CHICAGO, Illinois — Along the shores of Chile, what once stood as a hub for fishing and tourism, is today one of the nation’s most polluted areas. In 2018, international attention fell on Quintero-Puchuncaví when a cloud of gas covered its bay. More than 1,300 people faced hospitalization from gas poisoning in an event that some call the “Chilean Chernobyl.” While the immediate effects of the event are shocking to many, others see it as part of a broader, long-term issue of the state pursuing economic development through polluting activities at the cost of a smaller subset of the population who live in these areas, commonly referred to as sacrifice zones in Chile.
The History of Sacrifice Zones in Chile
Since the 1950s, the Chilean state designated regions of the country to be subject to increased industrialization and pollution in the name of economic growth. There are five of these areas throughout Chile, all of which have experienced environmental degradation.
While this period established the precedent for sacrifice zones in Chile, new political leadership and laws amplified their impact. In 1973, army commander-in-chief Augusto Pinochet came into power through a military coup. Alongside destroying the country’s democratic order and committing numerous human rights abuses, Pinochet and his junta put in place a neoliberal economic model that limited regulation and prioritized private property. Much of their political project was formally built into the structure of the country in the constitution of 1980.
Though Chile saw economic growth during this period, Chile also endured an era of widening inequality, most starkly demonstrated by the sacrifice zones in Chile that have harmed the health and human capital of its poorest citizens. Among some of the laws that have limited oversight into the ecological harm in these regions is the 1981 Water Code, which privatized water and the 1983 Mining Code, making it easy to secure a mining lease.
Sacrifice Zones Today
Even after Chile returned to democracy in the 1990s, environmental degradation continued. As of 2020, around 200,000 Chileans live in these five communities that have become sacrifice zones in Chile, often falling victim to the accidents and general pollution from companies operating in them.
In Quintero-Puchuncaví, events like “Chile’s Chernobyl” in 2018 are not uncommon. For instance, Gladys González, a teacher from Puchuncaví, told France24 that an incident of air contamination in 2011 did not just bring harm to her students’ physical health but also hurt their education. That year, reports of sickness among students from coal dust shut down their school for multiple months and when González started teaching again, it was out of shipping containers until a new school opened a few years later.
While acute events of poisoning like this get a lot of attention, just living in a sacrifice zone in Chile poses numerous long-term threats. González said even playing in the dirt can be harmful to her students because they risk ingesting the heavy metals that it has become saturated with. González and a number of her colleagues suffer from multiple chronic health conditions and tests of their blood show high concentrations of heavy metals as well.
A Successful Legal Challenge to Sacrifice Zones in Chile
The people living in these areas have not been passive, however. A number of groups are stepping up to challenge the status quo of sacrifice zones.
One of these organizations is Mujeres de Zona de Sacrificio de Quintero-Puchuncaví en Resistencia or “MUZOSARE.” MUZOSARE is a group of women from Quintero-Puchuncaví who have collected evidence documenting the consequences of local pollution, organized their communities in opposition to it and worked with legal groups, such as Defensoría Ambiental, that challenge the protections of polluters.
In 2019, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of MUZOSARE’s fight against both the government and companies responsible for “Chile’s Chernobyl.” The Court voted to hold the government accountable, finding that it failed to protect the constitutional rights of Quintero-Puchuncaví’s residents and ordered it to implement 15 measures aimed at improving air quality and emergency procedures.
A New Constitution
On September 4, 2022, Chileans will have the opportunity to break the country away from the Pinochet era with a vote for a new constitution. In 2019, protests against a number of long-held grievances broke out across the country, eventually resulting in a constitutional referendum in which 78% of the voters demanded constitutional reform. Among the long lists of changes this may bring, there are some key wins for opponents of sacrifice zones.
The framers of this new constitution hope to make it an “ecological constitution.” If it passes, it will ensure, among other rights, “human rights to environmental information and participation in environmental decision making” as well as the right to water. It would also give power to Indigenous groups to veto mining operations occurring on their lands.
The Road Ahead
Looking ahead, demand for copper and lithium, two minerals that are abundant in Chile, is projected to rise due to their importance in green technology. Extracting them could prove to be lucrative. Still, those living in Chile’s sacrifice zones believe that current mining practices cannot continue. More than 90% of people in the five sacrifice zones voted to scrap the current constitution, which is 12% higher than that of the overall population. Trends of support for the new constitution have been falling recently, but if it fails its referendum vote in September, opponents of sacrifice zones are already building organizations such as MUZOSARE to combat these issues through other means.
– Joey Harris
Photo: Flickr