[1][2] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] 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.

[2] Scholar Benjamin S. Orlove suggest that it was the rise of staple food prices that led to renewed protests against the tariff in 1905.

[2] The plans for the demonstration spread through word of mouth and support from the centrist Catholic newspaper El Chileno.

[2] This minority group marched to the residence where protest leaders were allowed to enter to deliver the petition document and to chat with the president.