Just want to post a link to the documentary “Luces en el Sacrificio” (“Lights in the Sacrifice”). The documentary focuses on an industrial zone in coastal Chile, South America – centred upon the towns of Puchuncaví and . The industrial zone is associated with high levels of industrial pollution that have had and are having devastating effects on the local population. Some of you will have heard about Minamata in Japan, where mercury pollution, and methyl mercury in particular, during the 1950s and 1960s led to severe health impacts on and large numbers of premature deaths among the local population (Minamata disease), and eventually to the Miamata Convention limiting the environmental release of mercury.
Puchuncaví and Quintero are a modern example of Miamata, where some people are still allowed to put profit ahead of the health of other people and of our environment more generally. In doing so they have created a “zone of sacrifice”, but also brought together a community in their opposition to the behaviour of the industries concerned (the “lights in the sacrifice”).
The documentary was made by a Chilean friend of mine. The company she works for is a not-for-profit organisation. Please let me have your feedback if you have chance to watch the documentary so that I can let my friend know.
The documentary is 57 mins long and, although in Spanish, is sub-titled throughout in English.