To reach Cecilia\u2019s home, you follow the train tracks along which, each and every day, the bins of Santiago are transported to the industrial-waste landfill site in the municipality of Til Til, to the North-East of Chile\u2019s capital. I wander among the remains of waste and plastic that fly off into the air every time a train passes. The air is dry and dust-filled. The width of the main roads brings to mind a large urban conurbation\u2014but the small houses that line them are a reminder that this is a mere village in central Chile. Hulking company buildings sit side by side with the residents\u2019 vegetable patches, composing a strange landscape, neither rural nor urban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cecilia has arranged plants all around the outside of her house, which is filled with the pleasing smell of a wood fire. She shares the house with her sister, mother and two nephews. Hung on the walls of the living room are objects that invoke the family\u2019s origins. On one side, for the father, who hails from the campo chileno<\/em> (the Chilean countryside) in the country\u2019s center, are horseshoes and pieces of leather and copper. On the other, for the mother from Chile\u2019s South, hang telares, <\/em>silver jewellery, and the Mapuche flag. 1<\/a><\/sup> Seated around a meal, I ask Cecilia about her life in Til Til and her relationship with an area that, due to its high concentration of polluting industries, environmental-protection organizations have dubbed a \u201cSacrifice Zone\u201d. In the course of our interview, the house shakes when the train passes by, and the electricity cuts repeatedly\u2014\u201cwhen our electricity is the most expensive of the whole metropolitan area<\/em>\u201d, her sister comments, with a knowing smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Til Til is a rural\nmunicipality of 19,000 inhabitants, 60 kilometers from Santiago. The\npredicament of its various villages is a stark illustration of Chile\u2019s\ndevelopment model over the past few decades. This has been based on surface and\nsub-surface exploitation and the export of natural resources, mining resources\nin particular. It has thus has severe consequences on the locals\u2019 environment,\nhealth and social life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Socio-environmental claims sit in third place among the dominant issues that have prompted social movements over the decade from 2009 to 20182<\/a><\/sup>, with only working conditions and education prompting greater mobilization. Such claims bear on pollution of various kinds (air, water, soil, subsoil), local development, and large-scale infrastructural projects (dams and hydro-electric power stations, mining, agroforestry industries, coal-fired power stations, etc.). Environmental movements are therefore not only geared towards protecting nature and biodiversity as such; they also defend a given area, and the health and dignity of that area\u2019s inhabitants. Collective action is generally circumscribed within a given local area\u2014and few such movements have repercussions countrywide, in that they do not always acquire visibility outside of the area where they occur. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Drawing on Til Til and its\ninhabitants as a case study, this investigation examines the environmental\nimpact of Chile\u2019s development model, and residents\u2019 difficulties in organizing\nand pursuing legal action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1980, under the rule of General Augusto Pinochet, a new Constitution was adopted. This remains in force. It established the principle of the state\u2019s subsidiarity, i.e. that the state\u2019s action aims at facilitating regulation through the market\u2014including with respect to environmental issues. This Constitution also etched in stone a neoliberal economic model, in the context of which education, healthcare and pensions have all been privatized. It also includes conservative provisions with respect to public morals, in particular concerning abortion. 3<\/a><\/sup> The demand to change this social and political order inherited from the dictatorship lies at the core of social movements in recent years: on the part of high-school and university-student movements in 2006 and 2011, against the pension system since 2015, and feminist movements, of which a wave of university occupations in 2018 are especially emblematic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Constitution also reinforces a development model based on the exploitation and export of natural resources. The model was put into practice by the disciples of Neoclassical economics\u2014Milton Friedman\u2019s famous \u201cChicago Boys\u201d. 4<\/a><\/sup> It was established through companies gaining easy access to mining concessions (through the 1983 Mining Code), and by the privatization of access to water (through the 1982 Water Code). The return to democracy in the 1990s did not alter this model, and Chile\u2019s economic growth remained reliant upon the wealth obtained through exporting copper (55% of Chile\u2019s exports): Chile has the world\u2019s greatest copper reserves (29%), and is