Santa María de Iquique, cantata popular is a cantata composed in 1969 by the Chilean composer Luis Advis Vitaglich, combining elements of both classical and folkloric/indigenous musical traditions to produce what became known as a popular cantata and one of Quilapayún’s most acclaimed and popular music interpretations. The theme of the cantata is a historical industrial dispute that ended with the massacre of miners in the northern Chilean city of Iquique in 1907. The reading is impeccably executed by the Chilean actor Hector Duvauchelle, who captures the increasingly tense struggle between the miners and their exploiters in the narrative. Instrumental interludes and songs empower the progression of the story leading to a final song which voices the miners demand for an end to exploitation with visions of an egalitarian and free world.

Quilapayún are a folk music group from Chile and among the longest lasting and most influential ambassadors of the Nueva Canción Chilena movement and genre. Formed during the mid-1960s, the group became inseparable with the revolution that occurred in the popular music of the country under the Popular Unity Government of Salvador Allende.