by Brian Keenan
The eerie voices of Santa Laura had exhausted and unnerved me. They echoed out of every nook and cranny, and I needed to be away from them.
As we walked back to our taxi parked on the desert roadside, we passed a small group of Americans. The men were explaining the working process of the mine to their wives. Their expertise told me they were engineers. They had the enthusiasm of little boys with a new train set. Their wives simply nodded complacently, like bored turkeys. I doubted they could hear the voices I had heard.
The road to Humberstone from Santa Laura runs through the dry salt pampas. The monotonous emptiness of the place concentrated my mind. I was thinking of those old photos of the nitrate barons and the explorers in the museum, trying to reconcile their fatherly images with the ghostly voices in Santa Laura. But the history of the nitrate industry is a complex and bloody one involving international disputes and open warfare between Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Ultimately these ‘Fertilizer Wars’ led to boundary changes which are still the subject of controversy today.
When Chile had claimed large expanses of Peruvian and Bolivian territory by force rather than reason, invoking at least one element of the national motto, the expansion of Chile’s nitrate reserves brought its own problems. A national committee integrating the élite triumvirate of landowner, merchants and mine owners set about the rapid industrial exploitation of these reserves. Their proposed intention was to ‘achieve the stable base of economic and political equilibrium’ through industrial development. The fact that only three of the surnames of this extremely powerful national body were of Spanish origin says much. The decisions reached here were being made by men whose own surnames declared them either English or German or French. Their allegiance was not a national one. The industries they sought to develop were wholly owned or financed by foreign investment.
The question of how to integrate the wealth of the desert was a vexed one. Private foreign investors wanted no truck with a nationalized industry. They had no interest in the labour question. Profit alone was paramount. With such fortunes at stake it was easy to understand the development of political nepotism and financial chicanery in the national parliament. As the labour force realized its own exploitation it determined to make its voice heard above all this political double-talk. With the added element that the world nitrate market was a volatile one, the inevitable result was civil war. Only in this instance it was not a civil war, but rather a war of internal economic interest fuelled by foreign investment.
In such a cauldron, who would hear the voices of those at the mine-face who spat blood from poisoned lungs, or the amputee from those same hell-holes who starved on the road that the mine owners had carved out of the desert, and along which they exported the large mineral wealth in truckloads of nitrate snow? Elsewhere in Chile and in Europe someone was making untold fortunes but here the only reward was hunger, homelessness and death.
With such thoughts on our minds, we left our taxi and made our way to the small office at the entrance to Humberstone.
It takes a while for me to grasp that the man on the gate is telling us we cannot go in. At first I assume it is because we have no tickets and point to the kiosk.
‘Boleto [tickets]?’
‘No, cerrado!’ he replies.
‘I don’t believe it. He says it’s closed.’
‘What?’ comes Brian’s bristling reply. ‘Show him your letter!’
Before leaving London the Chilean embassy had been kind enough to give me a letter of introduction, explaining that we were working on a book and that ‘To whom it may concern’ should be as helpful as possible. The gate man peruses the letter very carefully, hands it back smiling and shrugging. ‘Cerrado.’
He points to a notice. Laboriously I translate it word by word.
‘I think we have to go and get permission from some government office in Iquique.’
‘Frigg that,’ says Brian.
‘Quite. How fucking ridiculous! We come all the way out here and then they tell us we’ve got to go all the way back. Stupid bloody guidebooks,’ I moan, waving one under Brian’s nose. ‘“Two dollars fifty entrance charge, take food and water as you will want to stay a while. Guided tours on some days.” I’m writing to these idiots when we get back.’
‘OK, OK. What are we going to do? Go back?’
‘It’s a real shame. It does sound special – a ghost town.’
Even as I voice my complaints, a large Mercedes pulls up and two couples emerge.
‘I’ll go and see if they can help.’
