The civil-law category of a thing
Chilean civil law has traditionally classified animals as movable property. This category is not merely symbolic: it shapes ownership, contracts, compensation, succession, family disputes, enforcement proceedings, and the way legal institutions perceive animals' bodies and interests.
Animal-protection legislation has introduced a different language by describing animals as living and sentient beings. Yet that recognition coexists with a civil framework that continues to treat them as objects available for appropriation and use.
A contradiction across legal fields
The contradiction appears whenever an animal's welfare conflicts with proprietary powers. Procedural law can struggle to recognise an animal as more than evidence or an asset; family and succession law may fail to reflect bonds of care; and environmental law may protect populations while overlooking individual animals.
Changing terminology alone is not enough. De-objectification requires legal consequences: rules that limit ownership, recognise animals' interests as legally relevant, and create mechanisms through which those interests can be protected.
Beyond the false choice
The alternative is not necessarily to make every animal identical to a human legal person. Law already creates many forms of protection and representation for beings and interests that cannot act for themselves.
The real question is whether Chilean law will continue to use the category of a thing as the organising principle for animal life, or whether sentience will begin to reshape the institutions built around it.