Medicine and power; being sick to be “visible”

After briefly inhabiting the houses, the affected population exhibits a series of physical symptoms, whose relation with the toxic waste issue is completely ignored both by the population and Health Care personnel. The issue is triggered when neighbor associations —encouraged by territorial and municipal agents—, the Office for the Environment and the Secretary of Municipality Planning (SECPLAN) and environmental NGO’s undertake a first diagnosis to generally identify the population’s problems associated to poverty and vulnerability.

This results of this diagnosis indicted a “mound” located at the center of the inhabited perimeter and it triggers NGO’s and environmentalists’ alarms, which take independent samples of the ground and dust in the ceilings, with positive results for heavy contents of lead. After denouncing this situation, local and regional authorities had no reaction whatsoever.

Over this period, the inhabitants resorted to the territorial health care centers to be sent back their houses with prescriptions oriented to control the symptoms with no further enquiry. On many an occasion, the interviewees state that their suspicions in the children’s diseases were disavowed, alluding poor caretaking, lack of hygiene or negligence.

In these testimonies one notices the violence imposed upon an “invisible” in the eyes of the municipal functionary in their pain and minimal private space. As verified in the following quotation, in these initial treatments, functionaries interpreted and acted considering a dangerous association of poverty, soiling, disease and negligence, which hindered timely attention at first:

Children went to play there and welts started to appear, the looked as scabies, obviously they started to have reactions and the children were taken to the doctor; doctors said children had the scabies and it was because we were slobs (Territorial leader, woman, March 2014).

Despite the complaints of neighbor associations and related NGO’s —still scant in number—, no further actions were taken, nor was the allotment of housing stopped. Neighbors —except for the leaders linked to networks and organizations outside the territory— were not informed of the occurrences, dismissed the claims and their importance. So far there were no “proofs” of anything, despite the samples of soils and dust of NGO’s; one of the fundamental elements that influenced overlooking the problem among the neighbors was the constant denial in the health care centers the population resorted to.

The first referential milestone that modified this perception —for authorities and inhabitants— was the formal declaration of heavy metal poisoning by means of medical trials to the exposed population, which took place after a series of actions by neighbors and NGO’s. It was undertaken in 1998, when relevant health care organisms were forced to carry out blood tests.

The results showed that blood lead and urine inorganic arsenic levels surpassed the reference by ^{World Health Organization (2012)}, mainly in children⁶ and ordered to move the “Mound” of residues to the zone of Quebrada Encantada, less than 5 kilometers away from the inhabited space. Before decreeing this measure however, “blood sample taking” was smeared by the ill-advised actions of health care organizations, which —as an open secret that the population refers— adulterated a part of the samples and lost another, unleashing the leaders’ fury and the people’s mistrust. The organizations (Association of neighbors in the affected zones and 14 leaders) publicly denounced this situation in the press and the authorities apologized.

The ratification, by means of tests, of pollution levels, as well as their deviation and adulteration became key for the inhabitants’ perception and the subsequent actions taken by the organizations. Before this measurement took place, the actual pollution in the zone was still a non-established or “credible” topic. The ratification of high metal levels added to the growing certainty that if authorities acted in a scantly transparent manner was because “there was something” or “they did so because of something”.

Contrasting with the expected effect, the behavior of health care organisms cast doubts and established a relationship in terms of perception —verifiable or not— between the population and a series of physical and psychological symptoms they saw in their own bodies and their families’.

This way, the “sampling” modified once and for all the inhabitants’ perception of their environment, household and common space. The places that used to be playgrounds turned into forbidden spaces and the dust was continuously cleaned. At this point, people started to experience the suffering implied by not certainly knowing the effects toxic wastes had on their health, to feel vulnerable because of the abusive action of authority and to feel fear of losing their investments in improving their much-needed houses.

This suffering, as documented by ^{Auyero and Swistún (2008)} for the case of “Inflamable”, is closely linked to uncertainty and the levels of uneven and contradictory information which the inhabitants of the polluted zones are exposed to, which is stressed by the vulnerability from the variables before the exposure. These previous variables make the inhabitants, in ^{Chaterjee’s (2008)} terms, “objects of public policy”, depositaries of a State’s action that keeps them permanently waiting and which manages key information to understand their own experience and surroundings.

This way, expert knowledge becomes central as an element that shapes the inhabitants’ toxic experience, and at once it legitimizes their demand in the public space: those actors’ voices become relevant only if there is institutionality which by means of medical tests ratifies their veracity and relevance.

