CHAPTER 1

Environment and History

Chile does indeed appear at first glance to be a country with "a crazy geography,"in the famous words of the essayist Benjamín Subercaseaux.Straddled by two mountain cordilleras, the Andes and the coastal range,the country extends 2,600 miles in length along the Pacific Ocean coast andaverages only just over 100 miles in width. The Pacific on the west, the Andescordillera to the east, the Atacama Desert to the north, and Cape Hornin the far south are ecological barriers that make Chile an island, isolated,both in political and environmental terms, from its neighbors. Yet in spiteof its apparent isolation, Chile has also been something of a thoroughfare:until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the straits of Magellan werethe only waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, giving Chileanports tremendous maritime and commercial importance. Chile's crazygeography includes the world's driest desert, in the north, one of the world'slargest remaining temperate rain forests, in the south, the frozen wastes ofAntarctica, and a Mediterranean climate in the center. Chile also has twodistant Pacific island possessions, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and the JuanFernández Islands (the setting for Robinson Crusoe, the fictionalized accountof a shipwrecked sailor), both hundreds of miles off the coast.

This unusual geography has played an outsized role in Chile's nationalimaginary from the days of the Spanish conquest to the present. It is not bychance that when Chilean schoolchildren study their nation's past, the subjectis called history and geography. Ever since its conception as a colonialpossession, Chile's boosters have publicized the products of nature's bountythere, from the wheat cultivated on central Chile's large estates and thelivestock pastured on its meadows during the colonial period and the nineteenthcentury to the nitrates and copper extracted from the Atacama desertand Andes cordillera during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The earliest conquistadors, beginning with Pedro de Valdivia, the founderof the Spanish colony, extolled the natural beauty and bounty of Spain's newpossession. Similarly, the builders of the modern nation-state during thenineteenth century linked the singularity of Chile's identity as a nation, andthe apparently exceptional trajectory of its history, to its geography. Today,as Chile mines it forests, oceans, and soil to produce timber, fruit, fish andshellfish, and copper for markets abroad, triumphalist accounts of nature'sbounty continue to celebrate the country's model free-market economy anddemocratic government. In a similar vein, modern writers like BenjamínSubercaseaux and the poet Gabriela Mistral have often looked to Chile'sgeographic isolation and remote location "at the extreme end" of the world,in the words of conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, to explain its purportedlyunique position within Latin America. Both Subercaseaux and Mistral celebratethe country's isolation as the foundation of an exceptional politicaland economic history, as well as a robust national identity.

Narratives of Chilean historical and geographic exceptionalism havebeen tempered by three crosscutting discourses about Chile's nature or thenature of Chile. The first is an acute awareness of the changing configurationof the nation. Frontiers, like nature more generally, have played amajor role in Chile's national formation. Until the late nineteenth century,Chile's northern border lay in its "near north," or norte chico, south of theport of Antofogasta. What is today considered northern Chile, consistingof the provinces of Tarapacá and Antofogasta, belonged to Bolivia and Peruand was acquired by conquest during the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). Tothe south, the territory sandwiched between the Toltén and Bío Bío rivers,known as "the frontier" or "Araucanía" (for Chile's native araucariapine tree), was independent of the nation, ruled by indigenous Mapuchegroups until the late nineteenth-century military campaigns known as "thepacification of the Araucanía." In Patagonia to the far south, disputes withneighboring Argentina have made defining Chile's southernmost bordersa conflictive process since colonial days. The question of where the linesbetween the two nations would be drawn in Patagonia was only resolvedin the early twentieth century and has left bitter feelings on both sides. Sotoo has Chile's conflict with Peru and Bolivia (which continues to demandaccess to the Pacific Ocean) and forcible incorporation of Mapuches intothe nation at the close of the nineteenth century. By some accounts, Chile'sunstable borders and the history of violent national integration of frontierterritories, from the Atacama to the Araucanía and Patagonia, have underwrittenan exceptionally stable national identity and robust nationalism.As in the United States, Chile's exceptional place in the Americas has oftenbeen attributed to its frontier experiences and its aggressive expansionismsince the mid-nineteenth century.

