History of the Struggles for Environmental Justice in the Sacrifice Zones in Chile

Abstract

In this article we analyze the environmental history of three coastal bays designated as sacrifice zones in Chile. From their stories marked by socio-environmental inequalities and the fight for environmental justice, we observe the process of social and environmental conflict, incorporating the contributions of environmental history, political ecology of extractivism, and critical geography, and we account for the community and organizational strategies that seek to socially and environmentally recover these degraded territories. We conclude that, in this process, the concept of environmental justice acquires less legal and more socio-environmental readings through collective experiences that take as their center the recovery of ecosystems from the community participation and memory.