Meat riots

Meat riots
Date 22-24 October, 1905 Location Chile Result Demands of the workers rejected, meeting repressed, Chilean government victory
Belligerents
Chilean protesters	Government of Chile Chilean Army
Commanders and leaders
	Germán Riesco Roberto Silva Renard
Casualties and losses
2.000 kiled	300 killed

Government of Chile

The Meat riot (Spanish: Huelga de la carne), in the Chilean capital Santiago in October 1905, was a violent riot that originated from a demonstration against the tariffs applied to the cattle imports from Argentina.

The establishment of the Buenos Aires-Mendoza railroad in 1885 ended the lengthy and costly trade with carts that connected these two regions of Argentina and facilitated cattle exports from the pampas to Chile, albeit in the last portion of the route the cattle had to walk over the high mountain passes of the Andes. These imports resulted in a lowering of meat prices in Chile.

In 1887 Sociedad Nacional de la Agricultura (National Agriculture Society), a landowners organization, proposed to put a tariff on the Argentine cattle that Chile was importing from Argentina. In 1888 the attempt to pass this as a law in the Chamber of Deputies was frustrated by several urban workers social organizations, the Democrat Party, and mine owners that protested against it.

Sociedad Nacional de la Agricultura continued to support the implementation of a tariff and in 1897 it was passed as a law in congress, principally as part of a protectionist law package. The package was supported by the Democrat Party, but in 1898 and 1899 it called for the abolition of the tariff returning to its old stance. In 1902 a series of demonstrations against the tariff took place. Scholar Benjamin S. Orlove suggest that it was the rise of staple food prices that led to renewed protests against the tariff in 1905. This would have been because high staple prices would have led people to have less money available for buying meat. The prices of meat themselves remained stable in the period preceding the Meat riots.

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Wikipedia