The saltpetre workers could no longer put up with the weekly tokens and the punishing stocks. Those were times of humiliation in the industry. They had to fight. Men, women and children crossed the pampa and the dryness of silence, the cold night and the burning heat. The march to the Santa María School was better than the slow death in the saltpetre works. There the general and his shrapnel awaited them. 3,600 workers murdered. An immense tragedy.
Today, right there in Iquique, near the Santa María School, a new tragedy is taking place. There are no deaths and there is no punitive clamp, but there is aggression and humiliation of Venezuelan brothers. Yes, our Venezuelan brothers and sisters, the same ones who gave us a roof, shelter and work when we were escaping from the death and torture of the dictator Pinochet. Carabineros and police received express instructions from the Piñera government to evict them from the Plaza Brasil in Iquique, where they were taking refuge. Nothing mattered to them. Nothing was offered to them. There were no instructions to feed or shelter them anywhere. Only repression and government actions to expel them.
Shameful xenophobia prevailed. First it was Maduro, inept President, unable to protect his citizens and forcing millions of his compatriots to migrate to foreign territories. Family separations, dangerous roads, hunger that hurts and children without a future. Now, in Iquique, it is Piñera who is attacking them, the same one who had said in Cúcuta that he would welcome all Venezuelan exiles.
Surely, the right-wing candidate, Sebastián Sichel, protégé of the current President, will think of his curious phrase: “Politics has become politicised”. Now it fits well. Because Piñera offered solidarity to thousands of Venezuelans, to show himself to the international community as a generous president and at the same time a democrat, an enemy of Maduro. However, his lack of humanity was quickly laid bare, faithfully accompanied by the extreme right and his foreign minister, Andrés Allamand.
What happened is serious, but even more serious is that groups of Iquiqueños, in the Avenida Aeropuerto las Rosas, humiliated Venezuelan immigrants, beat them and burned their modest belongings. They accompanied the aggression with xenophobic shouts, associating immigration with delinquency. People against people. A cowardice without limits, encouraged by the shameful behaviour of the government itself and its Minister of the Interior.
The Iquiqueños no longer remembered the tragedy of the Santa María School. But they must have heard the Cantata of the Quilapayún, when it says “Let us unite as brothers, because we have pure reasons to fight”. It is true. Today there is no purer reason to fight than to defend immigrants, to protect them from incapable governments and those who attack their citizens. And, when it comes to Venezuelans, solidarity cannot waver because we are only returning generosity, that immense generosity that they gave us when pain and death were sweeping our country.
