The centenary of the massacre of Escuela Santa María de Iquique was on December the 21st 2007. Some symbolic gestures were made – the day was declared a national day of mourning, a monolith was erected, a ceremony was held, speeches were made, music was played, some books were published (1). But I was none the wiser at the time.
I had an idea that something nasty had happened because I had heard of the famous record by Quilapayún and Luis Advis, the "Cantata Popular Santa María de Iquique", recorded in 1970. But it was not until we recently went on a short holiday to Iquique that I really learned what had happened over century ago, back in 1907. Somehow, being there made a connection, made it real, even though the Santa María school that is there now was built sometime in the 1930s, and there are no more eye-witnesses.
I thought we would need to ask around to find out where it had happened, but it was not necessary. One day we went to have lunch in the central market (Mercado Centenario), and I could not help to notice the mural covering the walls of the large building over the road - workers, desert, an enormous chilean flag painted at an angle as if it were rising bright red out of the earth - or sinking into it.
I asked a man on the street what the building was and he told me: “that’s the Santa María school – a century ago they killed a lot of people there.” We walked most of the way around the building, reading the grafitti which spoke loudly of bloodshed, murder, vengeance, memory, rebellion. The building itself was silent, and locked.
Through the metal shutters and an open door a sign could be seen: “cooperate with cleaning”. It seems a terrible irony that mass murder should have been carried out by members of the Chilean armed forces on the site of a school, an institution associated with teaching and discipline. How to teach history, discipline and citizenship in a place steeped with such a bloody history of its own?
While I was looking at a particularly lurid mural a door opened between helicopters, chimneys, skulls and rivers of blood and perhaps unwisely I stepped in.
Inside the school, it was clearly not in active use. Graffiti on the other side of the courtyard proclaimed “La memoria rebela contra el olvido” (“Memory rebels against forgetting”). Corridors and open doors, to unknown places. No time for exploring. I was politely told to leave, and so I left.
Down by the sea front, in the ex-aduana building (old customs house) on Avenida Arturo Prat Chacón, the local government had a local history exhibition. One of the exhibits was a model of the original Santa María school building, together with a poster titled “Honour and Glory to the Martyrs of the Santa María School of Iquique” that lists the names of some of those who were murdered, together with some details of where they worked. The tribute was touching, but it somehow seemed like a tiny gesture compared to such an enormous atrocity, however distant in the past it may be.
A short walk from the ex-aduana took us to the muelle de pasajeros (the passenger’s dock), where we took a boat tour. The main attraction of the boat tour was a buoy marking the spot where Arturo Prat’s boat the Esmerelda was sunk by the Peruvian battleship the Huáscar. Prat’s heroism in the naval battle of Iquique transformed him into Chile’s biggest naval hero. He had probably realised when he saw the number and size of the Peruvian boats that his small frigate the Esmerelda was doomed, but he did not flinch from the near-certain death that approached across the water, and gave the now immortal speech: "Men! The odds are against us, but let us take heart and be brave. Never has our flag been lowered for the enemy and I hope that this will not be the first time. For my part, I can assure you that while I live, that flag will fly in its place, and if I die, my officers will do their duty” (2). In one of the Chilean school textbooks the historian Walterio Millar really got into the spirit of the moment and added “With a rousing ‘long live Chile!’ close to two hundred patriot hearts answered him, ready to make any sacrifice” (3). As if he had been there, on the ship with them, watching the approach of a bigger, faster battleship.
The street map of Iquique reads like a history book: Arturo Prat Chacón, Esmerelda, Blanco Encalada, 21 de Mayo, Eleuterio Ramírez, Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins, 18 de Septiembre, Manuel Rodríguez, Manuel Bulnes, Diego Portales, San Martín, Bolivar, Colón. There is even an Avenida Oficina Salitrera Victoria. The road that links Iquique with the high desert plain where the nitrate works (oficinas salitreras) were located is called simply “Ruta A-16”. This would have been the route taken by the striking workers and their families who decided to make the journey to Iquique by foot, to seek dialogue with the authorities. They had been enduring slavery in all but name, living in company lodgings, receiving their pay in tokens that were only valid at the company shops, and whose value had been progressively declining over time. They had nothing left to lose but their lives, and so were prepared to take risks. Men, women and children disobeyed the orders of their employers and made the trek across the desert and down into Iquique, braving the extremes of the desert days and nights to reach the city by the only means of transport available to them: their feet. Was this not also bravery, heroism even?
On the 14th December 1907, Presidente Pedro Montt’s minister of the interior, Rafael Sotomayor Gaete, gave orders via telegram to the Intendente of Iquique, “the public force must make itself respected no matter what the sacrifice”, and a few days later emphasised “the public force must maintain order whatever it might cost” (4). On the 20th of December, representatives of the workers met with the Intendente Eastman in an office of the Buenaventura nitrate works. A group of workers and their families tried to leave the place and were shot dead by troops, they were buried the next day (5). The 21st of December it was the turn of the General Roberto Silva Renard to dialogue with the striking workers. The Santa María school was surrounded with troops, including several machine guns. The strikers were issued an ultimatum, they were told to leave and return to work. They had two good reasons to disobey: firstly returning to work at this stage would leave them empty handed and weakened, and secondly they feared for their lives given the deadly events of the previous day, and the naval warships whose guns could have been brought to bear on their exit route. Disobedience was punished with death: at the General’s command, soldiers armed with machine guns and rifles opened fire, and those who survived the bullets were attacked by the soldiers armed with sabres and lances.
