A piece of Chiles dark history which has refused to go unrecognized and thankfully so. The voices of the dead will not be easily silenced.
On the night of December 21, 1907 as many as 3000 mine workers and their families stood on the roof the school in protest to mine conditions. Having been told to disperse within the hour or else. The leaders refused.
In response Silva-Renard aka The Butcher of Iquique , aptly named, commanded his band of soldiers to open fire on the strikers and their families. Having no regard for women or children the soldiers opened fire with machine guns plowing down people even as they fled and pleaded for mercy. At nightfall, they hauled and dumped the thousands of bodies into a clandestine mass grave, which has gone undiscovered until August of 2007 when the then Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet ordered a team of archaeologists and forensic scientists to excavate the site rumored to be the mass grave of the Santa Maria School Massacre victims. Nearly 2,500 bodies were exhumed. The Butcher of Iquique was never brought to justice for these cold blooded murders. Though there was an assassination attempt on his life, he escaped.
