Santa María School Massacre (1907)

Sat Dec 21, 1907

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Image: A Communist Party mural that commemorates Santa Maria school massacre on the right, photo Rodrigo Fernandez/CC

On this day in 1907, a massacre took place at the Santa María School in Iquique, Chile when the Chilean Army fired on a crowd of striking workers, mostly nitrate miners, and their families, killing approximately 2,000 people.

Preceding the massacre, on December 10th, 1907, a general strike had broken out in Tarapacá Province. This was the start of the “18 Pence Strike” (Spanish: “la huelga de los 18 peniques”). A large contingent of strikers traveled to the provincial capital, the port city of Iquique, carrying the flags of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, and issued a set of pro-worker demands.

The site of the massacre was the Domingo Santa María School, where thousands of miners from different nitrate mines in Chile’s far north had been camping for a week after converging on Iquique, the regional capital, to appeal for government intervention to improve their living and working conditions.

Rafael Sotomayor Gaete, the minister of the interior, decided to crush the strike, with violence if necessary. On December 21st, 1907, General Roberto Silva Renard, gave the strikers and their families one hour to leave or be fired upon.

After the mass of workers refused to leave, General Silva Renard gave his troops the order to fire, killing an estimated 2,000 people, including women and children present. Among the dead was Spanish worker Manuel Vaca, half-brother of the anarchist Antonio Ramón.

Ramón traveled to Iquique to find out what happened to his sibling. On December 14th, 1914, he approached General Renard on the street and stabbed him several times in the head. Renard survived the attack, but suffered severe injuries, losing his sight and all movement in half of his face, remaining an invalid until he died in 1920. Ramón was released from prison in 1919.

For decades after the massacre, the government repressed official acknowledgement of the incident. In 2007, the government conducted a highly publicized commemoration of its centenary, including an official national day of mourning and the reinternment of the victims’ remains.