In 1993, environmental history was made in California when a self-taught activist, Erin Brockovich, began a three-year court battle against Pacific Gas and Electric over contaminated drinking water. That same year, one of Chile’s most beautiful coastal areas, Quintero-Puchuncaví, was declared an environmentally “saturated zone” by the Agriculture Ministry due to sulfurous anhydroid and particulate material in the air. This ominous label was no surprise to the inhabitants of these mostly working-class communities: for years, they had been calling on the thermoelectric, petroleum and chemical firms in the area to stop polluting the air, soil and water – and for the Chilean government to hold them to account.
Like Erin Brockovitch, the local women who have played key roles in Quintero-Puchuncaví’s grassroots environmental groups had little training when they began the fight against corporate polluters and weak regulations. But like Brockovitch, their courage would help to ensure justice was done. On 28 May, after years of citizens’ calls for justice, environmental history was made on the Pacific coast once again. In an unprecedented decision, Chile’s Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling and confirmed that the government was ultimately responsible for the area’s environmental contamination, and that it must take concrete steps to prevent another event like the chemical leak that descended on Quintero-Puchuncaví in August and September 2018, sending over 1,700 people to hospital.
The 2018 mass poisoning was far from the first or only example of environmental crises in Quintero-Puchuncaví
The landmark ruling also focused attention on denials of responsibility by the companies most likely to have been the source of the 2018 environmental emergency, a large yellow cloud containing substances such as methyl chloroform, nitrobenzene and toluene. Although there had been widespread media attention for last year’s dramatic event (if not for the brutal police response to a peaceful protest march by local citizens and environmental activists), the 2018 mass poisoning was far from the first or only example of environmental crises in Quintero-Puchuncaví.
