COSACH AND THE CRISIS OF THE SALTPETRE INDUSTRY, AN ATTEMPT AT A COMMERCIAL SEAL (1927-1934)

Abstract

After the great economic crisis of 1929, the saltpeter industry entered a process of internal reorganization to survive commercially and remain the mainstay of the national economy. In this sense, the present work aims to show that the response to this problem was the development of a kind of state monopoly. This started the Compañía de Salitres de Chile (COSACH), as happened in 1873 with the attempt of a National Peruvian saltpeter company that responded to the economic crisis of that decade. We will analyze the differences between one process and the other and explain the origin and decline of COSACH.