In this regard, the leaders of the zone established two toxicologists as one of the referential axes key in the process; they collaborated with the Associations of neighbors in the affected zones, and not only did they produce reports to endorse the denounces, but also “they explained what was happening to us”, making use of the power as experts they had to shape and build the experience of a body that hurts, but which does not have words to refer such experience. From the diagnosis the possibility for the inhabitants to denounce, and over time, to be recognized as “victims” emerged.

Even if the importance of medical evidence in the interpretation of the proper experience helps generate the “claim”, it produces a problematizing effect inside communities. Being the medical test positive, one of the milestones that sets the possibility of speaking in the inhabitants tends to grow in an element that divides the population as “deserving victims” and “people that take advantage”. Hence, the former are those with high contents of arsenic and lead; while the people who does not have such levels are considered “opportunistic”, looking for state benefits.

This division is troublesome, because the effects of wastes are rather heterogeneous in their distribution over the territory, even over people exposed for the same length of time and in the same quadrant.⁷ Moreover, it hinders observing the transversal condition of vulnerability that has lead the inhabitants to be exposed to potentially harmful pollution levels. Thus, in a paradoxical manner, the Associations of neighbors in the affected zones and the families are still waiting to be heard and obtain some sort of reparation or “visibility”.

The ratification, by means of tests, of the pollution in the zone was a key element that activated such Associations and stirred the early actions, both organizational and judicial. In this project, distinguishable is the role of the territorial leader Lombardo Molina and those known as the “Fourteen leaders of the lead” [Catorce dirigentas del plomo], who devoted long time to build networks and make the conflict visible at national level.

With these actions, the problem gained certain notoriety, however no goals at central-government level were set at that moment but much later. As previously stated, the ratification of the tests decisively influenced the relocation of the most visible part of the toxic wastes to Quebrada Encantada. However, the relocation was made without technical advice and the suspended dust, aggravated by the desert environment, increased the dissemination of wastes.

In spite of recognizing the dangerousness of the situation, the inhabitants remained in the zone; in the face of scarce precautionary measures, neighbor associations performed “acampadas” (permanent demonstrations occupying a public space) in the city square, walks and manifestations that little by little transformed their subjectivities into this idea of “victim”, “affected” or “polluted” subject.

The media; being on “TV” to be “visible”

It is possible to notice a similar phenomenon regarding the uneven visibility levels in relation to the second referential milestone: the intervention of the television program Contacto, which presents reportages and complaints, broadcast in 2002 by open television Canal 13 [Channel 13].

The journalists of this renowned program took interest in the story of the “catorce dirigentas del plomo”, who had recently visited Santiago to denounce their problem to the President with meager results. The journalists noticed the scant publicness of the conflict and enquired the basic information; neighbor associations gave them a file produced by the very inhabitants, which not only contained documents, medical tests and a cadaster of the affected population, but also the records of the Office for the Environment, which had been given to these women.

Although the social leaders had utilized those data to press multiple charges, thus far the problem remained with no other intervention than the relocation of wastes to Quebrada Encantada. For their part, the organizations linked to this situation’s claims carried on intending to introduce the idea that “something was not right” in the population, with mixed results.

With the same information gathered by the leaders and in situ interviews, the journalists produced an item entitled “Contaminados” [Polluted] which was broadcast in prime time. Such broadcast was decisive for the intervention of the authority and for the neighbors to acquire deeper knowledge about their situation.

The leaders recall that after years of asking for meetings with no success, a week after the program, Contacto, central authorities visited the zone and established concrete action plans in this respect. This way, the “Master Plan” is the fruit of the controversy generated by such program. This is the moment when subjects became actually “visible” for the various political actors at national level.

When children arrived from Contacto, we told them: “I don’t know what you want, we have this” and threw it on a table in Bety’s house, we had some boxes, banana boxes full of odds and ends, papers. They were astonished, they said: “you have everything here”, “you have everything”, these were the literal words. They had all our information, they checked point by point, they settle there in the population. And started to research, oh well… I think you watched the program and noticed it was a harsh testimony (territorial leader, woman, March, 2014).

Even if from this event a period of great accomplishments began for the Associations of neighbors in terms of exposing their demands, the program’s media impact also triggered an adverse and unexpected effect: the stigmatization of the population and the Arica inhabitants’ reactions to this. The broadcast images intended to increase the impact, exacerbating the representation of a marginal and degraded zone, full of sick people and trash, with high levels of delinquency, which had direct repercussions in the treatment the inhabitants started to receive from individuals who did not belong to the community.

By showing a territory almost unknown for some, not only did the problem become public, but also the extended association between poverty, sickness and marginalization of the population in such territories.

