Pulperia was the name given to company stores and dining facilities in parts of South America, notably in the industries that extracted sodium nitrate from

caliche Caliche () is a sedimentary rock, a hardened natural cement of calcium carbonate that binds other materials—such as gravel, sand, clay, and silt. It occurs worldwide, in aridisol and mollisol soil orders—generally in arid or semiarid regions ...

deposits between 1850 and 1930 in Northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

in the current regions of Tarapaca and

Antofagasta Antofagasta () is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2015 census, the city has a population of 402,669. After the Spanish American wars ...

. The term was used in the Spanish colonial period in South America. In Tarapacá and Antofagasta, the settlements of the nitrate companies were called “Oficinas Salitreras” or “

Saltpeter Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate Salt (chemistry), salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ...

villages”, located on the large and arid

Pampa del Tamarugal Pampa del Tamarugal ("Plateau of the Tamarugal") is a vast plain encompassing a significant portion of the Norte Grande, Chile, and originally named for the '' Prosopis tamarugo'' trees that used to cover its surface. It is located between the par ...

and

Atacama Desert The Atacama Desert ( es, Desierto de Atacama) is a desert plateau in South America covering a 1,600 km (990 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes Mountains. The Atacama Desert is the driest nonpolar desert in th ...

. Due to the extreme conditions of the desert, traveling and providing supplies across was difficult. Therefore, the companies founded small villages and provided lodging, water and food for their workers. These self-sufficient installations included areas for the extraction and processing of

Niter Niter or nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrate, KNO3. It is a soft, white, highly soluble mineral found primarily in arid climates or cave deposits. Historically, the term ''niter'' was not well differentiated from natron, both of w ...

, on-site mining center management, worker’s housing, pulperias, churches, schools, recreation centers, and entertainment. The pulperías were an establishment that combined the services of the general stores and the Wild West barroom of the United States in the nineteenth century. Instead of using normal currency, the payment system of the wages was through tokens to obtain food rations valid only in the company store. This system of tokens included fixed prices established by the company to guarantee social and labor benefits to their workers and maintain a certain level of labor stability. However, in the long term, the fixed price system was ineffective in controlling the rising inflation. Moreover, every pulperia had different tokens. More than 2000 different tokens from “oficinas salitreras” were known, forming one of the more interesting sets of mining numismatic at world-wide level.Calvo Rebollar, M. (2009). Money did not see, just tabs. Payment of wages in Chile until 1925 lassalitreras .De re metallica (Madrid), (12), 9-30.Retrieved from: http://milksci.unizar.es/miner/remetallica/chilenas.pdf As a consequence, inconsistency in the token system and failures of the impracticality of the long term price fixed system forced the companies to change the token system to directly paying cash to the workers. These mining centers were home to thousands of workers and their families from Chile, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina in the late 19th century and early 20th century. However, the exploitation of the natural resource of

nitratine Nitratine or nitratite, also known as cubic niter (UK: nitre), soda niter or Chile saltpeter (UK: Chile saltpetre), is a mineral, the naturally occurring form of sodium nitrate, NaNO3. Chemically it is the sodium analogue of saltpeter. Nitratine ...

flourished between 1842 (when the usefulness of nitrate was discovered) and 1930 when synthetic nitrate was invented. With the declining sale of nitrate, most of these mining centers were abandoned, causing a massive exodus of workers and leaving lonely ghost towns in the desert. The pulperia system remained in use by the copper mining industry for a limited time up until the 1990s. However, pulperias have since been eradicated in all the mining industries of Chile.

Readings

Vergara, A. (2010). Fixed prices and rations: the Anaconda Copper Company in Chile between 1932 and 1958. Retrieved from: http://www.elsevier.es/sites/default/files/elsevier/eop/S1698-6989(12)00024-0.pdf

Notes

{{reflist History of mining in Chile Company stores