Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities

CHAPTER 8 "El Salvador: A Modern Company Town in the Chilean Andes"

178 chapter eight El Salvador A Modern Company Town in the Chilean Andes eugenio garcés feliú and angela vergara This chapter analyzes the social, urban, and architectonical characteristics of El Salvador, a company town built by the Andes Mining Copper Company in the Chilean Andes in the late 1950s. A U.S. company subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Company—one of the three largest copper producers at the time—Andes Copper launched in 1956 the El Salvador Project to replace the failing mine of Potrerillos. Inspired by modern ideas on copper production , labor management, and urban planning, Andes Copper built a new mine, industrial plants, roads, and a camp. The town became a unique experiment in urban planning and social engineering, integrating diverse—and sometimes contradictory—traditions such as previous Chilean experiences with company towns in nitrate and copper settlements, U.S. company town planning of the early twentieth century, and U.S. post–World War II urban practices. Company towns were an integral component of the Chilean industrial landscape and played a central role in the establishment and growth of Chile’s most important commodities: nitrate and copper. Built in the 1910s, copper camps such as Sewell, Chuquicamata, and Potrerillos became emblematic examples of the introduction of the company town model in the Chilean copper mines as well as of the success of U.S. capital in the industry. Located next to the mines, these camps grew isolated from the rest of the country, and U.S. businesses considered and ruled them as private properties. Following policies resembling those implemented in other U.S. operations in Latin America, U.S. copper companies strictly segregated Chilean workers from U.S. management, El Salvador • 179 encouraged workers to settle with their families, and sponsored a wide range of social services and urban infrastructure such as schools, sports fields, healthcare facilities, and special programs for housewives.1 Company towns, however, were always highly contradictory institutions and the site of intense labor and social tensions. While many contemporaries applauded the housing and social benefits provided by management and their welfare departments, many others such as Chilean writer Ricardo Latcham described these camps as a “Yankee feud.”2 In the late 1950s, the El Salvador Project became emblematic of the modernization of copper production and living arrangements for mine workers. It was part of an international trend to improve productivity in mining and achieve increasing degrees of influence and control over a labor force that management perceived as too radicalized and expensive. The separation of the El Salvador camp and plant, the semicircular layout, and the high quality of housing show the influence of new ideas in town and industrial planning. However, El Salvador did not completely break with its past. As a traditional mining camp, El Salvador was still attached to the old tradition of company towns in Chile as well as in the rest of the Americas. As in previous company towns, the company perceived housing, social services, and industrial plant infrastructures as forms of social and labor control, increasing workers’ dependency toward the company. The intense conflicts and confrontations that characterized the history of El Salvador in the following decades suggest that this model town did not achieve the harmonic balance between capital and labor that its planners had in mind. This chapter is organized in four sections. The first section places El Salvador in the history of company towns in Chile, demonstrating the influence of company towns in the country. The second part explains the genesis of the El Salvador Project and Anaconda’s campaign to modernize the copper industry and its Chilean properties. The third section analyzes the architectural and social aspects of El Salvador, showing the influence of new urban and planning ideas on Chile. The chapter ends with a short discussion of the labor and social tensions in Salvador throughout the 1960s, suggesting the tensions that the implementation of a company town caused in this community. company towns in chile In Chile, the most important planning efforts preceding the copper towns were the nitrate camps. Following the War of the Pacific (1879–83), nitrate became Chile’s most important export commodity. Controlled by British capital, nitrate 180 • e. garcÉs feliÚ and a. vergara fields were spread out throughout the Atacama Desert. Given the isolation and low demographic density of this northern region, labor recruiters (called enganchadores ) traveled around the country, especially to small...