Los obreros del volcán. Indígenas y procesos de transición laboral en las azufreras de tacora y taapaca. Norte de Chile (Siglo XX)

During the first decades of the twentieth century, mining at high altitude became important in the Andes of Arica, establishing a series of sulfur mines on the slopes of volcanoes Tacora and Taapaca. Such Extractive activities incorporated Aymara villagers as laborers for work on sulfur mining companies, production that triggered the regional economy. Indigenous workers, mostly of Bolivian origin, part of a process of proletarianisation which was regulated by industrial production, the legal provisions of the Chilean State and the different forms of social organization and trade unions. Based on a corpus of documentary background, this article describes and analyzes these processes, trying to relieve the Andean indigenous population that was incorporated into the wage labor of the sulfur mines and how they interacted with the Chilean authorities and with the industry in an environment of tradition and modernity.