Salitre Inc. tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the Chilean natural nitrate of sodium, called salitre by the miners in the Atacama Desert. Through the story of Luis Enrique, a kid born in the desert it brings an emoti onal, passionate, sad account with the unforgett able men and women during two generati ons of miners. The story brings compassion, truth of an era of happiness and prosperity to a final era of desperati on and poverty in the salitre towns.
The author Eduardo Bordonez-Molina treats the dictatorship of the General Pinochet with drama and heart to describe the profound social impact on men and women humiliated, off ended and subjugated during seventeen years of military rule. The exile was the only path for thousands of Chilean citi zend to escape from the cruel government of the General Pinochet.
The narrative begins with Luis Enrique returning to the place where he was born. He felt again the hot and the barren ground of the Atacama Desert aft er an absence of 40 years. He narrates the life of the miner working under the rough English Shank method to extract salitre. The tools were the eff rots of hundreds of mules and the hard work of the miners using primitive tools.
Eduardo Bordonez-Molina writes from the heart, drawing on his own refl ecti ons as the son and grandson of salitre miners, who persevered in one of the harshest environments on the planet before succumbing to its effects. As he writes with bitt erness, "My family never saw and felt the rain wetting their faces."
Eduardo Bordonez-Molina, a professional engineer born in Cala-Cala, Chile, in 1935, immigrated to the United States during the government of Socialist President Salvador Allende, escaping a country on the verge of civil revoluti on. Living in exile without his family, Bordonez-Molina earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in business administration from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. For more than 40 years, he has been working with a passion for mass rail transportation.
The author-feared persecuti on if he returned to Chile, which was under the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. After his tourist, visa expired; he lived illegally in the United States for more than 10 years until he received a permanent visa and reunited his family. Although Salitre Inc. is his first novel, Bordonez-Molina plans to conti nue writi ng novels that portray the cost of a society that emphasizes business and profit over humanity."