The death of the poet José Domingo Gómez Rojas in prison caused a public outcry, which by December 1920, led to the release of every arrested worker without charge.

After the fall of the Ibáñez dictatorship, Chilean anarcho-syndicalists reorganised into the General Confederation of Workers [es] (CGT), which abandoned the old model of industrial unionism in favor of a federalist organisation.

[2] During the 1870s, anarchists established a branch of the International Workingmen's Association (IWMA) in Chile, where it distributed propaganda within existing benefit societies and left-wing publications.

[5] By the turn of the 20th century, the anarchist movement had gained a substantial following in Chile,[6] as anarcho-syndicalists organised a number of trade unions and led a series of strike actions in the country.

[10] Anarchists grew increasingly critical of the FOCh after it came under the control of the Communist Party of Chile (CPC) and affiliated with the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU), which they argued to have caused division within the labor movement.

[15] Following mobilizations by the National Food Workers' Assembly (AOAN) in 1918, stevedores affiliated with the IWW refused to load foodstuffs onto ships for export.

[37] This caused a diplomatic incident with the Chilean government, which passed a Residency Law that prohibited "undesirable elements" from enetering the country.

[40] As a sustained wave of successful strike actions, union organising and antimilitarist agitation strengthened the power of the labor movement, the IWW became a target for political repression and its members were denounced by officials as "bomb-throwers and nihilists".

[44] On 19 July, the printer Julio Valiente was arrested, charged with having published the statutes of the IWW; he admitted to having printed 3,000 copies for the union, although he denied having any affiliation to it.

The Chilean government swiftly appointed José Astorquiza Líbano as special prosecutor and granted him broad powers to investigate the case.

[46] On the morning of Sunday, 25 July 1920, five Chilean police agents broke into the Santiago offices of the IWW in order to gather evidence of subversive activities.

Although they hoped to find weapons, their haul consisted solely of photos of famous anarchists, editions of various syndicalist publications, copies of manifestoes and other archival documents.

Verba Roja editor Armando Triviño said he could "smell" the coming repression and fled the city to a safe house in Valparaíso; in his absence, his wife and co-editor were arrested.

[49] In the homes of most IWW members, including that of the poet José Domingo Gómez Rojas, the police found little to no evidence of subversive activities, mostly discovering books, magazines or fundraising leaflets.

[50] Astorquiza subsequently turned to identifying the source of these various publications; he suspected the University of Chile Student Federation (FECh) of publishing and distributing the IWW's programs.

[56] People called for the fall of the Sanfuentes government, some proclaimed their support for the liberal presidential candidate Arturo Alessandri, and others were arrested for making pronouncements against the army and police.

[61] So many people were arrested during the process that the jails of Santiago became overcrowded, a situation exacerbated by Astorquiza spending so much time seeking evidence of subversive activities.

[62] Astorquiza considered even the most minor evidence, from possession of copies of left-wing papers to claims of people holding meetings, to be proof of subversive activities.

[64] Imprisoned workers lived in extremely poor conditions: bad quality food; the spread of epidemic typhus and tuberculosis; and widespread sexual assault.

[66] Members of the IWW-C clandestinely attended his funeral, while others that were imprisoned sent flowers to decorate his coffin or raised funds to aid his bereaved family.

[68] Astorquiza, the prison guards and police were widely blamed for the death, with students and the press increasingly protesting against the continued imprisonment of "innocent victims" of the process.

[70] The liberal opposition candidate Arturo Alessandri, who had won the 1920 Chilean presidential election, prepared to take office and was keen to put the process to an end.

[76] From 1922, the IWW-C sought to establish links with anarcho-syndicalists in Peru, where Luis Armando Triviño propagated the organizational form and methods of the IWW and called for international solidarity between Peruvian and Chilean workers.

[82] In March 1926, the Chilean IWW member Alberto Bengoa, who represented the local MTW section, presided over the Second International Congress of the Maritime Transport Workers of the Western Hemisphere, held in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.

[83] The congress ultimately agreed on a declaration which demanded the eight-hour day, weekend and overtime pay for sailors, as well as a number of other improvements to the working conditions for crews.

[19] In 1927, following the installation of a dictatorship under Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, the IWW-C was broken up,[87] as it had been strongest opponent of the government's labor code.