La pluma del barretero la cultura obrera ilustrada en tarapacá antes de la masacre de 1907. Una reflexión en torno a la figura de Osvaldo López Mellafe

This article tackles, by means of a biographical case, what the erudite labour culture was at the of the 19th century in Tarapacá. It analyzes the significance, the political and cultural action of the labour organization in the development of social conscience that ended in the strike and the subsequent massacre at the Santa Maria school of Iquique in 1907, event that would set a turning point both organization and labour culture at that time. They mentioned the mancommunal movement, the Democratic Party and the anarchist movement. It analyzes in a preferent way what the labour memorials were in 1904 and the subsequent visit Consultive Committee sent to travel across the salpetrepampas as one of the first State's actions with regard to the social matter in the nitrate north of Chile. The figure that this work studies is Osvaldo López Mellafe, militant of the Democratic Party, director of the El Pueblo newspaper, author of the (damned) novel Tarapacá and a Worker Dictionary, among other pieces of work, whose job propaganda of the worker ideology was to have a prominent role in the composition of the Memorials of 1904, fundamental restoring platform for the striker movement in 1907. This article recovers of this intellectual worker from an unfair oblivion of the chilean labour movement's histogriaphy.