Approximate reading time: 1 minute, 42 seconds
In the midst of the devastation caused by the forest fires that are ravaging Chile, there is an urgency to question the narratives that try to naturalize these disasters as inevitable events. In this text, Eli Neira reflects from the territory on how ecocide in Chile is not simply a series of natural tragedies, but the result of irresponsible human decisions and an economic structure that prioritizes profit over life and the environment. It is time to stop blaming fate and confront reality: Chile is burning, falling, destroyed, crumbling and rotting, all by the work and grace of its own owners.
Chile burns, falls, is destroyed, shells, rots, by the work and grace of its own owners.
Let’s stop naturalizing the effects of ecocide!
We already know that the fires are not the product of a fatal destiny or a curse that falls on these lands every summer. The fires are the product of clearing and monocultures, the lack of regulation and the criminal greed of the business community that has modified not only the landscape but life in this country, irreversibly for 50 years to date.
Stop asking the people for solidarity, the same people mutilated in the streets when they have risen, imprisoned in prisons to survive, miserated, immersed in ignorance, in the base paste, in debt, in misinformation and in the most abject hopelessness. Why aren’t they going to ask Lusick to release the water? Why aren’t they going to ask for toiletries from the paltero businessmen who have altered the entire ecosystem of the region? Why aren’t they going to ask for houses from the same ones who cause fires and then build towers? How long do we sustain this lie? How long will the surrendering governments, the timorous mayors, watch the backs of the criminal and ecocidal business community?
How much more must be burned before the law that prohibits building on damaged land is lifted? How many more poor people must burn to death so that Chile continues to be a good business for foreign capital, never for us?
How many years has the citizen mayor’s office in Valparaiso gone without there even being a fucking garbage container in the entire city, or clean points where recycling without quickly becoming micro-garbage dumps that will later be the perfect fuel for fires? How many more years? without there being a decent waste management plan, a contingency plan in high season when people and therefore garbage multiply in the region? When?
Chile burns, falls, is destroyed, shells, rots, by the work and grace of its own owners. Stop asking us to continue supporting this farce.
I write these words while the evacuation alarms have not stopped ringing since yesterday, with anger, with sorrow, with a deep feeling of helplessness for what already seems to be the final destination of the failed project of a coloniality that does not stop spitting at us in the expensive.”
Eli Neira
