Dinero no veían, solo fichas. El pago de salarios en las salitreras de Chile hasta 1925

Between 1850 and 1930, several hundreds of factories, the “ oficinas salitreras” worked in the Pampa del Tamarugal and the Atacama deserts, extracting sodium nitrate from “caliche” deposits. The isolation of these industries forced to include in each of them a village in which everything, lodging, water, and food was provided by the company. In particular, mainly between 1880 and 1920, the payment of the wages was realised in a great proportion by tokens, suitable for payment only in the company store, the “pulpería”, instead of to use legal currency. More of 2000 different tokens from “oficinas salitreras” where known, forming one of the more interesting sets of mining numismatic at world-wide level.