Paper short abstract:

Drawing on recent ethnography, I aim to analyse narratives around lithium extraction and development in Chile. I explore how these narratives connect rural with urban development by imagining the desert as an empty space only useful as a commodity zone, and its impacts on indigenous communities.

Paper long abstract:

In the context of the energy transition, lithium has been framed as a key mineral due to its key role in the ion-lithium batteries of computers, mobiles, and electric cars. Drawing on a 12-month ethnography carried out in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the paper looks at the hegemonic narratives around development in the context of lithium extraction in the Atacama salt flat. I will analyse how the interconnected dynamics of rural and urban development associated with lithium extraction express the contradictions of a persistent urban-oriented neocolonial narrative and its implications.

The Atacama Desert plays a key role in highlighting neocolonial views of the rural as empty space (Bridge, 2001), a narrative that legitimizes the destruction of certain ecosystems to bring "modernity" to urban places. Equally, as capitalism expands and national development remains tied to ideas of urban progress and modernity, paid work constitutes the only option for indigenous and rural communities to access formal system education, healthcare services, and technology. In this regard, lithium extraction appeared as a possibility for Lican Antai people to work closer to their ancestral lands, revitalizing increasingly abandoned villages. Nevertheless, they also acknowledge the temporality of mining companies and raise concerns about what will happen when "they leave the hole". While struggling to find labour opportunities, indigenous people are caught up in a dilemma: if lithium extraction ends, the villages "will die" as they will go to find job opportunities elsewhere, but if it remains, their ancestral ecosystems will be forever damaged.