“Uprising and Looting in the North Offices”. Indications of Workers Protest in the Saltpeter Industry during the Peruvian Period. Tarapacá in the Crisis of 1867

Abstract

This article analyzes the case of "uprising and looting by Chilean laborers in Carolina and Porvenir offices". These machine saltpeter works were located inside the ports of Pisagua and Junín (Province of Tarapaca), whose owners were predominant companies, Casa Gibbs Cª and Compañía Tarapaqueña Lafuente y Sobrino, respectively. It is set out through a historiographical analysis of primary (press) and secondary (bibliography) sources that this would be one of the first indications of workers protest that the newspapers used to confuse with ordinary crime or with conflicts of nationalities. These rebellions were produced due to the arbitrary change of workers wages, supposedly a product of the economic crisis of 1867.