Virtually, I wanted to get the stigma of Polimetales off me, because the stigma of Polimetales here in Arica is like “the polimetales are the old needy shrews, they are the poor old women, the oldest in the population, Los Industriales, Cerro Chuño”, I mean the poorest in the poorest is Polimetales, and on top they are polluted and more so they are sick, it’s like a mangy dog that nobody wants (territorial leader, woman, June 2014).

On the other side, the broadcasting of Contacto and its media impact on the locality also unlashed competence inside the organizations that had mobilized on the disclosing of the events. Public imagination divided the voices and set up a competition for the “political capital” implied in being leaders in a sector, which in spite of being marginalized was numerous in terms of electoral register.

Alliances, negotiations and interviews divided the organizations and produced rivalries still present nowadays in the territory and showed the affected populations’ diverse characteristics, regardless of their shared condition of vulnerability. The interviewees explicitly indicated that from that moment on the claiming nature was lost and the spokespeople were linked to broader-scope political projects, which in some specific cases had positive effects in terms of public visibility, but also generated political clientelism in others.

Legal system in the configuration of the toxic experience

The third milestone also refers to the recognition of the territory and its influence in the transformation of the toxic experience of the inhabitants by a third party. This refers to the possibility of the legal system to impact on the subjectivities and reproduce uneven positions, as it is an institution that conjugates the power relation crystalized between State and vulnerable population in terms of treatment, with that related to specific experience and knowledge: command of law, its processes and associated jargon.

A group of families, led by Lombardo Molina, started judicial actions against the State, Promel and its Swede partners in 1997. After a lengthy process, the Supreme Court ruled that the Swedish company, owner of the toxic wastes buried in the zone, had to repay the victims, in addition to take charge of a series of mitigation measures. Thus, it was ordered to indemnify 356 people with $2.848 million CLP (eight million per person) due to the responsibility of the Regional Health Care Service, which on behalf of the Chilean State, had to take the necessary precautions.

This reparation was only allotted to those who were part of the demand, this way not all the affected inhabitants received the necessary compensation, which divided the community even deeper: in the year 2009 most of the indemnified population remained there.

The differenced reparation divided the community further, even though it set a key precedent to ratify the situation before the eyes of the incredulous inhabitants. Many of them refer it was that moment when they joined the protest movement, on the idea that “if the Swedes paid, that’s because of something”. The wastes’ dangerousness only becomes real for some, when an external, legitimate, powerful entity willing to recognize and repair even though minimally the affected.

In 2007, the demand of Polimetales came out, three hundred and eighty something people won, I don’t remember the exact number now. But the demand included a thousand and something people, it was the demand of 1998. Then when this demand came out, I have to accept, I said: “hey, why certain people won? There has to be harm” (territorial leader, woman, June 2014).

Once the first victory was attained, legal initiatives proliferated in the territory. Many of the interviewees barely remember how many demands they have signed, addressing who and what for. The role of “lawyers” in this context becomes a central figure in the strengthening of the inhabitants’ experience of vulnerability and uncertainty: lawyers “appear” and “disappear” from the territory, many of them do not come back nor answer the phone calls of organization leaders.

Also in a dynamic centered on the power of expert knowledge, many of the inhabitants were involved in almost 13 collective demands that, according to enquires in the tribunals, had been dropped by the lawyer as there were mistakes made by the same professional. In spite of this abandonment for more than seven years, the lawyer never reported to the people involved about such actions nor answered their calls.

It is so that over the first phase of this research carried out in 2014, the subjects’ stories refer to “still” valid causes and are waiting for results with great expectations. Over the stay on the field in January 2015, some people involved had just been notified by a new lawyer in charge that their cases were archived and that many of them, because of pressing charges previously, were not able to take new actions due to the prescription of certain crimes. The sensation of the interviewees was bitterness and resignation about the situation after almost ten years waiting.

This way, the judicial element became a key point for the articulation of the axis organizations of the conflict and to search for reparation. According to the stories of actors and over the ethnographic work, it was verified that a large part of the leaders’ managements were articulated around the generation of these demands and the later localization of lawyers to obtain information about the results.

In this process, the “political capital” of social leaders was at stake in the face of other considered almost a “superior”, who cannot be directly addressed: the lawyer. The leader was asked to be the mediator —“explain in simple English⁸”— between the lawyer and the community to report accurately and in every-day terms what occurred in the legal sphere, what documents and papers were needed, among other things.

If leaders were not able to report, neighbors considered they were not “efficient”, “hid things” or were not capable to reach the lawyers. Because of this, large part of the present discredit of some leaders —in short those known as “catorce dirigentas del plomo”— is associated to the disclosing of the demands which were never concluded and which were managed by these people at territorial level, in spite they never had any actual capacity to pressure the lawyer who abandoned the cases.