Second, while nature has often appeared to endow Chile with exceptionalbeauty and limitless wealth, natural disasters—from earthquakes, volcaniceruptions, and tidal waves to floods, droughts, and epidemics—have beenan ever-present reminder, like the shifting national borders, of the nation'sfragility. For some writers, such as the historians Cristián Gazmuri and RolandoMellafe and essayists like Subercaseaux, constant natural disasters,like the chronic frontier wars with Mapuche groups and the country's geographicisolation, have created a specifically Chilean "mentality," one definedby stoicism, sobriety, and modesty, as well as the capacity to overcomeadversity and "begin again." 1 These national characteristics were acclaimedin responses to the 2010 earthquake in southern Chile and have been a stapleof writing about Chilean national identity for generations. In celebratingthe roto chileno (a once derogatory term for poor Chileans, literally "brokenone") as the pillar of the nation, writers since the late nineteenth centuryhave distinguished the roto's capacity to overcome natural adversity,whether the rugged topography of the mountain cordilleras or the inhospitableenvironment of the Atacama. The miner who suffers nature's wrathin explosions, landslides, falls, and silicosis, or black lung disease, has been arepresentative figure of Chilean nationhood, just as mining itself has fueledthe economy since the nineteenth century. But the (always male) miner conquering(female) nature, overcoming danger and disaster to extract ore, thebounty granted to Chile by nature, has also been a source of national pride.Chileans' perseverance in the face of natural adversity has been a definingfeature of nationalist sentiment. For many Chileans the miraculous rescueof miners trapped underground for sixty-nine days after a terrible accidentin 2010 symbolized both Chilean success in overcoming natural disastersand the strength of Chilean nationalism. The workers came out of theirconfinement hundreds of feet beneath the ground shouting "Viva Chilemierda!" The use of the expletive reflected how fraught, even uncertain,nationalist celebration of triumph over nature could be. For many Chileans,it was difficult not to recall the 355 miners killed in a tragic accident in theNorth American–owned El Teniente copper mine in 1945, one of the mostterrible tragedies in the history of mining across the globe.

Third, Chilean nationalism has historically been fractured by conflictsover the distribution of the wealth generated by the commodities extractedfrom nature. Pablo Neruda's poem "Catastrophe in Sewell" denouncingNorth American capital's control of the mining industry and lamenting the1945 El Teniente catastrophe reflects tensions over the ownership and distributionof Chile's natural resources. Chile's mines, the motor of the nationaleconomy, generated profits for foreign companies until their nationalizationin 1971. Today, while Chile has enjoyed the fruits of export-oriented production,the benefits of this prosperity have rarely been evenly distributed. In2010, Chile was one of the fifteen most unequal countries in the world interms of income distribution. Social inequality has often been exacerbatedby ecological degradation. In fact, accounts of economic modernization inChile frequently emphasize the twin processes of environmental crisis andsocial dislocation throughout Chilean history. During the nineteenth century,for example, the expansion of wheat exports led to the expulsion ofthousands of rural workers from the large estates that dominated centralChile's countryside, generating a mushrooming landless labor force. At thesame time, wheat monocultures provoked drought, flooding, and soil erosionwithin decades of a midcentury export boom, leading to Chile's firstenvironmental regulation on deforestation in 1873. Similarly, a mid-centuryboom in copper exports led to devastating conditions for mine laborers andan environmental crisis provoked by the destruction of the short north'snative forests, a development described vividly by naturalists like ClaudioGay and Charles Darwin.

Indeed, throughout Chilean history, human-manufactured natural disastershave drawn as much attention as the "tragic events" described byMellafe. Nineteenth-century concerns with climate change, soil erosion,and flooding caused by deforestation and cereal monocropping laid thefoundation for the growth of an "environmental consciousness" duringthe twentieth century. During the 1940s, Pablo Neruda evoked the desolationcaused by the destruction of unique temperate forests in southernChile in his famous poem "Ode to Erosion in Malleco." In the late 1950sthe writer Rafael Elizalde described ecological catastrophes as threateningthe foundation of the nation in The Survival of Chile. This nationalist veinin conservationist writing drew on earlier criollista (creolist) genres andcan be found in Neruda's poetry as well. Neruda often evoked the magnificenceof the Chilean landscape in his poetry, writing in his memoirs,"anyone who has never been in the Chilean forest doesn't know this planet.I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to gosinging through the world." His "Ode to Erosion" reflected a growing environmentalistconcern in Chile that was ignited by massive forest fires, setto clear land for crops and livestock and to clear underbrush and abet logging,which destroyed thousands of acres of southern temperate forest. Bythe 1980s, a burgeoning environmentalist movement organized in groupslike Defensores del Bosque Chileno (Defenders of the Chilean Forest) andComité Nacional Pro Defensa de la Flora y Fauna (National Committee inDefense of Flora and Fauna) called increasing attention to the environmentalcosts of high growth rates during Chile's neoliberal economic miracle.Environmentalist groups pointed out that free-market growth, beginningduring the dictatorship of Pinochet and maintained by transition democraticcenter-left governments during the 1990s, had created a new momentof profound ecological degradation. A boom in forestry exports led to therapid destruction of southern temperate rain forests and their replacementby plantations of eucalyptus and North American Monterey pine. Industrialfishing along Chile's lengthy Pacific coast and the spread of fish farms ledto the collapse of marine ecosystems and the depletion of a number of speciesof Chilean fish and shellfish, including the "Chilean sea bass," which isnot a bass at all but the species formerly and less appetizingly known as thePatagonian toothfish. In the fruit industry, workers were exposed to highdoses of pesticides, some banned in the developed world, and suffered anumber of work-related illnesses. In the forestry industry, logging companiessprayed cleared land with chemical defoliants, including a componentof Agent Orange, poisoning regional ecosystems that included remnant old-growthtemperate forests and were inhabited by large populations of Mapuchepeasants. These ecological disasters were accompanied by some of theworst working conditions in Chile. Forestry and fruit workers composeda chronically underemployed, migrant labor force, laboring seasonally forsubcontractors, without the protection of unions or basic benefits. In thefishing industry, large "factory" fishing boats competed with a once thrivingpopulation of small, independent "artisanal" fishermen along the coast,producing high unemployment in coastal towns.

