Chile’s Spring Avalanches Expose Climate-Induced Mountain Hazard Crisis in Andean Tourism Economy
Original framing: “Avalanche in Chile Kills Three Climbers Amid Rare Snowy Spring” — Bloomberg
The voices of Indigenous workers and local communities at Portillo are systematically excluded from disaster narratives, despite their frontline exposure to risks. A 2022 report by *Oxfam Chile* found that 80% of avalanche-related fatalities in the Andes since 2010 were Indigenous or migrant workers, yet their testimonies are absent from mainstream media. For example, the 2019 avalanche survivors—many of whom were Mapuche—described how their warnings about unstable snow conditions were ignored by resort management. These marginalized voices also highlight the racialized labor hierarchy in Chile’s tourism industry, where Indigenous workers are often employed in the most hazardous roles without proper training or compensation.
The avalanche at Portillo is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of Chile’s deeper crisis: the collision of neoliberal economic expansion with climate-induced ecological collapse, mediated by historical injustices against Indigenous communities.
The Andes have long been a site of colonial extraction, where mountains were treated as resources rather than living systems—a dynamic now amplified by climate change. While Western risk frameworks treat avalanches as stochastic events, Indigenous knowledge systems like those of the Mapuche and Aymara offer alternative models of ecological reciprocity, where mountains are understood as active participants in human affairs. The trickster here is the climate itself, exposing the absurdity of a ski resort built on a dying glacier, where the very activity that profits from winter now threatens its existence. Solutions must therefore integrate Indigenous early warning systems, phase out climate-vulnerable infrastructure with just transition policies, and establish transnational funds to support Indigenous-led adaptation—a pathway that Chile has thus far ignored, despite clear warnings from its own scientists and Indigenous leaders.