In the decade of the 1880s, once the territorial annexation of Tarapaca had been secured, Chile addressed its political and administrative reorganization. In this context, and based on data found in the archives of the Regional Government of Tarapaca in Iquique and Santiago, this paper argues that the conjunction of the salitre exploiters' interests with the modernizing guidelines caused the Chilean State to become markedly distant between the 1880s and the 1930s, regarding the resources, population, and Andean space of Tarapaca. This resulted in a scarce presence of the official machinery in these matters, and the absence of a specific Chileanization policy.