1907
I was in Iquique yesterday, a port city in the north of Chile. I didn´t have much time and the paragliding business didn´t have room for me, so I hopped on a bus to visit a ghost town that is about an hour away.
Humberstone
Humberstone was a nitrate mining company town where, at the turn of the century, employees and their families were payed with tokens instead of cash which kept them entrenched in an unbreakable cycle. In 1907, the three thousand town members, including women and children, walked the forty kilometers of sand dunes to Iquique, in order to ask for support from the local government for better working conditions and payment in cash from the company that was ignoring their requests.
Upon their arrival at the town square, two thousand were subjected to a bloody massacre by the local police force- they were shot and killed at point blank, weaponless, and without a chance to voice their needs. The remaining one thousand were forced to return to work without any changes.
This account was related to me by a construction worker who is working on the restoration project of the mining town. He had many wise words for me, two phrases which I will share with you-
"Love what you do, because if you don´t, you won´t love who you are"
and
"Just because a person doesn´t have a degree doesn´t make them worthless. Sometimes, they may be even more educated."
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