The Puna is a high-altitude depression in northwestern Argentina, nestled in the central Andes. Spanning the provinces of Catamarca, Salta and Jujuy, its landscape looks like a postcard from Mars. The ancient water that lies under its salt flats contains a treasure that could change the world – that gold of the twenty-first century, lithium, essential for the rechargeable batteries of smartphones and electric vehicles.

The Puna, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and the Bolivian Altiplano make up what is known as the “lithium triangle,” which contains 65 percent of the world’s known reserves. In July 2022, Argentina had approved thirty-eight lithium extraction projects, though only two were in operation: one in the Olaroz salt flat, Jujuy province, and the other in Catamarca’s Hombre Muerto salt flat. Two years later, five companies were actively extracting and exporting lithium. In April 2024, President Javier Milei posed for a photo with Elon Musk, both giving thumbs up from Tesla’s giant factory in Austin, Texas, where Milei assured Musk that there would be no government obstacles to future extraction of this strategic mineral.

To find out more about the Puna’s lithium boom, I traveled there in late 2023 and early 2024, crossing deserts, salt flats, and mountains. I rode in buses, trucks transporting locals, and rental cars in dubious condition. Once I climbed to 13,000 feet elevation in a Fiat 500. In places where public transportation was not available, I hitchhiked.

For years, the Puna was a place out of time, a repository of enchantments and religious syncretism. The Incas considered it a sacred space and traveled there from Cusco, Peru, to pay tribute to their gods. With the arrival of the Spaniards, it was labeled terra incognita, a place few dared to visit. Nineteenth-century scientists and adventure-seekers opened roads to admire its inhospitable landscapes, and over the years, tourism turned the Puna into a downloadable image for computer backgrounds, in which the local people are nothing more than a picturesque detail. Now, for the last decade, mining companies from China, Australia, the United States, Korea, and Japan have descended on and fought over the territory as if invading another planet, disregarding the fact that people have lived here for centuries.

In 2018, Argentine journalist Ernesto Picco traveled to the Hombre Muerto salt flat.

“I started to travel on weekends,” says Picco in a bar in the Microcentro of Buenos Aires, “first to Catamarca, then to the other provinces. I discovered that in each province the situation between the companies, the state, and native communities was different.” Since a 1994 constitutional reform, Picco tells me, each province has its own legislation for the exploitation of natural resources.

One of the first attempts at lithium extraction took place in the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia when, in 1985, Bolivian President Victor Paz Estenssoro signed a contract with a Minnesota company called Lithium Corporation of America (Lithco), which had been studying possible uses of lithium since the development of the atomic bomb. In the contract, Paz Estenssoro had practically handed the salt flats over to foreign hands, sparking such civil unrest that the president had no choice but to quickly backtrack, and Lithco was forced to try their luck elsewhere.

There were fewer restrictions in Argentina. Unlike Chile and Bolivia, Argentina has long offered a so-called “legal mining triad”; in addition to the 1994 constitutional reform and measures to encourage foreign investment, a 1997 amendment to the mining code gives additional rights to companies, including the possibility of granting them perpetual ownership.

On one of his trips, in the shadow of 20,000-foot-elevation Catamarca peaks, Picco met Alfredo Morales, a chief from the indigenous community of Antofagasta de la Sierra. Morales told Picco that foreigners had been exploring the area for years. Some were scientists looking for formations called stromatolites, whose molecular structure might be a key to the origin of life in the universe. Others wanted to compare the similarities between the Catamarcan Puna and images taken on Mars. It was in mid-2012 that Lithco arrived to exploit lithium in the Hombre Muerto salt flat.

After a short time, Antofagasta de la Sierra began to have problems. The jobs promised by the company barely materialized: of the 289 people hired, only 29 were from the area. Then people began noticing water shortages. There were discussions about whether or not the company should pay a fee to the province for the use of the water. Five years later, a gas pipeline was opened to connect the Hombre Muerto salt flat with the Pocitos salt flat in Salta, ninety miles away, supplying over 3 million cubic feet of gas per day for industrial activities, even as locals continued to use gas cylinders. So Morales and other locals demanded participation in decisions related to the use of their land and its resources.

In 2022, Picco’s book Crónicas del litio was published. A blend of travelogue and data survey, the book quickly became a key text on the region. Picco is careful not to reveal his position on the economic potential of lithium, though his eye is always on the claims of the communities and the consequences that extraction has had, and continues to have, on the environment.

“Were you allowed into the mines?”

