 3/2022, pp. 6-9 and 7-13 respectively).

The centre of coal mining used to be on the Gulf of Arauco near Lota and Coronel (see article on Lota in Industriekultur issue 3/2022, p. 16-17). Recently, coal is no longer mined in Chile. Oil production first started in 1945 in the Magellan region.

www.guiaminera.cl – Up-to-date Portal on Mining in Chile (Spanish)

Book on oil industry settlements in Patagonia (Spanish): Pia Acevedo Mendez: Arquitectura y sociedad petrolera en elf in del mundo. Campamentos ENAPinos en tierra del fuego, chile. https://parquecultural.cl/2022/06/24/historiadora-pia-acevedo-presenta-investigacion-sobre-campamentos-petroleros-de-enap-levantados-en-tierra-del-fuego/

Iron ore is exploited in northern Chile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Iron_Belt) in the Atacama region in the Huasco Valley and the Copiapo Valley as well as in the Coquimbo region in the Elqui Valley. The largest Chilean producer, Compañía de Acero del Pacífico (CAP https://www.cap.cl/cap/site/edic/base/port-eng/inicio.html), is active here and transports it by rail and ship, for example, for processing in its integrated smelter CAP Acero Compañía Siderúrgica Huachipato (https://www.capacero.cl/cap_acero/quienes-somos/quienes-somos/2018-01-29/115836.html) in Talcahuano, on the coast of the Bio-Bio region.

Information on the environmental impacts of the mining industry in Huasco can be found at https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/chile-mining-waste-continues-to-be-expelled-into-the-sea/.

Chile’s generation of electricity is still largely based on the use of fossil fuels in thermal power plants and about a quarter on hydropower (overview of power plants: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Centrales_el%C3%A9ctricas_de_Chile). About one fifth of Chile’s electricity now comes from solar and wind power plants.

In the wind-rich south, construction has recently begun on plants that will produce synthetic „green“ petrol from water, wind power and carbon dioxide.

Pangal was one of the first hydroelectric plants built after World War I by the Braden Copper Company to generate power for the El Teniente copper mine. In connection with this, a wooden pipeline was built, which is listed as a historical monument and is currently still partly in use (https://second.wiki/wiki/central_hidroelc3a9ctrica_pangal).

Thanks to its mineral resources, Chile is one of the most economically and politically stable countries on the continent. The economy was for a long time dominated by US and British companies, and industry and railways were shaped accordingly. But traces of German influences as well are still visible today, for example in the electricity industry, pharmacology or brewing. In the region around Concepción, the third largest city in the country, especially on the eastern shore of the Bay of Biobio, where there was already a paper mill and textile factories, wood processing, glass production and breweries, other processing industries were established in addition to the ironworks (1950), such as a refinery (1966) and the San Vicente chemical complex (1970s).

Social conflicts led to the election victory of the socialist Salvador Allende in 1970, who, among other things, nationalised the copper industry and thus generated considerable state revenue. A coup by the right-wing nationalists under General Pinochet on 11 September 1973 installed a brutal torture regime, which also led to mass unemployment and poverty with its extremely neo-liberal course. A return to democracy was achieved after a referendum in 1988, but social and educational policies were not fundamentally changed. Through strikes and mass protests, mainly for better educational opportunities and against the privatisation of the education sector, the establishment of a constituent assembly with the participation of broad sections of the population was won in 2019/20. The chairperson of the assembly comes from the indigenous Mapuche people in the south of the country (9% of the population), who have always resisted expropriation and land theft by the state and companies. Another point of contention is the massive extraction and use of water for industrial purposes. In the economic frontrunner country, more and more people were left behind because education, housing and health became unaffordable, while wages and pensions shrank. Hopes of the disadvantaged population groups were raised by the victory of leftist reformer Gabriel Boric in the presidential election in December 2021; he has been in office since 11 March 2022. The first draft of the new constitution was not approved in a referendum on 4 September 2022, so a new process is now beginning, accompanied by a panel of experts.