They can. Not only do Señor Carlos Calderon and his friend Alejandro Armstrong speak good English but Carlos turns out to be a congressman for the district around Valparalso. He exudes the confidence of one used to getting things done. Even with tight shorts emphasizing his pot belly and revealing varicose-veined legs he is every inch the experienced politician. He talks to the man on the gate and then to a policeman who has been sitting in his patrol car a hundred yards away.
‘You mentioned a letter of introduction. May I see it?’ He studies the letter and then explains, ‘I am going to the local police station to speak to the area commander so that we may visit Oficina Humberstone. If you and your friend wait here we will come back soon. I will take your letter, OK?’
Our new friends rejoin the two women waiting by the Mercedes and drive off, following the police car.
‘Excellent!’ I say to Brian. ‘I reckon he’ll get us in if anyone can.’
‘Looks better, that’s for sure,’ Bri says and then points to a little café across the road. ‘It’s thirsty work out here. Let’s get a drink.’
It is a hot and desolate spot. Music blares from a radio and the slightly jaded, over-made-up lady who runs the place is cooking up some powerful-smelling concoction, redolent of curry. Behind the café is a wasteland of car wrecks and mechanical junk. We sip Cokes and look back to the distant hulk of Santa Laura through the flapping canvas of a tattered windbreak.
As we sat waiting the absurdity of our situation struck me. Here we were sitting at a white plastic table in the middle of the desert supping cold drinks. Above us the canopy that was meant to shade us from the sun was torn in tatters by the wind. A few yards from us our taxi driver walked backwards and forwards scratching his head or sitting in the open doorway of his car, reading the paper. We were Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot, waiting for a miracle, waiting for something, anything. While I was waiting, pondering what was so important about going to visit a ghost mining town, the miracle happened.
Some thirty minutes later the Mercedes and its police escort returns. We walk over and Carlos tells us that he spoke to the local governor from the police station and has permission for his party and us to go round the plant. He then leads the formal introductions, first his wife and then his sister, who is married to Alejandro. ‘Carlos and I are brothers-in-law,’ confirms Alejandro who has the dashing good looks of a Fifties film star. Both ladies are handsome and elegant but have little English.
We all saunter in as the gate man happily raises the barrier. The policeman accompanies us as a courtesy escort, though his mirrored sunglasses give him an ominous appearance despite his smiles. I tell Carlos that we had no idea one needed special permission to enter the plant – that our guidebooks talked of it as a going tourist concern. He nods. ‘This was true, and the government has made Oficina Humberstone a national monument. But just before this happened the plant had changed hands – it is owned privately. The owner wants to sell the timber, good, valuable Oregon pine, for other construction projects and so there is a long legal dispute as to what happens next.’
Humberstone proves to be worth the frustrations of getting in. It is a remarkable place. Built as a result of the nitrate boom of the 1860s it was originally called Oficina La Palma but was renamed after its long-time manager, Santiago Humberstone, when he retired in 1925. A busy man was Santiago. As well as administering the oficina and perfecting methods for extracting nitrates from the calich
e of the desert, he was also involved in building the railways to carry the nitrates to the coast.
Out of nowhere a guide appears. A tiny, deeply sunburned woman, Juanita appears impish as she grins from behind large sunglasses. The two couples clearly find her conversation delightful and Carlos and Alejandro, often encouraged by their wives, pass on information to us as we walk around. The complex is vast, a town really. Five thousand workers and their families lived and worked here, with separate quarters for single men and married folk – and a guard to ensure that no women entered the singles enclave. Juanita showed us the market where workers could buy goods from the company using the company’s own money.
‘The workers didn’t have much choice then. Did the company take advantage of them?’ I ask Alejandro.
After conferring with Juanita he tells me, ‘In many mines with this system, yes. But I understand that this oficina was more kind, there was good treatment for the workers.’