“Of course not. I went in unannounced with a pickup truck and they kicked me out. What you see inside is like science fiction. These sites are cities in the middle of the desert. I returned to Hombre Muerto to make a documentary and we still couldn’t get in, even though the film crew were foreigners. There is too much secrecy.”

A few yards from the historic center of Salta, Ricardo Alonso sits next to a large window. He is a portly, bald man. This seems to be his second office – the café of the oldest and most popular hotel in the city. Alonso is a local celebrity: people greet him from the sidewalk, a well-known journalist approaches to talk to him, a congressman shakes his hand and asks him if he is in good health.

A former congressman and Minister of Mining for the province, Alonso is also a geologist and professor emeritus of the National University of Salta, where he still teaches three classes. He has published sixty-five books on geological topics, and still writes a weekly column in the newspaper El Tribuno. He has been working in the area since 1979 and was among the first to explore lithium in the region.

“There are many factors that allow lithium to appear, and they are related to the movement of plate tectonics, the arid climate, the salty waters under the mountains, and the intense volcanic activity in the area,” says Alonso. “Argentina has other salt flats, but there is not as much lithium in them.”

Lithium was discovered in 1817 by Swedich chemist Johan August Arfwedson, who named it after the Greek lithos, meaning “rock.” The interesting thing about lithium, says Alonso, is that it is a metal, like gold or silver, but it is not heavy. It can float on gasoline and is so soft it can be cut with a knife. “Lithium is one of the first chemical elements to form in the process of stellar nucleosynthesis,” he says, as if in awe. “It is considered to be one of the three elements that formed during the big bang.”

Alonso’s cell phone rings: his son. He excuses himself to answer.

In the last twenty years the smartphone has revolutionized our domestic life. It has changed not only the way we communicate at a distance, but also the way we listen to music, watch movies, pay taxes, create content, and read news. Alonso places his phone back on the table. Inside is a battery containing just under two grams of lithium.

Near Salinas Grandes in the province of Jujuy, there is an abandoned bus stop that looms against an imposing landscape. It is graffitied with: “LITHIUM TODAY, HUNGER TOMORROW.” To its left is the entrance to the salt flat, one of the most visited tourist attractions in Argentina. While different companies – Ganfeng from China, Lithium Americas from Canada – explore the nearby salt flats, Salinas Grandes remains open to visitors. Cars, 4×4s, and vans of tourists from different parts of the world come to take ninety-minute tours, snap pictures, and learn about the traditional way of harvesting salt, before returning to the nearest town.

Near the entrance gate are parking lots covered by thatched roofs, salt benches nestled into the ground, and a few shops selling handicrafts. A man with a traditional hat, his cheek bulging with the coca leaves, directs traffic. He points us to a small house with a low roof, where we meet those in charge of the salt flat tour, who come from the indigenous community of San Miguel de los Colorados in Tumbaya. About eighty families live there, the adults working as artisans or as tour guides employed by the municipal government.

Omar is one of the guides. The four-o’clock sun beams off the white salt. His hands are callused from pick and shovel work. He says that in summer, the rainy season, a thin layer of water on four thousand square miles of salt reflects the celestial vault, creating an illusion of continuity, as if there were no separation between heaven and earth. In autumn, Omar tells me, the ancient salt-makers dried salt loaves in the sun, which they then used to trade between communities.

In 2010, thirty-three communities in Jujuy officially reported the presence of strangers who had been drilling without prior notice near Santa Ana de la Puna. Soon after, a group of foreign men asked to speak with representatives of the Salinas Grandes mining cooperative, intending to buy land in the salt flat. The locals discovered these men had appeared in other communities. They formally filed a complaint with the government, but received no response. It was only through the internet that they discovered that their land – the land of their ancestors – was being sold to foreign companies without their permission. They were being denied the right to live on their own territory.

Journalist Analía Brizuela prefers to chat in Salta’s central square, on a bench in front of the archaeology museum. “The impact of mining is not only environmental; it is first and foremost social,” she says. “But even so, many people support it.” In 2023 it was reported that seven out of ten salteños believe that mining is a positive activity for the area’s industrial and economic development. Having covered the subject for five years, Brizuela is among the minority who believe the opposite.

“You can tell things have changed because the town has filled with people from China and Korea. They rent offices in the downtown neighborhoods. Look,” she points across the street, “there are two offices. Near the Güemes monument there are two more. Some are exclusively Chinese, and others have a mix of Chinese, Canadian, and Korean employees.”

