Damage to the District of Puchuncaví: A Territorial Crisis

Abstract

What is the zone of sacrifice? According to the TERRAM foundation, it is those territories of human settlement that are environmentally devastated due to industrial development. This devastation has direct implications on people’s fundamental rights (to live, to health, to education, to work, to food, to housing, etc.) [1]. In Chile, there are five Zones of Sacrifice; Puchuncaví is one of them. Located in the Valparaíso Region, with 18,546 inhabitants [2], industrial development has affected the lives of all species living there for decades, including human beings. By declaring it as a zone of sacrifice, destruction of the landscape is assumed as a permanent and/or long-term situation, based on the economic development model applied by the State. The objective of this study is to develop an analysis of the impacts of industrial development on the community of Puchuncaví to establish a basis for better community planning based on collective experiences. The study was divided into three stages: the first was to typify the development of the industrial estate within the territorial order; the second described the ways Puchuncaví was inhabited before the installation of the industrial complex; and third compared development of the industrial estate with current ways in which this disctirct is inhabited. Based on references such as Lefebvre (2013) and Augé (1992), among others, the methodology consisted of a participatory workshop with members of the community (general population and leaders) in which a manual collective map was built atop a to-scale territorial model in order to identify and characterize individual experiences of living in this district, as well as the impacts that industrial development has had on it.