This article analyzes the period that started with the international economic crisis of 1873 and its regional manifestations until the local economic crisis that occured in Taltal at the beginning of 1880, studying the nitrate production initiated a decade earlier with the opening of fifteen nitrate offices that were simultaneously functioning. Before the War of the Pacific, Taltal was the only Chilean region with nitrate deposits and in 1880 encountered a law named the Rights to Nitrate Exportation which took effect in September 1881 impacting exports south of the 24 degrees S.L. parallel. This tax burden provoked mass layoffs of workers in the emerging district of Taltal and had an important socioeconomic impact on the town provoking a combination of measures from the state apparatus that heralded the morphology of the reaction to the approaching crisis.