Info Box: Chile’s labour movement

The labour movement, Angela Vergara argues in her book Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile, was a progressive force that was instrumental in introducing national reforms and radicalising politics. In Chile, its role is crucial to understanding the expansion of the welfare state in the 1950s, the introduction of social reforms in the 1960s and the Chilean path to socialism in the early 1970s. The book shows the historical origins of the implementation of neoliberal policies, the erosion of workers‘ rights and the emergence of the so-called Chilean economic model propagated by the „Chicago Boys“. The book shows that many of the changes made in the 1970s and 1980s found their impetus in the crisis of import-substitution efforts of the late 1950s.

Angela Vergara: Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile, Penn Uni Press, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-271-03335-8.

https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-03334-1.html

Transport: The railway as the backbone of the extremely elongated country

For aperiod, from the 1910s to the 1970s, the country was served by continuous railway lines running north-south (link: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_rail_transport_in_Chile). Chile’s first railway line, from Caldera to Copiapó, was opened at the end of 1851. In the north, a series of isolated lines followed the mining industry from the hinterland to the ports on the coast. The Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia (FCAB) provided the connection from the port of Antofagasta to Bolivia in 1873-1889.

North of the central region, from La Calera to Iquique (distance approx. 1800 km), the railways of the mines and the saltpetre industry were connected by a transversal („longitudinal railway“) with 1000 mm gauge, completed in 1910. This large-scale state infrastructure project, a favourite of President Pedro Montt (1849-1910), promoted the internal colonisation of the country and thus had both a strong geostrategic and cultural-symbolic significance.

At the same time, the elaborate Transandino railway with its cogwheel sections, tunnels and bridges over the Andes Cordillera provided the connection to Argentina. However, the hoped-for flow of goods between Valparaíso and Buenos Aires failed to materialise, especially since the Panama Canal was opened in 1914 to bypass the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn. After landslides, through traffic was discontinued in 1984. The section from Los Andes to Río Blanco, where an industrial railway connects to the Saladillo copper mine, is still used today by goods trains and occasionally a tourist railcar.

There is a German documentary film from 1972 about the Transandino: https://www.amigosdeltren.cl/trasandino-el-ferrocarril-olvidado#!/ccomment-comment=431

Another Andean crossing from Augusta Victoria to Socompa with connection to the Argentinean network was not completed until 1948. The neglected Longitudinal Railway was sold to private companies from 1975 and partially closed down. Today, the northern metre-gauge network operated by the companies Ferronor (www.ferrronor.cl), FCAB (www.fcab.cl; http://www.markusworldwide.ch/Railways/Chile/FCAB/FCAB_Atacama.htm) and Codelco connects ports and mining centres and provides the link to Bolivia and Argentina. Passenger transport no longer takes place.

A broad-gauge network (1676 mm) extends from Santiago southwards to Temuco and Puerto Montt (distance approx. 1000 km), which today still comprises approx. 3400 km (of which approx. 1700 km are electrified). The interchange point with the northern narrow-gauge network was in La Calera. Today’s broad-gauge line between Santiago and Valparaíso was opened in 1863, but in contrast to the lines to the south, it has little traffic today. Exceptions are the Tren del Recuerdo from Santiago to Limache: (https://entren.cl) and the Metro from Valparaíso to Limache (https://www.efe.cl/nuestros-servicios/metro-valparaiso/servicio-y-trazado/).

The state broad-gauge network (Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado EFE https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empresa_de_los_Ferrocarriles_del_Estado) is to be expanded again more strongly for passenger transport in the future. The freight division was spun off and is operated by the private FEPASA (www.fepasa.cl and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrocarril_del_Pac%C3%ADfico_(Chile).

The majority of travel within the country and to neighbouring countries is now provided by buses. A through long-distance bus takes about 24 hours to travel from Santiago to Arica in the north of the country, on the border with Peru, about the same time across the continent to Buenos Aires. Passenger trains over the Andes passes to neighbouring countries had ceased to exist some time ago. There are also air connections between Santiago and regional airports.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arica-La_Paz_railway),

Book download: Alberto Decombe E.: „Historia del Ferrocarril Arica-La Paz“, 1913.

http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0014152

Monuments of the railway history

A large number of testimonies to railway history have been preserved, although they are not always in the best condition – often despite their monument status. Prominent is the historic Alameda terminus, Santiago’s central station with its steel hall, a design by Gustave Eiffel, built in 1897 by Schneider-Le Creusot and a monument since 1983. Several stations, some of which have been repurposed, and former railway workshops, such as San Bernardo and San Eugenio in the Santiago area, are protected monuments.

