On June 20, Gabriel Boric’s recently inaugurated reform government announced the closing of a copper smelter in the Punchuncaví-Quintero industrial corridor. The plant, which had polluted the air and riverways of the neighboring towns for decades, was frequently responsible for public health crises in the region. The most recent occurred in May when pollutants from the factory contaminated the local water and poisoned over five hundred children.

Community groups and environmental organizations, both key supporters of Boric’s campaign, hailed the decision to close the plant, which in 2018 Greenpeace described as a “Chilean Chernobyl.” Since the plant opened in 1964, local farmers and residents had complained of the damage it was inflicting on their health and the environment, and scientists had observed high levels of arsenic in the surrounding area.

Despite this, the backers of the president’s Apruebo Dignidad coalition were not united in support for the closure of the smelter. The Federación de Trabajadores del Cobre, the union representing employees of Chile’s state copper industry, also a crucial constituency of the new government, immediately responded to the announcement with a national strike. Endorsed by the general workers’ confederation, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), miners mobilized to defend their livelihoods as well as public industrial infrastructure that Boric’s coalition had just placed on the chopping block.