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It was called the Santa María School Massacre, but it wasn’t just students who died. It was miners and their families who were on strike to protest for better working conditions. But the Chilean government wasn’t interested in listening to their grievances and sent in the army, murdering thousands.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: December 21, 1907--
It happened in the port city of Iquique in northern Chile. The country had been in turmoil for some time over terrible working and living conditions for the country’s miners. The nation’s worker movement started with the nitrate miners; there had been several strikes over the previous five years, beginning in 1902.
The nitrate mines were mostly owned by British and German companies. The strike began on December 4, 1907, and by December 13 work in all nitrate mines had stopped. Several thousand workers, who were made up not just of Chileans, but also Peruvians, Argentinians, and Bolivians, marched with their families to the port of Iquique. There, the maritime workers joined them in the strike.
The strikers and their families had been camping at the Santa María School for a week when President Pedro Montt sent in the army under the command of Colonel Roberto Silva Renard. Renard ordered the gathered to disperse and return to work, but they replied with a hearty go fuck yourself. He gave them an hour, saying if you don’t move, we’re going to open fire. They said fuck you again. Once the hour was up, the killing began.
The soldiers started with killing the strike leaders, but it quickly turned into a murderous frenzy where they hunted down and machine-gunned anyone they saw, including women and children who were begging for mercy. The death toll was estimated to be over 2,000 people; the exact number is unknown because the government would not permit an investigation and buried the victims in a mass grave.
As a reward for the mass murder, Colonel Renard was promoted to Brigadier General. However, seven years later he was walking down the street to his office when he was confronted by Antonio Ramón, the brother of a man who had died in the massacre. Seeking revenge, Ramón repeatedly stabbed Renard, but was interrupted when bystanders came to the general’s aid. Renard survived the attack but was blinded and partially paralyzed from the stab wounds; he lived another six years mostly as an invalid. Chilean workers raised money for Ramón’s defense fund, and he only served five years in prison.
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