ABSTRACT
The “Chilean miracle”—that’s how neoliberal ideologues saluted the political–economic reforms set up by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). However, the substance of that statement has faded almost three decades after Chile’s return to democracy and these days no slogan can whitewash the dark side of that miracle, with its legacy of political violence, inequality, and ecological destruction. This chapter examines the trajectories of air pollution regulation implemented by Pinochet’s administration, focusing on the case of the Ventanas copper-processing complex at Quintero Bay in Chile’s Central Coast. During the seventeen years of the regime, the residents of Quintero Bay waited for a technological fix to the chronic air pollution that had been affecting them since the opening of the copper processing facilities in 1964. While the community waited, the issue became tangled up with scientific, diplomatic, and legal controversies precluding any definitive resolution. The chapter argues that in opposition to more traditional monolithic and well-ordered narratives of ideological consistency and political reform during Pinochet’s dictatorship, an environmental historical perspective offers a messier portrait of the period, emphasizing the ideological stubbornness aimed at crafting nature and technology in accordance with the economic orthodoxies held by the regime.
