A Social and Cultural History of Urban Smog in Santiago, 1973–90

In the 1980s and 1990s, residents of Santiago de Chile suffered some of the worst air pollution in the hemisphere. Rapid urban growth, increased automobile usage, and deregulation in urban transportation and land use, along with the city’s location in a valley bordered by the towering Andes mountains, combined to create dangerous levels of particulates and ozone. The problem had been recognized in Chile since at least the early 1960s, and by the time of the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), there was growing awareness of smog as a national health and environmental crisis. Although there is growing research on air pollution and mitigation from scientific, health, and engineering perspectives, we know little about how public perceptions of air pollution emerged historically, especially outside of the United States and Western Europe. How did perceptions of air and its environmental risks evolve in Santiago under military rule? What urban imaginaries shaped the way scientists, military officials, and ordinary residents discussed air quality and proposed solutions? I draw on news clippings; publications by professionals such as engineers, architects, urbanists, environmental scientists, and doctors; minutes from the military junta; and newsletters and city council minutes from municipalities within the Santiago metro region. My focus is on social and cultural perceptions of the air from a range of groups, with a focus on vulnerable and marginalized urban residents. I argue that awareness of air pollution intensified in the 1980s not only because the air had worsened, but because observers came to link the grey skies and foul air with the oppressive Pinochet regime. In addition, the military regime’s efforts to highlight issues of consumption as a way to legitimate itself opened up the regime to criticism around quality-of-life issues, including those related to the urban environment.