the top world producer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The consequences of this exploitation of natural resources\u2014including the deterioration of biodiversity\u2014 affect the entire country. They have transformed natural areas at the whim of the global demand for the country\u2019s most valuable resources (copper, lithium, avocados, salmon, paper pulp). In the North, mining has destabilized and weakened the local fauna and flora, covering the desert landscape with the ridges of giant excavations. In Chile\u2019s central region, intensive monocultures dominate\u2014such as the Hass avocado, a product that is not native to these areas, grown for consumption by the European and American markets. In the South, the forestry industry depletes native forests, while locals track growing sea pollution caused by overproduction of salmon. These salmon are fish-farmed in underwater cages, and their intensive farming both destroys ecosystems in the long-term5<\/a><\/sup>and harms the local seashell and fishing industries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This neoliberal inheritance weighs especially heavily on certain areas. Their inhabitants have dubbed these \u201cSacrifice Zones\u201d, since they consider that they have paid a heavy toll for the development model that Chile boasts of. The term emerged in the 1980s in the US in the context of environmental justice movements, and was introduced to Chile by environmental-protection organizations. At the time, US activists spoke of National Sacrifice Zones to designate the sites where nuclear weapons were produced, some of which were shut down due to high levels of radioactivity. They denounced a double injustice\u2014environmental and social\u2014inasmuch as marginalized groups, namely African-Americans and the poorest US residents, were the most exposed to this chemical pollution, that went beyond mere radioactivity.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n As for Chile\u2019s\nenvironmental-protection organizations, they repurpose the term Saturated Zone.\nIn Chilean law, this designates areas exposed to air pollution, and, in\nparticular, to high exposure to fine particles. Several such areas were\nre-dubbed \u201cSacrifice Zones\u201d given their high concentration of polluting\nactivities, especially coal-fired power stations (termoelectricas<\/em>). Chile has five Sacrifice Zones, Til Til among\nthem: in the North, the Tocopilla\/Mejillones Zones in the Antofagasta region,\nand Huasco in the region of Atacama; in central Chile, the Puchuncav\u00ed-Quintero\nZone in the region of Valpara\u00edso; and finally, in the South, the Coronel Zone\nin the region of Bio Bio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In these Sacrifice Zones,\nenvironmental catastrophe is compounded by social issues, since these\nindustrial activities (coal-fired power stations, the stockage of toxic waste, petrol\nrefineries, copper-processing, etc) only marginally benefit locals. These\ndensely-industrialized areas therefore also feature high rates of poverty and\nunemployment. Til Til is for instance one of the poorest municipalities of the\nmetropolitan region\u2014even while it gathers economic activity that is essential\nto the development of Santiago. Only few Til Til locals work in the companies\nthat sit within the municipal area, however, either because certain activities\ndo not require major manpower, or because the companies bring in seasonal\nworkers from other areas of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This repurposing of the term\nSacrifice Zone enables interrogating the impact of how these areas are\nexploited\u2014and who is responsible for such exploitation. Concretely: who is \u201csacrificed\u201d\u2014and\nin the name of what. The expression enables environmental-protection\norganizations and locals to politicize their situation, and to question the\nexploitation of natural resources and the national development model\u2014as well as\nhow the benefits of that model are redistributed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The history of Til Til is linked both to the development of Chile\u2019s major towns and to various evolutions in Chile\u2019s mining activity. Today, the train line between Santiago and Valpara\u00edso ferries the trash-trains that one sees when arriving at Cecilia\u2019s home. When it was inaugurated, at the end of the 19th<\/sup> Century, it enabled the villages along its route to grow and to commercialize their agricultural products in the towns. The end of the saga of saltpetre production 7<\/a><\/sup> in northern Chile led to waves of worker migration towards other regions. Some of these miners emigrated to central Chile to work in the gold and copper mines, including in Til Til. Thereafter, the cement manufacturer Polpaico came to town, to supply Santiago\u2019s construction businesses in the 1950s, marking the beginnings of heavy industry settling in the area. Polpaico\u2019s arrival swiftly attracted those from the surrounding countryside and Santiago\u2019s impoverished neighborhoods, who came to build the various villages that today make up the municipality of Til Til.