La visión del diario El Despertar de los Trabajadores sobre la Fiesta de La Tirana

The purpose of this article is to analyze the fragments of the workers’ newspaper El Despertar de los Trabajadores (Workers’ Awakening) that refer to the festivity of La Tirana. It is taken into account that the emergence of the workers’ movement coincides in time and space with this celebration. The main purpose is to understand the anticlerical sense and its relation with the popular religion professed by the saltpeter workers, the public to whom the newspaper is addressed. The results obtained indicate that the newspaper, through its anticlerical stance, made an effort to rationalize the celebration by highlighting the negative aspects related to the attendance to La Tirana, such as the alleged complicity of the clergy with the capitalist system and a critical description of the image of the Virgin.