Cementerio de Oficina Chile

Durval Menezes

Nice visit to the cemetery where rest the mortal remains of the pioneers who worked at Oficina Chile. OC was a large saltpeter extraction plant situated in the middle of the Atacama desert, in the contemporary Antofagasta Region but very near its border with the Atacama region. The saltpeter mining industry was extensive and proeminent in the Chilean economy in the late 19th and early 20th century, until it was made obsolete by a nitrogen-fixation process which obtained the same product literally from thin air, so all that remains today are the abandoned ruins and their cemeteries. From the latter, as they have mostly been left undisturbed by the multitude of sackers who looted the nearby mining installations virtually to the ground, it's often easier to discern the importance and size of those works. The most impressive graves, made of iron and stone, are of persons from German descent (this plant owners were German immigrants and their sons), surrounded by the less ornate tombs of common folk (many of them just mounds of earth with the remains of broken wood crosses on top, whose identification is no longer possible). It reminds me of a Spanish proverb, which says that, "after the game is over, both the king and the peon go into the same box"; the kings' "boxes" definitely seems prettier here, but I doubt it makes any difference for them. In an interesting turn of events, I located a grave, presumably from a "peon", whose headstone attests it is still maintained by his descendents today -- which makes the case that what's really worth in this world is the positive impressions one makes in people's lives: it's better to be a beloved "nobody" than a forgotten Ozymandias.

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