Cultural Heritage Day spotlights ancestral heritage and the glory days of the nitrates industry

On May 28^th, 29^th and 30^th, SQM participated in national celebrations of Cultural Heritage Day, an event dating back 52 years.  Aiming to create a gathering point from northern Chile, the company offered a series of virtual activities to showcase the area’s ancestral cultures and the glory days of the nitrates era.

The commemoration featured an extensive calendar of events in the Tarapacá and Antofagasta region towns where the company operates. One highlight, the first María Elena Tourism Encounter on Friday, May 28^th, was an opportunity to share experiences from different areas and places around the country. In addition, it spotlighted the municipality’s tourism potential, given the value of its historical heritage from the glory days of the nitrates industry.

On the same day, a live tour of Maria Elena’s most iconic places was streamed. The town was born as a nitrates office in 1926 and stands out because of its historical heritage and ties to the nitrates era. Renowned teacher, historian and author from the Pampa, Mauricio Camus, participated in the activity.

Activities also took place in Quillagua, the location of “Knowledge and Flavors of our Land”, an Aymara cuisine workshop, on Saturday, May 29^th. Expert female cooks from the area taught traditional Aymara recipes, drawing on the best ingredients and memories of traditions from this town in the middle of the Atacama Desert.

In San Pedro de Atacama, Lickanantay singer-songwriter Margarita Chocobar launched her fourth album to celebrate the 50^th year of her career. The 2021 San Pedro de Atacama High-Altitude Wine Festival, organized by the Toconao winemakers to share Lickanantay winemaking culture, was also part of the lineup. It marked the end of this year’s harvest activities and was the backdrop for launching a new wine.

On Saturday, May 29^th, the festival featured folklore shows by well-known local performers like Margarita Chocobar, Valentín Cortés and Rodrigo Ortiz, and Chilean singer-songwriters like Nano Stern and international musicians like Felipe Staiti, the guitarist of the Argentinean group “Enanitos Verdes.”

A live broadcast from the Santa Laura nitrates office in the Tarapacá Region culminated activities on Sunday, May 30^th. Produced in conjunction with the Nitrates Museum Foundation, the event featured interesting interviews with Patricio Díaz and Silvio Zerega, the foundation’s Directors of Heritage and Research, respectively. The special program included a tour of iconic sites at this historical heritage site. The national monument and UNESCO World Heritage Site bore witness to the heyday of the nitrates industry and the birth of northern Chile’s Pampa culture in the early 20th century.

The activities that made up this nationwide celebration were streamed on SQM’s Facebook fan page. Together, “Colores de Norte” and “Develop Worlds” drew an audience of more than 50,000.

Pablo Pisani, Director of Communications, Sustainability and Public Affairs at SQM, commented that “showcasing and recovering the historical heritage surrounding the nitrates industry and teaching about ancestral culture in the Tarapacá and Antofagasta regions are key to our community work plan. We are pleased to have participated in this huge national party revealing the diverse cultural richness in Chile’s different territories. This is the second year that we have had to hold it online due to the public health crisis.”

Heritage Month celebrations also included social media initiatives like sharing information about key players that contribute to spotlighting the area’s ancestral cultures and the glory days of the nitrate industry. Also, as a way of interacting with the public, a photography contest brought our social media followers unpublished images from the e-books on María Elena, Pedro de Valdivia and Tocopilla that were published specially for this occasion.