Abstract

During the second decade of the twentieth century, with the industrialization of the Chuquicamata mine (Atacama Desert, Chile), workers from an American mining company introduced baseball to the inhabitants of the city of Tocopilla. From an elite sport practised by the Americans and embodying social segregation, baseball evolved into a widespread social practice that identified the city at a national level. Local communities adopted baseball, becoming a sport with solid labour, ethnic, economic, and political identity. In addition, the mining capitalists instrumentalized the popular triumph of baseball to create better social relationships between American and local workers and to improve the company's corporate image.