This way, one of the unexpected effects, certainly negative, on the importance given to judicialization as a mechanism to access reparation has been the discredit of collective action for accomplishing common goals. The scant success of the judicial actions undertaken by neighbor associations, added to uncertainty and contradictory information on the demands pursued and the results, made the inhabitants have the impression that their permanence in the associations not only had been useless, but also detrimental.

This way, after the peak of the conflict in previous years, nowadays the inhabitants are in a phase of despondency and/or individual actions, and also extremely mistrustful of territorial organizations. This fact was reinforced when by the end of 2014, the Supreme Court admitted a demand individually pressed by a family and ruled that the Local Health Care Service indemnified four people.

The beneficiaries of this verdict are a paradigmatic case of a beneficious individual solution that increase the resentment of those who invested time on collective actions: those neighbors did not have any close relationship with anyone in the territory, they never wanted to involve in the organizations or in the protest actions and hired a lawyer on their own to take their case. Instead of waiting for the eradication measures, they resorted to the Housing Service so that it swapped the house in the polluted zone for another in a rural zone nearby Arica.

The media visibility of the ruling favorable to this family heavily hit neighbor associations that, over the same period, had been waiting for almost ten years the resolution of their cases and had just learnt these were abandoned. The immediate effect was the large amount of individual cases sent to the successful lawyer in less than two months, including those of emblematic territorial leaders.

As for the very case of the 1997 demand, which confirmed the perception that “there was something wrong”, the reparation did not have the effect expected by those who received it: many of the beneficiaries spent their resources extending or improving their houses in polluted places, which gives an account of the poor notion of the dangerousness of the pollution in the area, or as some of the affected referred, the amount did not afford moving, as it was not enough to change their place of residence.

We notice that the judiciary also has great importance in the toxic experience and the inhabitants’ suffering. On the on side, they are at a situation of uneven knowledge regarding that “other” lawyer that monopolizes the possibility of receiving compensation; and the other, when this reparation is obtained, not only puts a price on the suffering —which frequently does not match the inflicted harm that has to be observed in the long term—, but also sets processes into motion that generate new forms of victimization of the population due to its condition of vulnerability.

A clear instance of this is the treatment of the recent cause won in the Supreme Court individually by Family Sanhueza, in which the unfortunate action of the judiciary instead of repairing has inflicted new forms of victimization on this family: after almost ten years of litigation because of the grave disease of its two small children, it was allotted a 10-million CLP compensation per family member⁹, but in the transcription of the formal ruling and the payment order, the functionaries made a mistake that reduced the payment to only ten million in total, with no possibility to appeal or contest the resolution in spite of being evidently an error in the transcription according to official documents. This information was delivered to the affected after heavy pressure on the tribunals looking for an explanation.

Together with ignoring what occurred, at the moment of writing this article the pursuant had tried to clarify the situation in almost every instance at municipal, state and national levels to clarify the situation unsuccessfully, spending most of the his time in long waits in the offices of various functionaries who advised him to “accept what there is, because it’s better than nothing”.

The impotence before the reiterated abuse experienced emotionally hit this family hard, as the members told when visited during fieldwork, which indubitably was also one of the most emotionally intense moments for the researcher appointed to document their experience.¹⁰

State intervention; public policy, reparation and re-victimization

As noticed, in each of the previous sections it is possible to distinguish possibilities for reparation and collective action, but also new forms to victimize the population. Both elements are also observed in the public policies implemented in the territory. The main were the measures of “Master Plan” and “Polimetales Law” [Ley de Polimetales], in force at moment. The problems in the implementation of such measures before the coming into force, mainly in the erratic and delegitimized action of institutional actors and the scarce technical expertise to deal with the complexity of the situation.

Before the creation of the document that originated “Plan Maestro”, the inhabitants of the territory already expressed their mistrust in the face of the action of some actors, who had tried to hide the situation over and over:

The authorities always told us we were not polluted, they always deceived us and conspired. That is the saddest, they conspired, they conspired with the University, the University changed our tests. It has a lot to do with their being poor people, in fact, it was hard for us to reach Santiago, we are two thousand kilometers away, the trip in bus was terrible, luckily sometimes we got some plane tickets. Being heard was the hardest struggle in life, I believe (territorial leader, women, June 2014).

Together with this lack of legitimacy, during several of the interventions of relevant authorities did not have sufficient technical advice to deal with a case so complex; as long as it did not make it to national headlines, an actual effort to set humanely and technically the necessary measures was not made.