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the late 1990s, this\nrural area has progressively become industrialized according to the Santiago\nmetropolitan region\u2019s urban development plan. Urban planning has therefore\nfollowed the capital\u2019s expansion and its needs, without taking into account the\nrural nature of Til Til. The area\u2019s locals have been employed in the factories\nas manual workers, even while they also developed their own local agricultural\nproduction, primarily in fruit (olives and melons), before these two revenue\nstreams dried up. Industrial growth in Til Til has made it the backyard of\nSantiago\u2019s development, relegating mining (and the jobs of local workers) to\nthe background. The area then \u201cspecialized\u201d in stocking mining waste, from\nmines outside the municipality that transferred their residue via underground\ntubes to the large settling-tanks housed in Til Til. In open-air pools, these\ntanks contain the mining \u201cresidue\u201d after minerals are separated from rock.\nOther companies that bury domestic and industrial waste are also present in Til\nTil. Finally, the municipality also features agro-industrial industries\n(companies that engage in intensive pig-breeding) and wastewater-recycling\ncenters. The train that threads through the villages ferries neither travelers\nnor agricultural products: it now only transfers waste towards the\nmunicipality\u2019s waste-treatment industries. The train was once a symbol of Til\nTil\u2019s development. Today, it merely reminds locals of both the municipality\u2019s\npast economic dynamism\u2014and its present-day marginalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faced with this predicament,\nthe anxiety of locals may be measured through their daily discussions about the\nrisks imposed by the various industries in the midst of which they live. They\nobserve for instance that the cement walls that contain the toxic residues of\nmining activity are cracking. These settling-tanks sit close to their houses,\nand are an integral part of their everyday landscape. They worry about how\nwatertight these open-air pools really are, and fear that heavy metals\ninfiltrate the groundwater table and the soil that they use to farm their own\nvegetable gardens. Part of the year, the lack of water in the municipality\nforces some of Til Til\u2019s villages to be supplied by tankers\u2014a process that\nmakes the local passage of trucks even denser, produces immense quantities of\ndust, and generates permanent air pollution. Implementing such \u201cemergency\u201d\nplans has become the norm to confront shortages and drought, without any\nrestriction on water usage by the industries settled in the municipality being\nconsidered. Finally, these activities prevent agricultural activity\u2014and\nespecially the local production of fruit, that had previously allowed locals a\ncertain economic autonomy, including in terms of producing their own food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These diverse kinds of\npollution also affect locals\u2019 health: the rate of respiratory diseases is proportionately\nhigher in Til Til than in the rest of the country. Add to this noise pollution\n(the rattle of the train, the throb of the trucks) and the nauseating smells\ngiven off by the factories. Locals do not know whether such pollution may have\na long-term impact on their health, and no scientific study has yet been\nconducted on the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this context, Til Til\u2019s\nresidents wonder about the extent of their rights to decide whether these\nindustrial projects in their municipality should be implemented, and on how\nmuch legitimacy they may have as citizens to refuse them. For several years,\nsome Til Til locals have fought the construction of a new industrial-waste\ntreatment project that would bring waste from the whole country to Til Til.\nThey regularly organize by blocking Road 5, a motorway that crosses the country\nfrom North to South, and that passes near their villages. Faced with these\npolluting projects, locals express a feeling of impotence and of being\nmarginalized in decision-making processes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course, they say that [the project] will respect international norms and, well, it\u2019s always the same thing but, well\u2026 we worry about what they could destroy in the process. (\u2026) So, yes, there has been this consultation process where you have to go to a website, but we know that people won\u2019t go on this website, that they won\u2019t submit their observations, and they don\u2019t understand, either, that\u2019s the real issue\u2026 What I wonder is: why do they consult people about something that people don\u2019t understand? People have no idea. On top of that, it\u2019s all written in a\u2026 legal language that no-one understands. It\u2019s terribly difficult to read these things, and it\u2019s stressful to not understand, on top of that you have to do it on the computer, and a little old man God knows how old is never going to go online. So in practice, we have to believe that all [these projects] are done so that it happens regardless, and