Chile Follow

The Chilean government closed down the San José mine—where 33 miners are still trapped underground—in 2007 over health and safety failures.

Earthquakes are events that expose what is hidden in a society. They are crises that reveal the best and the worst of people.

Chile – BAE secretly paid £1 million to General Pinochet in return for help over arms deals.Romania – The 2003 sale of two ex-Royal Navy frigates saw payments of £7 million in "secret commissions" to clinch the £116 million ship refurbishment deal.Czech Republic – The 2003 sale of Gripen fighter aircraft to the Czech Republic saw the CIA, rival arms companies and the Czech police confirm bribery attempts by BAE.Qatar – After the sale of UK arms to Qatar in 1996, BAE paid a £7 million "commission" into three Jersey trust funds under the cont

Between 1970-3 Chile entered a period of revolution. Workers began to take control of factories, the peasants were seizing the land and a vast movement of the oppressed was making its mark on shaping a new society.

Tony Manero is a film set in Chile’s capital city Santiago in 1978 – during the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Rioting shook Chile’s capital Santiago on Wednesday of last week during a day of protest called by the CUT, the main trade union federation.

At the beginning of August, contract miners in Chile’s new CTC union federation celebrated a significant victory against Codelco, Chile’s state-owned mining corporation.

After the battles of forestry workers in the Arauco region and copper miners working for the state owned Codelco company, subcontracted workers are targeting the private mining industry.

Miners striking against Codelco, Chile's state owned mining corporation are celebrating a victory. After a solid 37 day strike by some 13,000 workers the company made a revised offer. The strikers, subcontractors in the CTC union federation, voted by a large majority to accept the offer and end the strike.

This week some 700 miners have come out on strike in Chile’s Collahuasi copper mine, nearly 2,000 kilometres north of Santiago and 5,000 metres up in the Andes. This is at a time when thousands of subcontracted workers in Chile’s state owned copper mines are already out.

The use of sub-contractors has become endemic in Chilean copper mines. In 1980 the state copper company Codelco employed 28,000 workers on fixed contracts. Now only 18,000 work "direct", and 33,300 work for sub-contractors – and the jobs which are "tendered out" are the same jobs that direct workers do.

Within a few minutes of the announcement that the hated tyrant Pinochet was dead, thousands of Chilean people took to the streets to celebrate.