10.5 EQUIPAMIENTO CULTURAL Y DE OCIO
10.5.2 ADECUACIÓN CENTRO SOCIAL. MEJORA DE EQUIPAMIENTO 69
Nationalization under socialism implied an attempt to construct a different society in the camps, respond to workers’ demands, and solve old problems such as discrimination, segregation, isolation, and abusive labor practices.
The new administration sought to enhance the social and urban infra-structure and thereby benefit common unskilled or semiskilled workers, through building schools and social and recreational centers. It focused on workers and their families and on ways of improving the lives of women and children in the isolated and sometimes very masculine communities.
To solve the traditional problem of isolation, new authorities strove to integrate the mines into the rest of the country, improve transportation, create new opportunities for recreation in and outside the camps, and solve the immediate problems of the community. From a social perspective, nation-alization and socialism implied a complete reform of the old company’s welfare agenda.
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30. For a general discussion of the success and limitations of participación in the country, see Manuel Barrera, Worker Participation in Company Management in Chile: A Historical Experience (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1981).
31. James Petras, “Chile: Nacionalización, transformaciones socioeconómicas y partici-pación popular,” Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional 11 (1972).
32. Zapata, Los mineros de Chuquicamata, 57–58.
33. Manuel Trigo, conversation with the author, July 20, 2000.
A first priority of the new administration was the desegregation of housing and social services. From 1917 to 1971, Andes Copper had dis-tributed housing and provided social and recreational services according to workers’ positions in the company. Similarly, it had established strict seg-regation between the foreign staff and the native labor force. In contrast, the up nationalization program questioned the basis of the company town model; for one thing, the foreign system was discriminatory and abusive and thus contrary to the ideals of the up nationalization project, but above all, labor unions encouraged such questioning.
The dismantling of the company town model had a symbolic dimension for the local community, representing the end of foreign domination. When the new administration moved to the camp, they did not occupy the old houses of the American camp but moved into new houses in El Salvador.
The general manager’s house in Potrerillos became a guesthouse and the biggest houses in the old American camp were used as kindergarten and nursery schools and community institutions.34In Chuquicamata, Salvador Allende symbolically gave the board of directors’ house to the unions.35 While in the past the Welfare Department had assigned housing by marital status and job classification, during the up, the main criteria were workers’
needs, family size, and seniority. The decisions about housing became the joint responsibility of the workers’ representatives and the company’s administrators.36Facilities and services were also desegregated. The ranchos, the restaurants where single workers received their meals, had been segre-gated according to job classification. In January 1973, the administration opened the rancho that had served the administrative personnel to all unmarried workers and those who were living in the camps without their families, regardless of the job status of these groups.37
In a context of economic restrictions, the company did not carry out big programs of housing development. In August 1971, Cobresal had planned to build 380 houses in El Salvador, 16 in Llanta, 68 in Barquito and Chañaral, and 304 in Potrerillos.38However, it only built 110 houses between 1971 and 1972, and finished only 10, while 30 others were under construction during
34. Francisco Lira, conversation with the author, July 1, 2000.
35. Zapata, Los mineros de Chuquicamata, 4.
36. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, pp. 6, 17–18.
37. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, p. 6.
38. Gutiérrez to Cantuarias, August 12, 1971, arnad, mm, Providencias, 1971, vol. 777-0378.
the first six months of 1973.39Shortages of construction material and diffi-culties with the construction company in charge of the works (Viviendas Económicas del Norte, or vienor) slowed the process of construction.
Despite these constraints, Cobresal was able to improve existing housing and advanced the eradication of collective bathrooms.
Education was a major concern of the company. The new administra-tion expanded; desegregated; and, as general manager Ricardo García explained, democratized the school system in the camps.40The company improved elementary education by increasing the number of teachers, created high schools and kindergartens in Potrerillos and El Salvador, and organized programs of adult education and technical training. By 1973, there were two high schools, one in El Salvador and one in Potrerillos, with a total enrollment of 227 students.41The kindergartens were a new initiative, one that recognized the needs of working women. By August 1973, there were forty children between forty-five days and six years old enrolled in the preschool in Potrerillos, and sixty-six in El Salvador.42In addition, the Training Department (Departamento de Adiestramiento y Capacitación) organized a massive literacy campaign under the slogan “If you know, teach. If you don’t know, learn.” The Training Department trained brigades composed of three people, each of whom taught a group of about ten students.43The teachers, who were volunteers from the com-munity, started working in July 1972. By 1973, they had taught sixty students, but then the program was suspended.44
In an attempt to break the traditional barriers of isolation, the company made special efforts to bring artists, theater companies, and orchestras to town. Sports competitions were encouraged, and television arrived in the camps for the first time.45Similarly, the company decided to build recre-ational facilities next to the coast, in Flamenco. The construction of Flamenco was part of the up national initiative of building balnearios populares (popular vacation sites) and creating recreational opportunities for working people. Provisional facilities were opened for the summer of 1973, and 173
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39. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, p. 16.
40. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, p. 30.
41. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, p. 30.
42. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, pp. 5–6.
43. Departamento de Capacitación Cobresal, “Campaña de Alfabetización,” Museo El Salvador, El Salvador, Chile, n.d.
44. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, annex 2, p. 8.
45. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, pp. 6–7, 36.
workers and their families spent their weekends at the beach, sleeping in tents. The company provided free transportation and lodging and subsi-dized food, and workers paid only part of the food expenses. By mid-1973, the company and workers discussed the possibility of building permanent facilities at Flamenco.46
In an effort to solve immediate problems at the local level, to involve the community in its own affairs, and to create opportunities for participa-tion, the administration encouraged volunteer work.47As the director of the Welfare Department, Raúl Vásquez, explained, volunteer works would
“make the community more integrated, so that [the community] could solve its own problems.”48Similarly, Vásquez viewed volunteer work as an alternative to the traditional paternalism of the company. Workers and their families joined the administrative staff in the construction of new schools and roads and in a wide range of social campaigns. Similarly, the need to encourage the community to solve its own problems, thus decreasing people’s dependency on the company, led the administration to promote grassroots organizations. The community also benefited from national volunteer programs. During the summer of 1972, for example, male and female students from the Universidad Técnica del Estado arrived in El Salvador, Chuquicamata, and El Teniente as volunteer workers.49
Despite the government’s efforts to supply the mines with necessary food and raw materials, by the end of 1972 the national problems of supply began to hit the camps. In October 1972, truck owners organized a national strike (the October paro) that disrupted transportation and aggra-vated the national economic crisis. The strike of 1972 isolated the mine, leading to a shortage of canned food. In November, management was forced to implement strict rationing at the company stores. Throughout 1973, a national shortage of foreign currency and an increase in prices in the international market restricted traditional imports such as beef, dry milk, tea, butter, and oils. Despite these problems, the company store had a normal supply of fresh produce provided by local producers.50The shortage caused internal conflicts and discontent in the mines. As a worker explained
46. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, annex 3, pp. 10–12.
47. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, annex 3, pp. 10–12.
48. Andino (Potrerillos), June 5, 1971.
49. Cobre (Santiago), February 1972.
50. Cobresal, “Primer encuentro,” chap. 4, pp. 12–14.
to a newspaper in February 1973, “If you ask someone how we were before and how are we today, he will tell you that we were better in the past.”51In Chuquicamata, rationing at the company store unleashed protests from housewives and a forty-eight-hour strike in January 1973.52