On the morning of July 21, 1972, three hundred workers at the SUMAR textile factory in Cerrillos locked the administrative gates and raised a hand-painted banner above the entrance: “Esta fabrica funciona bajo control obrero.” They were not striking. They were, for the first time, running the looms without a single owner present — answering instead to an elected council of machinists, seamstresses, and floor supervisors who met each evening in the canteen over boiled tea and stale bread.
The First Cordon: Cerrillos-Macul
What happened at SUMAR was not isolated. Within weeks, the metalworks at Mademsa, the electronics plant at SITSa, and the garment workshops along Avenida Santa Rosa had formed their own comandos comunales. These clusters of workers from neighbouring factories sharing supplies, coordinating transport, and defending against employer lockouts became known as the cordones industriales. By October 1972, Santiago counted eleven cordones across the capital's working-class belt.
“The factory belongs to those who make it run, not those who own the paper. We do not need their permission — we already have the keys.”
— Ernesto Vega, textile worker, Cordon Cerrillos-Macul
The cordones were more than emergency responses to bosses' lockouts. They were experiments in popular power, each one coordinating production schedules, distributing raw materials between plants, and negotiating directly with government ministers. The workers of Cerrillos-Macul published their own weekly bulletin listing output figures alongside political analysis of the national situation.