The Malleco Viaduct is a railway bridge in the Región de la Araucanía in Chile that crosses the Malleco Valley, a tributary of the Río Bío Bío, near the town of Collipulli. It is the highest railway bridge still in operation in Chile and is on the Chilean proposal list as a possible UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Malleco Viaduct was built in 1886-1890 as part of the state railway line from Santiago de Chile to Puerto Montt in the section between Angol and Traiguén. It crosses the Malleco at a height of 102 m, making it Chile’s second highest bridge; only the Conchi Viaduct on the earlier line from Antofagasta to Bolivia is one metre higher.

The single-track bridge is 347.5 m long and 4 m wide between the supports. It is divided into 5 spans of 69.5 m each. The track lies on the wide-meshed steel lattice girders, which are supported by four truss pillars. The first and fourth pillars are each 43.7 m high, the second 67.7 m and the third 75.7 m. The diagonal braces between the piers and the superstructure as well as the narrower piers at the beginning and end of the bridge were added later to adapt the bridge to the increased weight of the vehicles. (Source: https://www.deinlexikon.de/wiki/Malleco-Viadukt et al.)

On the main line Santiago – Temuco, several large viaducts over river valleys, such as the impressive steel Malleco Viaduct, are still part of the active network today. Not far from there, in Temuco, a railway museum exists (LINK: https://www.interpatagonia.com/temuco/pablo-neruda-railway-museum.html as well as https://www.archdaily.com/918681/railway-museum-pablo-neruda-chauriye-stager-arquitectos) of the broad-gauge network in a large roundhouse with a turntable, which has been roofed over with great architectural effort. The site also includes an old railway yard, the large concrete coal bunker and workshops. It is now dedicated to the city’s most famous son, the politically engaged writer Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose father was a railwayman in Temuco.

Temuco’s impressive roundhouse houses the railway museum of the southern broad-gauge network, meanwhile it has been roofed over at great architectural expense. It is dedicated to the city’s most famous son, the politically committed writer and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose father was a railwayman in Temuco. Photo: Miguel Carrasco Q. (Creative Commons 3.0)

In the Quinta Normal Park in Santiago, a number of steam locomotives and wagons have been installed and can be freely visited there. In Baquaedano, a junction of the northern metre gauge network, a railway museum was set up without much effort in the former steam locomotive shed, which was listed in 1983, where a number of steam locomotives and wagons are kept. A collection of vehicles from the Transandino Railway can be found in the partially active Los Andes depot at the start of the line. Other railway vehicles are displayed as monuments all over the country.

The steel viaduct of the FC de Pampa Joya nitrate railway over the Loa near Maria Elena (100 km northeast of Tocopilla) has stood unused in the Atacama Desert for 90 years. It was built in 1929 by Krupp Rheinhausen, the line was electrified in mid-1930 and abandoned as early as 1931.

Industrial heritage

The state heritage agency has placed an astonishing wealth of industrial objects under protection, some sites have become UNESCO World Heritage Sites, others are on the Chilean Tentative List. There is a great deal of public interest in the history of industry and railways; in addition to the Chilean section of TICCIH, there are a large number of initiatives and private commitment to the preservation and research of industrial history. The example of an internet portal can be found in the Bio-Bio region, the industrialised region around Concepcion (https://patrimonioindustrialbiobio.cl/).

An interesting phenomenon is that the abandoned Company Towns, despite their remote location, are a place of living memory for many Chileans – quite understandable when one considers that in Sewell alone around 80,000 children were born in about 60 years.

We would like to thank all photographers and suppliers of images for their kind cooperation.

Contact: indukult.net@gmx.net