Sacrifice Zones in Chile: Contestations and Possible Reconfigurations of the Neoliberal Development Model By Mariela Miranda van Iersel, Chile
Introduction “Every new building blocks sunlight from someone, but no one would take this as a reason to halt construction” informs one news article from July 1957 upon the installation of the first smelter and refinery of copper at the commune of Puchuncaví, Chile (as cited in Villasana López et al., 2020, p. 343). This public statement reveals a logic of sacrifice in the name of ‘progress,’ and it was followed by the installation of fourteen other highly contaminating industries in the area. Several quantitative papers have achieved consistent results about the negative effects that exposure to these installations has on health (Cortés et al., 2019, p. 103). Unsurprisingly, years of pollution resulted in a socioenvironmental crisis that reached its definite explosion in 2018, when over 1,500 individuals suffered intoxications due to a saturation of pollutants present at the air level, soil, and coastlines (Céspedes and Rueda, 2019, p. 27). Problematically, Puchuncaví is only one of the six ‘sacrifice zones’ in Chile. The term sacrifice zone has been applied worldwide to describe urban areas with exposure to extreme concentrations of environmental pollution caused by industrial activities – making it dangerous to even breathe or drink clean water at these locations (Lerner, 2010, pp. 3-4). In Chile, the notion of sacrifice zones gained popularity in 2015 after the mayors of five municipalities (Tocopilla, Huasco, Quintero, Coronel, and Puchuncaví) joined forces to demand a governmental response to the socio-environmental crisis experienced by their districts (Castán Broto and Sanzana Calvett, 2020, p. 280). This achieved the recognition by the Chilean administration that their municipalities are sacrifice zones – representing a symbolic victory against the extractive dynamics of neoliberal development (Castán Broto and Sanzana Calvett, 2020, p. 282). Indeed, sacrifice zones in Chile have served as a long-standing strategy for the strengthening of neoliberal economic development, which anticipates that extractions will pave the way to socioeconomic progress (Arsel, Hogenboom and Pellegrini, 2016, p. 880). Ultimately, the conflict lies in that “communities and entire local ecosystems have been [increasingly] sacrificed in the name of ‘economic growth’ or ‘national prosperity’” (Valenzuela-Fuentes, Alarcón-Barrueto and Torres-Salinas, 2021, p. 2). Sacrifice zones for extraction are legalised and maintained by the Chilean government despite the evidence that states their detrimental consequence to welfare and health. As top-down national policies and approaches to sacrifice zones have failed to resolve social injustices (Castán Broto and Sanzana Calvett, 2020, p. 282), the aim of this essay is to understand the views and practices of individual agents who have organised themselves to resist and question the extractivist model of development. How many buildings should be built to cover sunlight from how many human beings? For this purpose, this paper will: (1) present contextual information about the legacies of dictatorship that have enabled sacrifice zones in Chile; (2) explain the environmental injustice that has incentivized bottom-up action, and (3) discuss the social movement that has resisted sacrifice zones and the possibility of buen vivir (living well) as an alternative development perspective.
Contextual factors enabling sacrifice zones While the extraction of natural resources for exportation dates back to a dark colonial history in Latin America, it continues to be central to development policies and economic growth today (Arsel, Hogenboom and Pellegrini, 2016, pp. 880-881). Its contemporary relevance and promotion are related to the installation of a hegemonic neoliberal ideology. 52