it doesn\u2019t matter whether people give their opinion or not\u2026 And well, people know, they have the feeling that they can say if it\u2019s good or not, but why am I going to say something if in the end, they\u2019re going to do it anyway? That\u2019s the feeling we have, it doesn\u2019t matter what we do, what we do doesn\u2019t matter, they\u2019re going to do it anyway\u201d. 8<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, healthcare centers\nare not adapted to the industrial risk that threatens these areas. Healthcare\ncrises that occurred in another Sacrifice Zone especially worry Til Til\u2019s\ninhabitants. On the Pacific Coast, a hundred kilometers from Santiago, many\nlocals, and especially children in the industrial basin of Quintero Puchuncav\u00ed,\nwere intoxicated in 2011, then again in 2018. Those poisoned were urgently sent\nto hospitals that were not equipped to deal with this type of infection,\nprompting anger from local residents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Locals dispute the argument\nthat the companies in the industrial park and the port area respect norms\ngoverning polluting emissions. From the early 1990s, this Sacrifice Zone was\ndeclared a Saturated Zone. Among other industries, it contains copper-processing\nplants, four coal-fired power stations, a smelting plant, and a petrol\nrefinery. For several years, healthcare personnel have sounded the alarm over\nmany cases of intoxication and chronic illnesses, whose growth-rate in these\nmunicipalities is anomalous. Professors and school personnel have also\nrepeatedly mobilized to denounce the risks to which schoolchildren are exposed.\nFor their part, artisanal fishermen unions insist that it is impossible to keep\npracticing their fishing activity, because marine biodiversity is disappearing\ndue to water pollution from chronic black tides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2018, faced with a new wave\nof intoxication, groups of women, fishermen and locals mobilized in the port\ncities of Quintero and Puchuncav\u00ed to hold these private companies and the State\naccountable. In a historic ruling in May 2019, Chile\u2019s Supreme Court forced the\nState to take steps to clarify the causes of this environmental and health\ncrisis, and to implement urgent protection measures. In the absence of reliable\ninformation about what caused these intoxications, however, no company has yet\nbeen found responsible. Various prevention measures have been contemplated,\nsuch as moving schools and sports venues further away from the industrial park.\nBut no plan provides for effective control of these companies\u2019 emissions or\nimplementing potential sanctions\u2014much less reducing industrial activity in\nthese municipalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Faced with these predicaments, the inhabitants of Sacrifice Zones such as Til Til have sought access to justice to make their situation known. But only few lawyers have elected to defend the environmental cause, and the victims affected by the relevant health risks are equally few. Such trials \u201cdon\u2019t yield returns<\/em>\u201d 9<\/a><\/sup> , as several lawyers encountered in the course of my research confided. For the most part, NGO lawyers defend social organizations that are made up of locals, environmental-protection activists and victims of pollution who demand justice. They plead their case up against the lawyers of Chilean or foreign multinationals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Chilean\nlegislation, each industrial project must follow an evaluation process of its\nenvironmental impact, according to which locals who are liable to be affected\nby the project may articulate their comments and fears. This citizen\nparticipation is, however, severely restricted by the technical nature of\ndocuments provided by the companies. As a Til Til resident quoted above told\nme, this constrains the ability of those affected to grasp their content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawyers also emphasize that\nsuch impact studies are often partial, to the extent that they are funded by\nthe companies themselves. Locals who live in a trying socio-economic situation\nfind it impossible to fund contradictory scientific analyses, that could\nmeasure the quality of water, air and the soil\u2014and that would enable drawing\ncorrelations between locals\u2019 deteriorating health and industrial activities.