Marusia massacre

In March 1925, workers at the Marusia nitrate mine (oficina), located in the foothills of the Andes in Chile's Tarapacá region near the town of Huara, went on strike to demand higher wages, shorter working hours, and improved conditions. During negotiations between company executives and worker representatives, the British engineer who managed the mine — reportedly disliked for whipping workers — was found dead near the site. A Bolivian engineer was accused of the killing and executed without due process on the orders of the company's owners.

Fearing violent reprisals similar to the earlier San Gregorio massacre, the union, led by labor leader Domingo Soto, took preventive measures, including contacting workers at other mines and proposing to disable railroad tracks to block strikebreakers. The Chilean government, under President Arturo Alessandri, responded by dispatching forty soldiers commanded by Captain Gilberto Troncoso, who was known for his role in the earlier San Gregorio violence. When these troops entered Marusia shooting, workers responded with dynamite, killing several soldiers, seizing weapons, capturing the mine's explosives depot, and cutting telegraph lines. Troncoso's force was compelled to retreat.

Following this initial clash, the roughly 2,400 residents of Marusia armed themselves. In a town assembly, union leaders debated whether to negotiate a surrender or seek help from other mining communities; ultimately, a proposal by Soto to have the local priest mediate was adopted.

The government then sent a 300-man army battalion under Colonel Pedro Schultz as reinforcement. This force attacked the town at night, using machine guns against everyone in sight, including women and children. Hundreds were killed, though an exact death toll was never established; over ninety percent of the dead were reported to be strikers or their family members, with total deaths exceeding 500. A group of workers mounted a defense with dynamite, killing 36 soldiers and injuring 64 more before the assault ended the immediate uprising. Surviving miners and their families fled into the surrounding mountains.

The underlying labor conflict did not end with the massacre; it resurfaced less than two months later in the related La Coruña massacre. The events at Marusia were later fictionalized in Patricio Manns' 1974 novel and adapted into the 1976 film Letters from Marusia (Actas de Marusia).