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A place of sacrifice: a visit to Los Maitenes


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Puchuncaví and, in general, the other areas that are in the commune are one of the many emblematic cases of our country concerning environmental conflicts, becoming one of the so called “Sacrifice Zones”, defined by the environmental organization OCEANA as “those places that concentrate a huge quantity of polluting industries, affecting always the poorest or more vulnerable communities” (OCEANA CHILE, s.f.).This sectors are being exposed to industrial activities that most of the time promise to be environmentally friendly projects, benefiting the neighborhood and improving life quality, but finally they only favor multinational companies and impoverishes health and the wellness of local population.


While the development of this commune has promoted the economic growth of Chile, this business progress permitted several environmental injustices to communities living near the power plants. Puchuncaví’s area constitutes an emblematic conflict since 1964, when the inauguratation of the copper Smelting and Refinery in Ventanas belonging to the Mining National Enterprise (ENAMI) took place (which in our days belongs to CODELCO). In the same year, the thermoelectric central Ventana I from CHILGENER S.A (nowadays AES GENER S.A) started to operate. The result of these industries have been “soils, coastal edge and ecosystems affected by the atmospheric emissions with high concentration of sulfuric oxide and particulate matter (PM) rich on copper (Cu) and other elements such as arsenic (As), lead (Pb9, mercury (Hg) and zinc (Zn)” (Badal, L. 2014).



View of the thermoelectric complex from Los Maitenes.


After we got there and studied those backgrounds we contacted the neighbor’s board of Los Maitenes, a village that is not well known and which most of the time is not included in studies, statistics and other related subjects. The villagers mentioned their problems due to the abandon of the municipality and the thermoelectric facilities, highlighting:

  • Declination of flora and fauna in their lands, animals also are having serious health problems due to the gases.

  • Emissions without filters during the night.

  • Poorly paved roads, and no luminary for them.

  • Serious health problems, for example:”People here die from cancer, from 10 people that pass away, 9 are related to cancer, and I’m not talking of people in their 50’s, they are in their 30’s, it’s young people ” (Focus Group, Neighbor’s Board Los Maitenes, 2017).


    • After identifying the problems that they suffer they were told about iGEM Competition and what we, as Team UChile OpenBio-CeBiB are doing in order to help people living in the “Sacrifice Zones”. The villagers were very interested on our work, telling us that they want to improve their soil to come back to their old Los Maitenes, described as “a rich community in peas, beans and corn plantations, animals roamed freely in our lands and we had what to eat, because nowadays we do not even have that, neither animals”.






    Pictures of our visit to Los Maitenes, we had a nice chat with the neighbors.

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