\nFurther, such impact studies are conducted based on specific projects, not on a\ngiven territory; the upshot is to ignore the cumulative impact of various\nindustrial sites clustered together in one space. Older projects, especially\nthose linked to installing coal-fired power stations or mining-residue pools,\nare quite simply not subject to new environmental legislation, since their\ninstallation predates the law. Til Til\u2019s inhabitants cannot therefore mount\nlegal action concerning the residue pools that alarm them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, lawyers prepare cases, meet with locals and plead cases in the new environmental tribunals set up since the 2010 environmental legislation came into force. They gather evidence and information on ongoing projects and the expert assessments that would be required. To buttress their arguments, they rely heavily on a phrase in the 1980 Constitution: \u201cthe right to live in an unpolluted environment\u201d. Yet the outcome of these cases is often defeat, since it is often impossible to prove the link between environmental impact and a given project. Most often, judges decide in favor of the protection of the right to free enterprise that is also inscribed in the Constitution. Lawyers explain that these are precisely the limits of a legal framework for protecting human rights that relies on a dictatorship-era Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The true benefit of these\ncourt cases rather rests in the fact that, during these long trials, locals\nbecome better-informed, in a context in which access to information is a real\nbattle. They attend gatherings, exchange their perceptions and malaise, and\nshare their experience of organizing. Ultimately, such trials enable\n(re-)creating a local social fabric, or even prompt activist callings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lawyer I met in Santiago in\nApril 2018 emphasized that, in Chile, \u201cthere is a notion that problems must\nbe resolved by a lawyer, through the courts, through institutions (\u2026) When what\nI observe is that it\u2019s precisely the institutions that created the problem. So\nthe community [of locals] grows ever-more-conscious of this fact, communities\nacross the country in general grow more conscious of this fact, and so they act\naccordingly and they seek other alternatives\u2014not this one only. Which doesn\u2019t\nnecessarily mean that they abandon [the judicial path], but that they consider\nthat it isn\u2019t the only means available to them.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Various small groups of\ncitizens organize at the local level, as in Til Til, where\u2014including on social\nmedia\u2014locals exchange information relative to the necessary scientific analyses\nto \u201cdocument\u201d pollution, and to the new projects being implemented. They\nthereby seek to institute citizen control over what occurs around their homes.\nThe accumulation of such micro-mobilizations\u2014such as those regularly conducted\naround Route 5\u2014, and what they enable in terms of citizen debate, create brief\ncrucibles for the politicization of socio-environmental issues in Chile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Various ills converge in Til\nTil: severe attacks on the environment provoked by a high concentration of\nindustrial activity, locals\u2019 degraded health, trying socio-economic conditions,\nand a lack of access to mechanisms for citizen participation. These Sacrifice\nZones are emblematic of a development model that was established under Chile\u2019s\ndictatorship, and that was reinforced when the country returned to democracy.\nSuch spaces illustrate the limits of a development model that now prompts\nfeelings of injustice and anger across the country. Social and economic issues,\nemployment, precariousness and health issues have become intertwined with the\nenvironmental crisis. Such \u201cenvironmental injustice\u201d makes up the everyday life\nof locals in these areas, who seek to become better-informed, to condemn\nviolations of their health, and to mount court cases. Despite the absence of a constitutional\nbasis, and an existing development model that is anchored in the imaginary of a\nprosperous Chile, mutual-aid networks are emerging, and inhabitants are\norganizing at the local level. They thereby help to convey messages concerning\nthe environmental crisis\u2014and so nurture the growing politicization of Chilean\nsociety.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/noria.valentinbigel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/photo1-web-1-1920x1280.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nChilean-style Development: A Generator of\nSacrifice Zones<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Who is \u201csacrificed\u201d\u2014and in the name of what?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/noria.valentinbigel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Carte_1_Termoelectricas_VF_ENG-1000x760.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTil Til, Santiago\u2019s Backyard<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Industrial growth in Til Til has made it the backyard of Santiago\u2019s development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/noria.valentinbigel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Carte_2_Til-Til_VF_ENG_PDF-1920x1615.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/noria.valentinbigel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/photo2-web-1-1920x1280.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nDefending the Environment by Force of Law<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Access to information is a real battle<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sacrifice Zones\u2014The Limits of a Model <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nNotes<\/h2>\n\n\n