The studies about the daily life of Nitrate workers in Tarapacá have associated the saltpeter environment with isolation and fragmentation, because its location at the desert and the prevalence of the company town notion. This notion was reinforced by the so called classic Marxist historiography, which embraced the Nitrate workers self-image, functional both to their developing process as social actors and their project of social transformation. This article proposes that if we understand the saltpeter environment from the articulating role of the cantons, Tarapacá was not a fragmented space, but an environment socially constructed by the permanent traffic and circulation of multiple flows, remarking the Nitrate workers mobility over this territory, looking for better jobs and supply routes.
Artaza, P. (2018). The saltpeter cantones as a transit and circulation space. Tarapaca during the nitrate expansion cycle. Revista Chilena De Antropología, (37), 164–182. Retrieved from https://revistadeantropologia.uchile.cl/index.php/RCA/article/view/49493