Lithium Americas, from Canada, is in the Pastos Grandes salt flat; in the Rincón salt flat the English Rio Tinto Group is working; in the Pozuelos salt flat, the Chinese Ganfeng operates, while in Sal de los Ángeles, Chinese companies Revotech Asia Limited and Tibet Summit Resources also extract potassium. Other companies are likely to start operations within the next three years. And oversight, according to Brizuela, is very low: they open their offices in the center of Salta, hire a geologist and mining technicians, explore the area, and determine where the lithium is. Mining companies, she adds, are taxed barely 3 percent.

“How much approval is there from the local communities?” I ask.

“It depends. In Salta many people believe mining supports the local economy, that it brings work, not only to the miners but also the catering services.” According to Brizuela, this creates economic disparity within the community. Lithium’s influence extends to the food miners consume, the housing for foreign consultants, and the hotels for businessmen.

The situation in the neighboring province of Jujuy is different. On June 22, 2023, the thirty-three Puna communities peacefully demonstrated in the city of San Salvador against changes made to the provincial constitution. Two key articles regarding the access of indigenous communities to their own land had been modified. The communities had never had property titles; they inhabit their land in the same way their ancestors have for hundreds of years. This constitutional change made it easier for companies to buy this land from the state and evict the communities. The demonstration was violently repressed by the police.

Driving from Salta to Tolar Grande community takes one 225 miles into the central Andes. There’s bus service to Tolar Grande, the last town before the Arizaro and Llullaillaco salt flats, where more than seven mining projects have sprung up in the last four years. Google Maps estimates the trip to be about seven and a half hours. No, says the driver, it will take nine or ten, sometimes twelve.

The bus warms up its engines and people climb aboard. One man says he hopes to get work at the mines in the Arizaro salt flat. Another, Antolino, takes the next-to-last seat, against the window. Thirty years old, with short hair and an easy smile, he lives a few miles from San Antonio de los Cobres, one of the stops between Salta and Tolar Grande. There, the road becomes gravel. Antolino says he lives up on the hill. He manages a small museum dedicated to the Kolla culture, where he takes tourists to learn how the first inhabitants lived. “It was my grandparents’ house. They lived there, they did everything there. They had their looms and llamas. The house is made of adobe with a thatched roof.”

He takes out a phone and shows me pictures of the house: dirt floor, mud walls, pots made of clay. The bus leaves Salta. Through the window we see tobacco fields, a river. The mountains are covered by dense vegetation until, after a bend in the road, the first cacti appear, surrounded by rocks of different colors.

“My grandparents used to travel by mule, from one town to another.”

 “Have you always lived in San Antonio de los Cobres?”

“No, there was a time when I worked in Antofagasta de la Sierra. With boron.”

“In the mines?”

“Yes, I worked there for many years.”

When Antolino heard that the mining companies were looking for workers, he packed a small backpack, left his son, and traveled by pickup with other villagers to a mining company in the Hombre Muerto salt flat. He lived there, in that white, burning desert, in small wooden rooms with other men, pumping brine into large pools to dry in the sun. The work was hard but the pay was not bad – better than going down to Salta, where good jobs were scarce – though the work, from sunup to sundown, was exhausting. When he had a day off, he would return to San Antonio de los Cobres to be with his grandparents and son.

One day he returned home and decided never to set foot on a salt flat again. He gives walking tours now. “Tourists come, I pick them up at the square. I show them my grandparents’ house. I have some llamas in the corral.”

And would he ever go back to work in a mine? His answer is a resounding no.

Tolar Grande is only five blocks long and five blocks wide. Flavio Quipildor’s house is on the north side of town, where he lives with his wife and two children. Above a television is a shelf with several soccer trophies from a local biannual tournament. Quipildor, age thirty-six, is sitting on a sofa. Until four years ago he was the cacique of the Kolla community in Tolar Grande. An early proponent of sustainable tourism, and a mountain guide who completed several ascents of the Llullaillaco volcano, the seventh highest mountain in South America, he now works in a mine in the Llullaillaco salt flat.

I ask him if he likes working there. He tells me there is more money for him and his family, and the benefits are not bad. I ask him if there is any resistance to the mining companies from the communities. He tells me flatly, “No.”

A month before, in Jujuy, I had talked to Jorge Tupac Sairi, an activist who organizes local action teams with various indigenous groups. He invited me to an assembly in the northern town of Abra Pampa, on the border with Bolivia. Groups from different parts of the province were discussing problems caused by the lithium mining boom and the deregulation of mining activity. The latent fear, Tupac Sairi told me, was of losing control over land and water quality.

