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Even better? After I ate some llama, a local delicacy that tastes like gamy beef, I napped hard for an hour. The sky overhead was mythically blue and I dropped to my knees, running my finger across the flats to taste the salt. There was nobody—and I mean nobody—around for miles. Juan saw me and smiled as if to say: Just wait.
Government of the Province of Buenos Aires. For example, in the provinces of San Juan and Mendoza, local laws forbid pharmacies from selling Misoprostol. Swedish 2. None of the healthcare providers on duty over the weekend would help Graciela. Yes No Unsure. Perfil in Spanish. Estudio de caso en un barrio de la ciudad de Tandil, Argentina.
Man, I thought, this country has everything. Local politicians often campaign on a promise to finally pave it.
Hours turned to days—with stops at local inns—and it was sometimes hard to keep up with the fauna. We passed through a Dr. Seuss—like forest composed of cactus plants that stretched 25 feet into the air. Farther down the line, the forest gave way to a stretch of canyons known as Quebrada de las Conchas. Juan, a surprisingly good amateur photographer, presented himself as the strong and silent type.
When we pulled off the road so I could go to the bathroom, he apparently called in to a local radio station and asked them to broadcast my name, warning listeners that there was a wild American on the loose. When we heard the announcement on air a few minutes later, he laughed so hard he nearly had to pull off the road. On my fourth day we were scheduled to visit the Caves of Acsibi. Without them, Samsung would be unimaginable.
Goodenough — the fathers who collaborated in different moments and laboratories for this energy storage creature to exist — won the Nobel prize for chemistry. Many things are said about lithium: The future white gold, the starlet mineral of the next 50 years, the oil of the 21st century, the mineral that will redeem over two centuries of fossil fuels once they exhaust.
The truth is that, from the beginning of the century, the lithium carbonate value per ton increased tenfold, to USD 16, in from USD 1, in Nowadays, the countries competing for the primary resource are in the north of the planet: China, South Korea, the United States, Germany and Japan. But it is the Asian countries — mainly China — that produce the greatest added value: They import or extract the raw material, manufacture industrial and technological goods with it for domestic consumption and also for exports, even to the United States and Europe.
They are winning the innovation race: the energy transition is based in Shanghai. The sun was beginning to clear the hills of the Jujuyan Puna. As usual, she rode 35 kilometers of gravel road up to the shopping stand located on the side of National Route 52, near Salinas Grandes. This time, she continued to the Guayatayoc Lagoon, North of the salt flats. Along with her, people arrived from all local Kolla indigenous communities that were alerted: The lagoon was being dug to find out if lithium could be extracted. The white gold mystery had been talked about in the area for almost 20 years.
Now, it was materializing in trucks and drills. When the workers of the Ekeko mining company saw the crowd approaching, they dropped their tools. The demand was non-negotiable: "No to lithium. We camped out on the site and gave them seven days to leave. The Salinas Grandes working group — where the leaders met monthly — was broadened with the residents and community members of the 33 communities that live in the area and became the Permanent Assembly of the Salinas Grandes Basin — Guayatayoc Lagoon.
Its members decided to stay until the workers left, by which time they had already dug three wells in the lagoon. After several days of camping and protests, Ekeko — owned by Daniel Galli and Carlos Sorentino — withdrew its workforce from the place.
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The Ekeko is a mythical figure of the Andean culture, linked to abundance, fertility and joy. The contractor took his name to be the outpost of another mining company, the Canadian AIS Resources, which intended to begin mining lithium in the lagoon. She sells small wool ekekos, which evoke the god of fertility and are far from being associated with the mining contractor. She never takes off her sunglasses. She wears a hat and a red polar fleece. Here, in this white desert, cut by grooves at a height of 4, meters, a cold sun relentlessly chaps skin and eyes.
Together with Bolivia and Chile, Argentina is part of the lithium triangle, where — according to the U. In Argentina, the Salta, Jujuy and Catamarca provinces share the distribution of the resource in brine. The first project in the country began in Catamarca in with the U. The second is Sales de Jujuy, which has been extracting lithium carbonate from the Olaroz salt flat — 50 km from Salinas Grandes — since , thanks largely to the investment of Australian company Orocobre and Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. In 40 years, the company expects to produce 6. It already produces 17, annually and hopes to reach 25, In addition, they estimate they extract Another seven are advanced, in the pre-feasibility stage.
