How the salmon industry threatens Chile's Indigenous peoples

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The Kawésqar people survived the arrival of European settlers in the 19th century, which wiped out many of Chile's Indigenous communities. Today, less than a thousand Kawésqar are left.

And now, the multi-billion-dollar salmon industry – backed by Chile's new president – threatens the Kawésqar peoples' right to the sea.

FEATURED STORY

Inside the battle between Chile's salmon industry and its Indigenous peoples

Elena Basso

Punta Arenas, Chile. For more than a hundred years, fishermen on Capitán Aracena, an island in Chile's southernmost territory, have told a local legend about one of the island's caves. Anybody who sailed too close, they said, would be cursed by the mummy buried inside.

A naturally mummified body of a woman was indeed located in a cave on the island in the early 2000s, thanks to information locals provided to scientists. She had lived 100 to 150 years earlier, according to a 2008 study, and her DNA matched that of the ancestral original peoples in the Chilean Patagonia and the Kawésqar community, who still live here today.

Chilean authorities decided the woman's body should stay in the cave due to the costs and difficulties involved in replicating the environmental conditions needed to preserve it. But the respect and fear traditionally associated with the legend is fading, says Leticia Caro, a 50-year-old leader of a nomadic Kawésqar community.

"It was shocking for me to see, but in recent years, several people have posted selfies with the mummy on social media. A total lack of respect. I saw them and couldn't believe it," Caro told openDemocracy.

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Those taking the selfies were not tourists, but workers from Nova Austral, a Chilean company that reportedly received significant Norwegian investment while under the steer of its Norwegian former parent company. Nova Austral intensively farms salmon right in front of the burial site.

For thousands of years, the lives of Caro's nomadic Kawésqar peoples have revolved around the sea. They sailed the fjords of Patagonia, living mainly off fishing, performing ancestral ceremonies on the water, using seaweed and other marine products for medicinal purposes and considering areas of the coast and ocean to be sacred.

They survived the arrival of European settlers in the 19th century, which wiped out many Indigenous communities. "We have been victims of genocide, and those who colonised our land also took away our right to sail. Little by little, we took it back, and several people in the community, including my father, started sailing again," Caro said.

"Then the salmon industry arrived," she continued. "Once again, we found ourselves at a crossroads: moving away from our sea and giving up subsistence navigation."

Salmon are not native to Chilean waters; they were imported from Norway in the 1980s, and their production in the region had increased by almost 3,000% by 2017, with hundreds of vast salmon farms, or salmoneras, established in the Pacific waters off Chilean Patagonia. These farms block Indigenous peoples' free navigation and cause pollution that makes it increasingly difficult to fish.

Today, Caro says, there are fewer than a thousand Kawésqar left.

The situation might be about to get worse still. Chile's parliament looks set to bow to its hugely profitable salmon industry and weaken a vital piece of legislation that was introduced less than 20 years ago to provide some protection for the marine environment and those who live off of it. The country's new far-right president, José Antonio Kast, who was sworn in last week, is among the critics of the legislation, which he has accused of paralysing the economy.

Fish is Chile's biggest non-mining export, and the country is the world's second-largest salmon producer, behind only Norway. Most of its salmon is sold in the US – a trade worth $2.2bn in 2024 – but other important markets are Japan, Brazil, Latin America, China and, more recently, the European Union, where Chilean salmon imports are growing rapidly, up from $56m in 2003 to $204m in 2024.

As the industry's value has soared, so has its social and environmental impact.

Dozens of divers have died working on salmoneras, and Indigenous peoples' lands have been polluted. Activists who speak out against the industry report receiving anonymous death threats. An April 2024 report by a United Nations special rapporteur found salmoneras are "one of the main threats to the environment in Patagonia", warning that the large amounts of chemicals and pesticides they use are damaging the marine ecosystem, creating vast "dead zones" in the Patagonian sea.

"The damage is not only caused in the location where the farm is located, but also spreads to other areas and channels because the sea is alive, it is a current," Caro said.

One major problem is the industry's heavy reliance on antibiotics to control diseases that spread among fish stocks due to high-density farming, warming waters, and poor environmental management. Norway's salmon farming industry has a larger output than Chile's, but is considered 99% antibiotics-free; it used just 709 kilograms of the drugs in 2024 compared to the more than 351,000 kilograms used in Chilean salmon farms, including by Norwegian companies. Studies estimate that up to 70-80% of the drugs administered in Chile end up in the environment, leading to fears of antibiotic resistance spreading to other marine life in the region, or even to humans.

