Iquique, Chile

Iquique (pronounced eye – key – kay) is also right beside the desert. In fact, above the town there is a giant sand dune that is used as a night time billboard! This place used to be boom town in the late 1800s and early 1900s due to nitrate mining.

I took a tour out to Humberstone, one of the old mining towns. This was an interesting history trip because you got to see how 'things were done' back in the day. The wealthy Brits who ran the mine literally worked the miners to death. Nitrate, which is used as fertilizer by normal people (and explosives by terrorists) is very corrosive.

Miners wore special shoes that were wrapped in layers of leather. Here's what the shoe looks like after it has been used. Just imagine what it does to your skin and your lungs. The owners didn't care and made millions off the backs of their workers. Humberstone is literally in the middle of nowhere, yet they had a grand theater (where the most famous acts from Europe would perform), a giant swimming pool, tennis courts, a dance hall, a hotel and houses that are better than what I have back at home. If you were an owner or worked in the administration, then life was very good. You don't even want to see where the miners lived.

To add insult to injury, they didn't even pay the miners money! Each mining company could print their own 'money' and the workers could only use that 'money' at the company store. Remember the old song “I owe my soul to the company store” - well that is what the lyrics are talking about. Mine operators paid the government to look the other way and about 40 of these companies sprang up. Fed up with the abuse, the workers from the different mining companies got together and gave a list of demands to the mine operators. They waited for a response, but they weren't expecting the one they got. Bullets killed over 4000 unarmed men, women and children in what would be one of the world's worst strike massacres in history. People got paid off and things kept right on going. The best thing about Humberstone is that it finally closed down in 1960 when artificial fertilizer was developed.

If you only have time to see one set of geoglyphs in Chile, then I recommend that you visit the Pintados Geoglyphs. Unlike most places, which only have a few designs, there are lots to see here. There are 4 kilometers of roads that wind around the hills displaying the glyphs.