Presentation short abstract

In the paper, I argue that colonial continuities in Chile are reproduced in Green Capitalism. Material concessions by hegemonic forces result in the division of communities along racialized and class lines, thus stabilizing extractivist structures, shaping subjectivities and struggles in Atacama.

Presentation long abstract

The Salar de Atacama has - not yet - been officially declared a sacrifice zone, but instead an ‘empty space’. It is precisely there that the green costs of global capitalism are internalized and distributed unevenly among society and Nature. Lithium, the ‘white gold’, is extracted from the supposed emptiness of the Salar and exported to the world market. Colonial continuities persist in green extractivism. But unlike after the invasion of the Conquista and even 500 years later in societies of the Global South, the dominant discourses of ‘development’, ‘progress’, and ‘prosperity’ are not just empty words in the Salar today. The ruling forces make state-orchestrated concessions to local communities, which in part participate in the ‘model Chile’ for the first time and qua raza. As a result, lines of conflict are shifting, both between and within communities, where power relations and societal relations with nature are changing. In this light, I reveal the dark side of ‘green’ lithium extractivism in Chile. Based on field research, I detect the emergence of a fragmented lithium consensus that is anchored in the "extractivist common sense" (Gramsci, Gudynas). To explain it, I first outline the historically developed structures. Secondly, I highlight the mechanisms of the “integral state” (Gramsci, Poulantzas) that reproduce the extractivist model under a green guise. Thirdly, I show to what extent strategies affect the subjectivities and modes of living in the Salar, so that subaltern struggles and capitalist contradictions are dealt with in the interests of the glocal ruling forces.