In spite of the difficulty of establishing the affected territories due to the air dissemination of the wastes, the critical zones were determined —“The Polygon” [El Polígono] — on which intervention focused; this was a permanent source of conflict and uncertainty for the population, since the delimitation of critical zones included at first a rather smaller radius in relation to the request of neighbor associations and had to be modified on a number of occasions.

Many of the affected zones with emblematic territorial leaders were left outside “the polygon” at first, not knowing if they would receive help even if they were a few meters from the zone considered “dangerous”. According to 2002 Census data available at the moment of the “Master Plan” intervention, around 12 600 people lived in affected zones, occupying 3752 houses.

However, it was considered that the affected population was 5000 people and measures were applied from this number. These were insufficient and were implemented in a heterogeneous manner by sector. The people in charge of applying them pointed out that the heterogeneity of measures was due to the requirements of these sectors and leaders of the organizations in each place when implementing the set of solutions established in “Master Plan”.

With these practices the atomization of organizations, division between neighbors were instilled, and what is worst, the technically necessary measures to protect the entire population were not taken. These measures contemplated the fast paving of the affected sectors to prevent airborne dissemination, deeper studies to acknowledge the extent of heavy metal presence and the “relocation of houses located in Sector F, which includes the following streets: Renato Rocca, Alejandro Azola, Capitán Avalos, Cerro Chuño, Calles 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and Mario Ojeda, which comprised about 1880 houses”¹¹ (^{Programa Maestro, 2009: 26}).

The implementation of a health plan that included the health care attention for those affected in the primary network and a system to accompany the education of children in schools in the polluted zones, as well as other measures, were proposed. Albeit, their setting into motion has produced a series of problems that have imposed new suffering to the subjects. The first one is tardiness: the beginning of claims can be dated back to the mid 1990’s, while “Master Plan” corresponds to 2009 and the law that decrees its implementation to 2012.

Considering that the enactment of the law was also accompanied by the elaboration of a “regulation” destined to define the operative aspects, the benefits and reparation policies established in the law started to be administrated as of 2013. They were prompt actions in terms of the state apparatus, nevertheless lengthy in relation to the population’s health.

Over this period, organizations split a number of times, neighbors with the possibility to leave simply abandoned their houses in the affected zone and these were occupied by new tenants, largely undocumented migrants, vagabonds or families in extreme poverty. The zones where damage had to be mitigated present little advancement: in some cases dust has been cleaned from the roofs and “plazas secas” ¹² have been created. However, there has been scant progress in paving the streets and yards, where polluted ground can still be found, which the population is daily exposed to.

A second source of suffering by the reparatory policies comes from the relocation measures that were defined as critical by the law. As a first point, it is worth mentioning that they have been slow and ineffective, for a large part of the families that should have been relocated still remain in the affected zones; only part of Cerro Chuño has been benefitted by relocation.

As a second point, in the zone where this eradication measure has been effectively carried out, it has been made with differences in time and quality in the same sort of housing.¹³ This has produced conflicts and dissatisfaction, increasing the feeling that the State offers “take it or leave it” solutions and uncertainty in the cases of those who did not accept the first relocation conditions.

On the other side, relocating by stages has meant that those who left, abandoned housing with no running water nor electricity; these houses are nowadays occupied by homeless people, this increases the tension between neighbors, crime and neighborhood degradation.

During the writing process of this article, the second “wave” of relocations in Cerro Chuño was taking place and the families that were waiting for a solution late in 2015 —around 50 houses— feared for their security in an environment where there was no public transport, trade, where trash gathered at the corners and the majority of the houses, in spite of their closure, was illegally inhabited. All of this, discounting that the new houses allotted are a few kilometers away from the polluted “Polygon”.

Both in the case of the relocated population and those which are still waiting, there are constant tensions in relation to the housing offered as a solution by the Ministry of Housing which does not have similar characteristics to those the affected possessed, nor does it compensate the investments made on them, which is a third source of suffering.

Instead of adopting a stance that propitiated dialogue and the reparation to the affected —a criterion that should prevail in the responsibility of the State for the damage— housing was allotted according to the available budget and not in function of the needs and minimal demands of organizations and inhabitants. Small houses were changed by departments which neither have the same surface nor the advantages in terms of location as their original housing.

Because of this, the sensation of “losing the effort of so many years” and “starting from scratch” made some of them reject the relocation offer and preferred to remain in the affected zones. Otherwise, the location of new housing a few meters from “The Polygon” raised suspicion in the neighbors and remained in theirs, even if many of them sent their children to live somewhere else. All these elements have made the conflict remain valid, increasing the perception of abuse and vulnerability in the inhabitants.