Supplying Extraction: An Environmental and Labor History of the Dupont Company in Northern Chile

The DuPont Company is best known as a manufacturer of explosives that evolved into one of the world’s largest chemical corporations. While innovations such as synthetic fibers and Teflon reshaped global industry and mass consumption, DuPont’s history is also marked by environmental harm. Yet like the cellophane it helped to invent, DuPont often operated in ways that made its presence appear diffuse or invisible: the company typically supplied other industries rather than selling directly to consumers.

This paper examines the environmental and labor history of DuPont in Chile, focusing on the Compañía Sudamericana de Explosivos (CSE), in which DuPont acquired a majority stake by 1923. CSE became Chile’s largest supplier of industrial explosives, extending operations into Bolivia and Peru and producing increasingly sophisticated detonators by the 1960s. Its trajectory mirrors the political and economic transformations of twentieth-century Chile: nationalized during Salvador Allende’s government (1970–1973), privatized under the military dictatorship, and later reconstituted as ENAEX S.A., now a multinational leader in explosives manufacturing.

By situating the history of explosives manufacturing—and the chemical supply chains that sustained mining—within the broader history of mineral extraction, this paper argues that DuPont was central to shaping labor conditions and environmental degradation in northern Chile. Explosives production and distribution were highly dangerous processes, marked by frequent accidents and chronic exposure to toxic materials. At the same time, these operations contributed to pollution that has made parts of the region among the most environmentally damaged in the country. Tracing these corporate and industrial networks reveals how extractive economies reshaped landscapes, labor relations, and public health, offering a more nuanced understanding of Chile’s intertwined labor and environmental transformations.