As if to support this view we enter a room with a large zinc-topped bar – an ice cream parlour! Juanita leads us outside and across a square to see the church and then, via a library, to the hospital. Here she points out a legend on the wall, handwritten by a man who states he was born there and is now a professor at Dallas University in Texas. It must be very strange to return from one of the world’s most modern cities and find your birthplace a ghost town.
Humberstone closed down in 1961 but in the nitrate industry’s heyday, between the 1860s and the First World War, the export taxes were so lucrative that the government in Santiago was able to fund vast public programmes with them. This meant that the general population was kept happy, and political and economic reform avoided. Yet it was in this region that trade unionism took root in the face of harsh regimes at the nitrate oficinas and at the copper and other mines. There were a number of workers’ revolts and the very thing they produced was turned against them when their protests were savagely suppressed in a hail of bullets.
At Humberstone, though, there was more gentle drama. Juanita leads us into a massive theatre. Brian and I join our friends in the front row seats as our effusive little guide tells us that in the boom times there was so much money available that top rank troupes were brought in to entertain the workers and that Iquique once hosted the great Caruso. She tells another story that has the two couples doubled up. Señora Calderon turns to her husband urging him to translate.
‘Once she was showing a man around the oficina. She did not like him, says he was very grand. He seems to have thought that Señorita Juanita, a little woman in the desert, was not showing enough respect. They were in this theatre when he said in a loud voice, “I am an artist from Santiago.” She stood on that stage and looked down on him and said, “Well, I am the Sophia Loren of Humberstone.” That kept him quiet!’
Brian and I applaud.
The theatre was not the only leisure facility available to the Humberstone workforce. There was a dance hall where even now, in the last week of November, there is an annual party for those who worked or grew up there. There was also a huge swimming pool. This was built out of steel plates, probably from ships’ hulls, because, unlike cement, steel would not be eroded by the nitrate in the soil. Water for the pool and for all human consumption had to be brought or piped in from the hills as the local wells produced only brackish stuff heavily salted with the nitrate.
‘Strange, isn’t it,’ says Brian as we look down into the empty pool, ‘that this lifeless earth should produce the raw materials for fertilizer. Camps like this, that had no life-sustaining water, prepared stuff that helped other land flourish.’
‘Still, there was one advantage as far as I can see. The nitrate kept rats and spiders away. I’d have liked some of that for all those mice and cockroaches in Beirut.’
Our last stop is at the one occupied building on the site. Juanita tells us that a lady lives there, a kind of janitor it seems, and that last year she killed a burglar with an iron bar. As she tells us this we are startled by a fierce chattering above our heads. A little monkey jumps from side to side of the tin roof on a length of chain, its eyes wide and its teeth bared in a snarl. We back away from its eerie anger.
At the gate we say goodbye to Carlos, Alejandro and their wives who invite us to visit them in Santiago if we have time. We find our taxi driver and head back to Iquique, reflecting on our good fortune.
Chapter Four
The bus to Calama stops for twenty minutes at Rio Loa which is nothing but a customs point by the sea, in the middle of nowhere. The heat beats down as every bag is checked, for we are leaving the First Region, Tarapaca, and entering the Second, Antofagasta. There are twelve regions and we aim to pass through them all. We have covered 300 kilometres; a mere 4,000 to go. Everyone is pleasant enough, the customs officers asking where we are from, but I still feel that churning in the stomach I get at customs, borders and checkpoints. Given I have done and plan to do nothing wrong there is no real reason for this tension. Partly it’s the sense of there being no way back: the subconscious remembrance of sitting, sometimes for hours, bound and gagged, often with a gun at one’s head, waiting for the guards to decide it was safe to move on. The remoteness of this spot – the blank, dusty plain around us – adds to the feeling of vulnerability.
After cracking along at a good clip we slow as the road starts winding inland. This is a relief from the rocking and rolling as the bus swung high up among the clifftops. The curtains had been drawn against the sun but every now and then, as we shimmied through another abysmal chicane, I would catch a dizzying glimpse of a sheer drop below my window. I resented anyone sleeping, ignorant of our impending doom.