While exploiting natural resources has driven export-led growth overthe last decades, today ecotourism plays a significant role in the Chileaneconomy. As foreign tourists travel to Chile in increasing numbers to experiencethe natural wonders of the country's temperate rain forests, theglacial formations of the Torres de Paine in the south, the Andes cordilleraand its mountain lakes, and the stunning Pacific coast, the environmentalistmovement's critique of the unregulated exploitation of naturalresources has taken on more weight. Admiration for Chile's natural environment,which constituted a wellspring of creole nationalist sentimentfrom Pedro de Valdivia to Mistral and Subercaseaux, today motors thecountry's profitable tourist economy, placing conservationist pressure onresource-extractive industries like forestry, mining, and fishing. During the1940s, the Chilean state promoted domestic tourism as a means to fomentnationalism and national strength. Travel throughout the country on thestate-owned railroad would, like the writings of Mistral and Subercaseaux,acquaint Chileans with the extraordinary natural and geographic gifts bestowedon the country and instill in them a profound identification withthe nation. In addition, travel in nature outside the city was believed to bea healthful exercise that would increase the strength of "the Chilean race."Today, however, tourism initiatives have been reoriented toward attractingforeign travelers and currency with the still "pristine" natural wonders inChile's numerous national parks and nature preserves. The hidden underbellyof these natural attractions, threatening to unravel Chile's continuedself-representation through nature, is a series of "tragic events" human inorigin. These include tree plantations that have replaced temperate forests,collapsed marine ecosystems, and environmental pollution caused by miningand the usual urban contaminants—diesel-powered buses, dust, and industrialoutput—that make the nation's capital, trapped in a valley betweenthe two cordilleras, one of the most polluted cities in Latin America.

"No Better Land"

Pedro de Valdivia

Five years after embarking on the conquest of Chili, Pedro de Valdivia penned thisfamous missive to Emperor Charles V. Like many petitions of conquistadors seekingroyal favor for their enterprises, the letter extols the wealth and latent potential ofthe new territory. In Chile, this consisted primarily of (allegedly) abundant gold aswell as fertile land. Valdivia's eloquent descriptions of Chile's natural beauty, fertility,and riches would be echoed by numerous colonial naturalists and missionaries,whose annals abound with descriptions of the "luxuriance" of Chile's native forests,its "proud mountains ... so tall they make the Alps and Pyrenees seem like pygmies,"the abundance of its harvests, and its seas "populated by an infinity of fish."Valdivia's descriptions also resonated well beyond the colonial period: his letterslaid the foundation for a strain of criollismo—creolism or literature of nationalpride—that would flourish in modern Chile. Today a quotation from Valdivia's letteris engraved in a stone at the base of Santa Lucía Hill in Santiago, reputed to bethe site where he founded that city in 1541.

Your Majesty should know that one hundred leagues and seven valleys liebetween here and the Valley of Copiapó, measuring twenty-five leaguesacross at the widest parts and fifteen or less at others. Anyone needingto come to these provinces from those of Peru will find difficulty only inthat stretch from Copiapó to here, for up to the Valley of Atacama there isfood everywhere, since the Indians of Peru are at peace with the Spaniardsthanks to the good order that Governor Vaca de Castro has established.At Atacama they can restock their provisions to cross the large, sparselypopulated, 120-league tract from there to Copiapó; the Indians of this andall other parts gather and hide food where it cannot be found wheneverthey receive word that people are coming, and not only do they refuse togive any to those passing through, but they wage war against them. Here inthis land, however, everyone already present and anyone who should comecan count on having enough food, for three months from now, around December,which is the middle of summer, ten or twelve thousand fanegasof wheat and a countless amount of corn will be harvested in this city, andfrom the two hogs and suckling pig that we salvaged when the Indiansburned the city, there are already eight to ten thousand more, and from themale and female chickens, as many hens as grass, which breed abundantlyin the winter and summer....