Governing Poverty in Times of Change: National Programs, Inequality, and Local Reality in Chile

This article analyzes the trajectory of Chile’s social protection system from the 1990s to the 2020s, focusing on the tensions between poverty, social inequality, national policy frameworks, and local structural transformations. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s poststructuralist approach and critical poverty studies, the article examines the social construction of poverty in programs such as Chile Solidario and Seguridades y Oportunidades, their evolution, and interaction with local processes of socioeconomic restructuring. The article argues that Chilean poverty metrics operate as an ideological apparatus that depoliticizes structural problems, enabling governments to claim statistical success while socioeconomic inequality remains largely intact. At the same time, the shift toward multidimensional poverty measurement marks a significant change that, by complexifying poverty, reintroduces inequality concerns. The case of Coronel shows how local poverty reduction may emerge as an ambivalent byproduct of national policies and socioeconomic restructuring, producing statistical gains while consolidating a sacrifice zone marked by socio-environmental injustice.