Santa María School massacre

The Santa María School massacre was a massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter works (nitrate) miners, along with their wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile, on December 21, 1907. The number of victims is undetermined but is estimated to be over 2,000. The massacre occurred during the peak of the nitrate mining era, which coincided with the Parliamentary Period in Chilean political history (1891–1925). With the massacre and an ensuing reign of terror, not only was the strike broken, but the workers' movement was thrown into limbo for over a decade. For decades afterwards, there was official suppression of knowledge of the incident, but in 2007 the government conducted a highly publicized commemoration of its centenary, including an official national day of mourning and the reinterment of the victims' remains.

The site of the massacre was the Domingo Santa María School, where thousands of miners from different nitrate mines in Chile's far north had been camping for a week after converging on Iquique, the regional capital, to appeal for government intervention to improve their living and working conditions. Rafael Sotomayor Gaete, the minister of the interior, decided to crush the strike, by army assault if need be. On December 21, 1907, the commander of the troops at the scene, General Roberto Silva Renard, in accordance with this plan, informed the strikers' leaders that the strikers had one hour to disband or be fired upon. When the time was up and the leaders and the multitude stood firm, Renard gave his troops the order to fire. An initial volley that felled the negotiators was followed by a hail of rifle and machine gun fire aimed at the multitude of strikers and their accompanying wives and children.