This article explores the cultural construction of socio-ecological inequalities, recovering the concept of environmental suffering for the analysis of a territory with high environmental degradation: the "Polimetales" case located in the city of Arica, Chile, studied through an ethnographic methodology during 2013, 2014 and 2015. The paper attempts to establish the ways in which the subjects involved in these territories experience this environmental suffering, interpret socio-environmental unequal relationships and try to modify them. By means of this analysis, the article focus on the dynamics of conflict about inequalities.