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Caro and her community, Grupos Familiares Nómades del Mar, live in the Kawésqar National Park. At 2.8 million hectares, the park is the second-largest protected area in Chile – but this doesn't protect it from the salmon industry. Salmoneras are allowed within national parks, despite widespread scientific evidence on the environmental damage they cause. For this reason, Caro's community and two others are applying for the creation of a 300,000-hectare Indigenous Peoples' Coastal Marine Area (ECMPO).

ECMPOs were established by Law 20249 – known as Lafkenche law, after the Mapuche communities who inhabit coastal areas in southern-central Chile – in 2008. They are a powerful tool to help Indigenous communities protect specific maritime and coastal areas, and their traditional practices, fishing and sacred sites, from all forms of exploitation, including that linked to the salmon industry.

The first ECMPO was approved in 2015, and geographer Alvaro Montaña, from the nonprofit Center for the Study and Protection of Natural Heritage, told openDemocracy that 42 have been approved over the past ten years.

Once the government approves an application for an ECMPO, the community has the right to establish a management plan for the area together with the Chilean state's maritime authorities. No new maritime concessions can be granted to businesses, effectively banning the creation of new salmon farms in the area, though pre-existing concessions and exploitation activities are not affected.

Despite being internationally celebrated as a pioneering piece of legislation for Indigenous rights, the Lafkenche law is under fierce attack and at risk of being watered down.

Last month, a Senate committee backed an amendment to the legislation, which will now be voted on by the floor. If passed, it will limit the areas for an ECMPO, make it mandatory to include a management plan in the initial application – a requirement that will force the communities to invest extensive work, time, and possibly funds into their applications – and curtail communities' rights in favour of businesses and other productive activities.

The amendment comes after representatives of the salmon industry have accused Indigenous communities of misusing the law, claiming their applications for ECMPOs represent 'land grabs' as they span large areas that can still be used for Indigenous fishing and gathering practices, as well as for ancestral navigation.

For Indigenous peoples, though, these spaces are sacred and must be protected. "Take the case of the cave, for example," said Caro. "It is an important archaeological site. We are fighting against all this. It is not just pollution: it is cultural interference, the destruction of memory that salmon companies are carrying out."

But criticisms of the law are not just being levelled by the salmon industry – they go right to the top of Chilean politics. Speaking at last year's Salmon Summit, the country's new president, José Antonio Kast, called the legislation a "tool for political blackmail" and advocated for its amendment.

Kast's comments came a month after another former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei, who was in power from 1994 to 2000, condemned the law. "We have to kill the Lafkenche law because it is killing the salmon industry," said Frei, who is now the country's ambassador extraordinary for Asia-Pacific.

"I believe many of these criticisms stem from misinformation," said Christian Paredes Letelier, an environmental lawyer from Observatorio Ciudadano, an NGO which promotes human rights. "But also from discrimination and racism toward Indigenous communities." Montaña of the Center for the Study and Protection of Natural Heritage also believes many of the attacks stem from "racial hatred".

Paredes continued: "The communities that brought about the law always emphasise that it is not a tool against the salmon industry, but a tool to protect the ancestral traditions of the indigenous peoples, which also include protecting the sea, although that is not the direct goal of the law."

A Freedom of Information request to Sernapesca, the Chilean state agency for fisheries, by human rights NGO Observatorio Ciudadano, reveals there have been no complaints or reports of alleged violations or abuses of the Lafkenche law since it was enacted.

Paredes stressed the legislation "does not grant communities ownership of the sea, it grants them its administration. A very different thing."

For Montaña, the main problem with the law is not its impact on the salmon industry, but that its "timelines for the process are not being followed". The legislation states an ECMPO should be approved within two-and-a-half years of an application being lodged, but the process is taking seven-and-a-half years due to the high number of applications and a lack of public funds. "But this is an administrative problem that could be resolved," Montaña added. "The law works."

An assembly of Lafkenche communities rejected the proposed amendment and called on the government to protect their rights...

You can read the rest of this feature here.