Those who survived the massacre were marched back to work and treated with more brutality than before. Those who died were buried in a mass grave and the government of Pedro Montt decreed that death certificates should not be issued for them. Because of this, the number who died is still unclear, but given the number of people who were at the school and the weapons used against them, it is though to be around 2200. The popular Cantata de Santa María de Iquique by Luis Advis and Quilapayún goes further (6):
Three thousand six hundred died one after another
Three thousand six hundred were killed one after another
While the true number killed remains unknown, the estimates are of a similar order of magnitude to the number killed in the attacks on New York of September 11th , 2001 (7). The efforts made at the time to punish those accountable through the institutions of the government and the law were small and ineffectual. In 1914 General Silva Renard escaped gravely injured from an assassination attempt by Antonio Ramón Ramón, whose brother Manuel Vacca had been killed in the massacre.
Returning to the Naval Glories of Iquique in 1879, the Peruvian captain Miguel Grau, and later on the Peruvian authorities, treated the survivors of the Esmerelda – who were rescued from the sea by the crew of the Huáscar – infinitely better than the Chilean government treated its own citizens thirty years later in the episode of Santa María de Iquique. The British Vice Councillor in Iquique, Mr. Jewell, wrote “With all impartiality, I believe that the Peruvians, in their treatment of the prisoners of war set an example that should give them credit with any nation. I have also visited the cemetery and have seen that the prefect has already ordered that the tombs of Captain Pratt and the lieutenant Serrano should be marked with two simple crosses with their respective names, painted in a legible manner, so that when the occasion presents itself, there will be no difficulty in identifying the remains of these officials.” (8)
It has now been six months or more since I visited Iquique and I have put off finishing this several times. Maybe there is no neat way to finish this. It is an unfinished story, there is unfinished business. The first centenary of the massacre, in 2007, came and went, and what remains in Iquique is a dilapidated school on the site of the massacre, whose walls are daubed with graffiti, with a modest monolith at the corner of the streets Latorre and Amenategui, erected in 1957, with a plaque that reads “Homage of the workers and people of Chile to those who fell in this place, the 21 December 1907” (9, 10). There are no streets or plazas named “Martyrs of Santa María” but there is an Avenida Pedro Montt in Santiago, and another street of the same name in Valparaíso (11). The desert road that leads from the pampa down into Iquique has no name, just a route number.
Probably the biggest and most significant memorial is not seen but heard: the Cantata Popular Santa María de Iquique, composed by Luis Advís, originally recorded by Quilapayún in 1970 and later re-recorded as the Cantata Rock Santa María by the Colectivo Cantata Rock in 2007. This piece of music has crossed all sorts of boundaries, and has remained well-known during decades. For a start, it is an unusual composition that mixes elements of the classical cantata with popular music; folk music in the original version, with the most recent version adding rock music to the mix. The Colectivo Cantata Rock have a page in facebook and a webpage where the complete Cantata can be downloaded for free (12).
It is a shame that one hundred years has not been enough for justice to have been done, not even symbolic justice. If Pope John Paul II was able to apologize to so many individuals and groups of people who had suffered at the hands of the Catholic church over the centuries (13), why has the Chilean government been unable to offer any sort of apology for the actions of their predecessors? Is it because they silently reserve the right to wield this sort of repressive force in future, with similar impunity? I hope it will not be another hundred years before they find the way to make amends. Until something like this is done, it will continue being another case of “Ni perdón, ni olvido” (Neither forgiveness, nor forgetting).
(1) Centenary commemorations. http://www.emol.com/noticias/nacional/detalle/detallenoticias.asp?idnoticia=286165
(2) Arturo Prat. 21 de mayo de 1879. Cited in “Combate naval de Iquique”, Wikipedia: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combate_naval_de_Iquique
(3) ‘Historia de Chile’, Walterio Millar, 63rd edition, Zig-Zag, Santiago, Chile, 2000.
(4) Telégrafos del estado. http://www.cantatarock.cl/img_matanz/bot_galeria/galeria_alta/f18_541_747.html
(5) ‘Matanza de la Escuela Santa María de Iquique’, Wikipedia, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanza_de_la_Escuela_Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_de_Iquique
(6) ‘Cantata Popular Santa María de Iquique’, Luis Advis, performed by Quilapayún.
(7) ‘September 11 attacks’, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
(8) ‘Carta del Vice Cónsul de Su Majestad Británica en Iquique al respecto de los prisioneros de la "Esmeralda"’, Wikisource, http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Carta_del_Vice_C%C3%B3nsul_de_Su_Majestad_Brit%C3%A1nica_en_Iquique_al_respecto_de_los_prisioneros_de_la_%22Esmeralda%22
(9) ‘Un 21 de Diciembre’, Germán Altamirano, http://www.purochile.rrojasdatabank.info/santamaria.htm
(10) “monolito recuerdo matanza obreros de iquique 21 diciembre 1907”, http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4486927, by antioligarca
(11) “CGT culmina actividades por Santa María e inaugura monolito en homenaje a los mártires obreros”, Arnaldo Pérez Guerra, http://www.cgtmosicam.cl/reportaje_31.htm
(12) http://www.cantatarock.cl/descarga.htm
(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologies_by_Pope_John_Paul_II
