Abstract

This article explores the cultural construction of socio-ecological inequalities, recovering the concept of environmental suffering for the analysis of a territory with high environmental degradation: the “Polimetales” case located in the city of Arica, Chile, studied through an ethnographic methodolog y during 2013, 2014 and 2015. The paper attempts to establish the ways in which the subjects involved in these territories experience this environmental suffering, interpret socio-environmental unequal relationships and try to modify them. By means of this analysis, the article focus on the dynamics of conflict about inequalities