Charting progress: spaces of civilization and barbarism in the Tarapacá province, north the Chile (1825-1884).

Abstract

The notion of possession and cultural registry of the geographic space of Tarapacá, from the Peruvian Republic up to the first administrative divisions established by Chile in 1884 has been poorly studied. Froom this void it claims that both republics understood the territory through economic and cultural criteria circumscribed to the guano and salt nitrate exploitation, their interests based in the establishment of binaries of racial and ethnic differences to legitimate the political occupation of the specific enclaves of the extraction process of this resource, in detriment of barbarism.