“We are in contact with all the communities,” Tupac Sairi told me after the assembly closed, “and we have proof that the mining companies are polluting.” And there are other adverse effects. “In Catamarca, for example, an entire river has dried up. The Trapiche River has no more water. And that is a huge problem for us and our economy, which depends on water.” After the brine is pumped from the salt flat, it is poured into huge pools and rests in the sun. Once the water has evaporated, the lithium is separated from other chemical components like magnesium and sodium. Pumping such quantities of water to the surface lowers the fresh water table. Around half a million gallons of water is lost to evaporation for every ton of lithium produced.

On March 13, 2024, after a series of complaints about the contamination of the Los Patos River and the disappearance of the Trapiche River in the Hombre Muerto salt flat, the provincial court of Catamarca ruled in favor of the province’s indigenous communities. The ruling set a precedent for mining activity and requires companies to obtain further permissions before moving forward with their lithium projects.

When I ask Quipildor, the indigenous miner in Tolar Grande, what he thinks about the protests and the ruling he says, “Everyone can do as they please. Not everyone chooses to work in the mines. And that’s fine.”

This time, our truck is a lead-gray 2018 Hilux with 180,000 miles on it. We’re heading toward the Arizaro salt flat, forty-five miles from Tolar Grande, where the enigmatic Cono de Arita is located – a black formation of lava and salt, 650 feet high, surrounded by a huge, prehistoric, white basin. The driver is Luciano Petri, a chemical engineer who has worked for several mining companies. He had told me I had to go to Arizaro if I wanted to see how the mining companies operated. Two English-speaking Canadian investors have hired Petri to take them there. They do not have permits to enter the mines, but it does not matter; they want to see the place and make a report for a company whose name they cannot reveal.

Petri doesn’t sound like a conventional engineer. He talks about how lithium is separated from magnesium and in the same breath quotes the playwright José Sbarra. He says he is not a chemist, but an alchemist. He asks if I know the philosopher Rodolfo Kusch. “He has a very nice phrase: ‘The landscape subverts the sense of being.’” Kusch spoke of culture as an act, and said it was necessary to think of a community as linked to the soil it inhabits. The life of an inhabitant cannot be dissociated from the place where he lives.

“Many local people love the mines.”

“Does that surprise you?” asks Petri.

“Is it possible to have well-managed mining?”

“Technical knowledge has to be paired with the landscape and holistic knowledge. Because if you read a report on paper, it is fine, it has no gaps, and if it does, it is studied, rethought, and corrected. Carrying out a project is an act of communication. The human being acts as an intermediary. Engineering is considered an economic necessity, but it is a human need.”

The Arizaro salt flat – 600 square miles at 10,000 feet above sea level – stretches like a white stain up to mountains that look like a stone curtain. Its name in Kunza, an extinct indigenous language, means “the place where the condor dwells.” Petri drives at full speed, gravel kicking up against the chassis. The Canadians take pictures. The road climbs. The salt flat below reveals its corrupted splendor.

“There, do you see them?”

We make out several buildings surrounded by long evaporation pools, blue spots that reflect the sky. There, the lithium is extracted from the brine and packaged to be transported in trucks through the Socompa Pass which leads to Chile.

Several companies operate on the Arizaro salt flat: Lithium Chile has a concession of thirty-three square miles; Grosso Group is working there too, as are Grupo Hanaq and the French-based Eramet. The Canadians ask Petri to stop. He parks the truck. It’s four o’clock and the sun is blazing. The Canadians pose and take a selfie. Petri looks down into the pools of one of the mines.

“They say they are even setting up a private airport.”

“How many people live here?”

“Around one to three thousand,” says Petri. “At night you see it better. The nights here are unfathomable, the deepest and most beautiful nights I’ve ever seen. The mountains go dark and the stars shine as in an inverted city. The intensity of the night stars in the Puna is scarcely rivaled anywhere else in the world. And we took it for granted.”

The Canadians pocket their phones and look toward the mines. The wind hits their faces, their skin slathered in sunscreen.

“Now at night, it’s all lit up like a city,” says Petri. “And, for a moment, you think that what you see is the future. But that is a lie.”

A longer version of this article was published in Spanish by Gatopardo in August 2024. English version published by permission. Translated from the Spanish by Coretta Thomson.