Illness, animal deaths and water shortages: life inside Chile’s polluted ‘sacrifice zones’

<p>Allegations of environmental breaches dog Anglo American’s mining operations. Now the company has been given the go-ahead for plans that communities say risk disaster</p><ul><li><p>Photographs by Nicole Kramm</p></li></ul><p>Patricia Silva lays out an array of medicines and doctors’ letters on her kitchen table. She lives a few kilometres from a copper foundry operated by the British-headquartered mining company Anglo American in Catemu, a town in central <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/chile">Chile</a>. Every morning and evening, she says, the air is filled with a faint blue smoke.</p><p>“It irritates your throat and makes you cough,” Silva says, remembering a day when her son Cristián, then three years old, began to have convulsions. “His face turned purple and he couldn’t breathe. He still has a red mark on his face from that episode.”</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/22/illness-animal-deaths-water-shortages-chile-polluted-sacrifice-zones-anglo-american-mining">Continue reading...</a>