And there are over 50 initiatives: In total, they cover 8, km2 of the country's salt flats, almost 43 times the surface of the City of Buenos Aires. In the sea of millions, the immensity of the Salinas Grandes — Guayatayoc Lagoon basin awakens the appetite of the world's mining companies. Alicia Chalabe was working on environmental conflicts in the town of Abra Pampa in Jujuy when, in , the Santuario de Tres Pozos community contacted her for advice to face a foreign company that wanted to enter and explore their territory.
Since then, she has become the communities' lawyer. In the case of Salinas Grandes — Guayatayoc Lagoon, the Jujuy Secretary for Mining "approved the feasibility of the project despite the fact that Ekeko did not have the authorization of the three communities; only Rinconadillas had granted it. In fact, they divided the mining territory, which is not allowed by the mining code or the Supreme Court of Justice. Both are clear, no partial studies can be done," Chalabe explains. JEMSE was created in by the government of Jujuy in order to take part in the different processes of the mining industry.
It operates in four areas: mining, where the lines of possible production are studied; hydrocarbons; renewable energy; and everything related to adding value to primary mining production. On February 24 last year, weeks after expelling Ekeko workers, people from all communities blocked and camped for three days on National Route 52 at Saladillo to make their claim broader. They declared Salinas Grandes and the Guayatayoc Lagoon as "ancestral cultural and natural heritage of the native peoples.
From that moment on, they installed gates to control access to a km2 territory and organized a communication network among communities, each made up of between to people. We have been working from generation to generation. Our ancestors have lived and worked here.
We have the right to defend our territory and make the government respect each community's position on natural resources. On Wednesday, March 28, , at a. She was the second speaker; earlier, Liborio Flores had talked about the damage caused by companies exploring without consent in his territory, in Salta and Jujuy.
Behind Chalabe, over 60 indigenous people from Salta and Jujuy who had travelled nearly 1, km to witness the second time that a lawsuit by the native peoples reached the Supreme Court were listening intently. Twenty days earlier, the Qom cacique Felix Diaz had made history by claiming the ancestral lands of the Potae Napocna Navogoh community in the Formosa province. The lawyer, wearing a green jacket and earrings shaped as the Punan sun, placed the microphone and for half an hour defended the indigenous claim: The government and the mining companies had to comply with the right to free, prior and informed consent.
For her and the communities, the demand was clear, but not for the judges. Communities are asking for respect for the right to free, prior and informed consent detailed in Convention of the International Labor Organization ILO , which Argentina ratified in , Alicia explained. The process must be conducted by the State and not by the companies, they must consult the representatives chosen by the people and consider the cultural adaptation of the consultation, she clarified. What do you expect from the Court? From the sentence? The completion of the consultation according to the international standards and within the framework of human rights, Alicia clarified once again.
And this isn't even a claim for declaratory judgment. It's all very hypothetical, but I don't see a case. Nine months after the discussion on the 4th floor of the Courts, signed by the same four justices, the Court rejected the protection action, declared its incompetence and returned the case to provincial courts.
But the communities gained visibility and, for a few years, the companies stopped pressing on Salinas Grandes. Meanwhile, in Olaroz, the companies tried to get the communities to approve the lithium projects any way they could, but the 33 communities took advantage of the experience before the Court to draw up a consultation protocol. At the end of , the first community biocultural protocol of Argentina was completed.
It was named Kachi Yupi, which means 'salt footprints' in Quechua. They thought about it before dialoguing with the legal world and defending a territory-based worldview. At that time, Gerardo Morales took office as governor of Jujuy. He took note of the protocol and promised that he would recognize it through a decree.
Four years later, the commitment is still on the to-do list.
Moreover, the State did not guarantee the free, prior and informed consultation in accordance with international standards and continued the bidding processes carried out by JEMSE, while the mining companies entered the territories ignoring the voice of those who opposed them. Based on this new escalation, the communities of Salinas Grandes once again presented themselves before the Supreme Court, this time through an environmental protection action. Two tourists take turns taking pictures. One moves away towards the horizon line and the other stretches out his hand to create an optical illusion, so it looks like he is holding his traveling companion in miniature.
Others simply walk.