[vasco]

Exactly, this sounds like when europeans and americans go to africa to keep the local people from using their resources under the guise of protecting wildlife. There's plenty of local sources about it but a documentary that does a great job for a foreign audience and really made me think is 'Black Mambas' https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18351318/

If us Europeans and Americans want to look at the sky undisturbed, why don't we build telescopes at home? We can expropriate or block businesses in however big of a radius we want. Or we can buy up all the land around the site we are using in a foreign country instead of keeping the development of the land of the local people. It feels like exploitation.

It's easy to make this about science vs business and I hate light pollution just as the next guy, but it feels gross to shame the local population for wanting to do what we've done with our land already when we can do it at home as well, or pay them to be worth their while to not develop around the site. They should not have to keep their country pristine just because we want to be "pure" with other people's home when we're not with our own. Or pay them enough if it's so important (it is).

[oldherl]

The word "local" is strange. There are almost no real "local" people as to local to that region. As to the other Chilean people, they can go to any other major Chilean city and build whatever they want there instead of building it right at Atacama. Nobody is stopping that.