Battle lines redrawn and communities divided over Argentina’s lithium mines
In the vast white desert of the Salinas Grandes, Antonio Calpanchay, 45, lifts his axe and slices the ground. He has worked this land since he was 12, chopping and collecting salt, replenishing it for the seasons ahead and teaching his children to do the same.
“All of our aboriginal community works here, even the elders,” he says, sheltering his weathered face from the sun. “We always have. It is our livelihood.”
As his son watches on warily, Calpanchay points north, to a deviation from the plain’s blistering white – a heap of black stone and mud. “They started looking for lithium there in 2010,” he says. “We made them stop; it was hurting the environment and affecting the water. But now they are back and I am afraid. Everything we have could be lost.”
The Salinas Grandes is the largest salt flat in Argentina, a biodiverse ecosystem stretching 200 miles and sitting within the lithium triangle along with parts of Chile and Bolivia.
Lithium, a silvery metal known as white gold, is an essential component of mobile phone and electric car batteries; its global demand is predicted to rise more than fortyfold by 2040. But its exploitation has also fuelled a moral debate, one that pits the green energy transition against the rights of local and Indigenous peoples.
For 14 years, the 33 Atacama and Kolla Indigenous communities have banded together to halt mining operations, fearful that their water resources will be lost or contaminated and that they will be forced from their land. “Respect our territory” and “no to lithium” reads the graffiti over dozens of road signs, abandoned buildings and murals.
But now, as more than 30 global mining conglomerates encroach on the region, encouraged by the “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei, the battle lines have been redrawn. Communities are increasingly divided by offers of work and investment; one has already broken the pact – more are expected to follow.
“Companies are moving in,” says Calpanchay. “I am worried for the future of my grandsons.”
