The San Antonio Leader || An Inverted Logic

The debate surrounding the Outer Port project begs a fundamental question: what do we mean by coherence with the landscape? Presenting a large-scale port infrastructure as a “natural extension” of the environment simply because of its proximity to another port, as stated in the project’s Supplementary Addendum, is confusing physical proximity with ecological and urban integration. This premise not only simplifies a complex reality, but also reflects an outdated way of understanding the connection between infrastructure and territory.

The Maipo River Wetland Nature Sanctuary is not a scenic backdrop available for intervention, but a living, dynamic, and fragile ecosystem, whose protection has been mandated by the State. Chile has explicitly recognized the environmental, social, and landscape value of this interdependent system, where the landscape, understood as an ecological and cultural dimension and not as a postcard, is one of its conservation targets. An ecosystem cannot be preserved while artificially dividing it to facilitate the execution of a project, much less if there are no concrete measures for protection, restoration, or compensation within the Sanctuary itself. In fact, what is presented as a Voluntary Environmental Commitment—monitoring the Sanctuary—is actually a function already fulfilled for years by its own institutions.

Furthermore, concentrating all environmental protection actions in San Antonio, while ignoring Santo Domingo, a commune that is also part of the Sanctuary and where active governance exists for its conservation, not only fragments the ecosystem but also adapts the territory to the project, rather than adapting the project to the territory. These inverted variables undermine the territorial and ecological coherence of the design. Making one part of the system invisible is equivalent to excluding an entire community from the conversation, weakening the very basis of any territorial legitimacy.

At the Cosmos Foundation, as the Sanctuary’s administrator, we believe the real challenge isn’t accumulating measures to formally comply with regulations, but rather changing the starting point: designing public infrastructure that considers the location, understands it, respects it, and recognizes it as a condition, not an obstacle. Only then can we truly speak of coexistence and commitment.