As afternoon moves to evening the careless sleepers stir and curtains are opened again. We come out of Tocopilla up a boulder-strewn, sheer-sided and tortuously winding valley to witness a glorious sunset: its heart on the horizon the colour of burning copper, cooling to the softest of blues higher in the sky and, framing all this, white feathery clouds. It keeps catching you unawares, the light and terrain mingling suddenly to make your heart leap.
Although the landscape is often harsh it looks actually malign only where man has disturbed the surface; his leavings from the mines or diggings look squalid. In the winding valley I saw the abandoned workings of the piquineros (small, independent mining gangs). They looked like little black mouths that had spewed out rock, dust and the wooden chutes and rocker contraptions that reminded me of photographs of the California gold rush. Imagining the life of such prospectors at the turn of the century makes me shudder. To be in such a remote spot, with just a few mementoes of a home and family far away, must have been tough enough but to burrow deep beneath the parched surface would have required great courage or desperation.
We drive through Maria Elena, one of only two working nitrate oficinas left. It looks very much like Humberstone, rows and rows of one-storey wooden chalets, all with the same colour blue on the fences. Like Humberstone it has a theatre, market, library, shops and hospital and started out as a private company town but now it is a proper municipality and the plant is owned by the state company. We stop at a railway line to let heavy trains roll slowly past, their open cars filled with rocks. The oficina is dominated by a giant chimney and other huge constructions. Once the bus has struggled over the tracks I look back at Maria Elena. Uniform and bleak, it appears just as I had imagined a South American mining town. As we leave it behind in the dust from our tyres and the fading sunset, the washed-out chalets and the few street lamps present a dilapidated vision of suspended animation.
We continue along the uneven road which improves, but only briefly, at the junction with the Pan American Highway. Once across that we head deeper inland and the road is once more an unpaved track. It is a strange feeling leaving that great road behind, as if one is heading away from civilization and back in time. Just outside Chuquicamata we slow right down as the track turns to sand. Fine clouds of dust fill the bus and dry our throats.
We had a one-night
stop at the town of Calama which was the nearest place to Chuquicamata, the biggest open-cast mine on the planet. Someone had described it to us as like looking across and into the Grand Canyon. I could not understand why John wanted to visit this place. I was trying to find a reason for persuading myself to go but could find none. It might be interesting to compare this working mine with Humberstone and Santa Laura but that seemed an insufficient motive for staring into a gigantic hole in the ground. Chile was, after all, such a visually intoxicating country. It is a feast to the eye and to the senses but the idea of Chuquicamata seemed the opposite of all that.
We went to bed early after supper. On the way to my room I found a huge picture of Chuquicamata hanging on one of the hotel walls. It was a nightscape of deep blackness relieved by thousands of lights, giving the impression of a vast city. I studied it for several moments trying to imagine myself there.
I read Pablo’s poetry long into the night. Whether it was my weariness, Neruda’s exotic imagery, or even a tinge of guilt for not accompanying John, I slept fitfully. It was obvious that the ghosts of Humberstone and Santa Laura had followed us here to Calama and into my sleep. I dreamed of Chuquicamata.
The mine glittered like a ghostly Marie Celeste. I was in the bowels of its massive aperture, which closed around me like a gigantic bird enveloping me in its suffocating, dusty plumage. The implacable walls towered everywhere about me and were veined with a green patina of copper seams. I walked the terraces that had been walked by generations of miners before me. I seemed to be trapped in a maze of excavated galleries in an infinity of stone. Everywhere around me I saw insubstantial forms of men claw and pick at the earth. There was a strange aquamarine sheen to their bodies as they laboured furiously like turquoise ants. They were mindless things. The copper god hidden in the earth had laid its sulphurous breath on them and was pulling them into itself.
