Popular mining and survival strategies: Pirquineros and pallacos in the Norte Chic o, Chile , 1780-1950
Authors
Milton Godoy Orellana
Doctor en Historia. Investigador asociado en el Instituto de Estudios del Patrimonio de
la Universidad Arturo Prat e investigador y docente en la Universidad Academia de Humanismo
Cristiano
The article analyzes mining in the popular sectors of the Chilean Norte Chico, focusing on pirquineros, especially with regard to continuity, plus pallacos and maritateros, whose practice is extinguished in the nineteenth century. The origin of these names and their practices as a popular survival strategy and variations, specifically pirquinería, presented since the end of the eighteenth century is studied. In this context the perception of elite working on the pirquinería, their questioning and persecution, to become the so-called system “pirquén”, a sort of lease mines by payment in cash or part of the production system that coexisted in the twentieth century with the traditional pirquinería, characterized by operations performed by a worker or group of them with scarce capital and technology.
Godoy Orellana, M. (2016). Popular mining and survival strategies: Pirquineros and pallacos in the Norte Chic o, Chile , 1780-1950. Cuadernos De Historia, (45), pp. 29–62. Retrieved from https://cuadernosdehistoria.uchile.cl./index.php/CDH/article/view/44692
