Objective: This paper analyzes the emergence of Chilean environmental institutions (1994) within the framework of the neoliberal model established in the civic-military dictatorship (1973-1989). Although said environmental institutionality arises in "democracy", its legal bases must be sustained on a series of legal norms that shaped the neoliberal state founded on dictatorship. Theoretical framework: The Governmentality Approach affirms that there is a complex network of power relations, supported by political economy as primordial knowledge, which allows this power to be exercised to guide the behavior of the population, through different mechanisms and concrete and practical devices. Method: Through a discourse analysis of a legal and political documentary corpus, it is evident that the bases of the neoliberal state operate as a condition of possibility for the establishment of an environmental institutionalism that through its discursive practices operates as an adequate device for the principles of the neoliberal model. Results and conclusions: It is concluded that, in the environmental institutions created in the 1990s, a series of discursive objects, created previously, are reformulated, which encourage the neoliberal treatment of the environmental issue, specifically through new legal tools such as LGBMA. (19,300) and the environmental evaluation regulation (1997). Research implications: Identifies the limitations and contradictions of the State's environmental management; within the framework of a neoliberal political economic model like the Chilean one. Originality/value: Contributes to the use of discursive historical analysis methodologies through specific fields such as the environment, through archival material that allows us to understand the specific practices of the State from the perspective of a history of the present of neoliberal governmentality.