The Atacama is the highest and driest desert in the world with some areas believed never to have received rainfall in recorded history. Occupied by the indigenous Lickan Antay people for at least 10,000 years it’s unique environment is also a center for major scientific research on our planet and universe. The volcanoes in the region are some of the most active in the world many revered by the Lickan Antay. In 2022 I made my first trip to the Atacama as part of a month long artist residency staying in the small indigenous settlement (Ayllu) of Coyo. It is not hard to be in such an extreme environment and wonder how life persists at the edge of what is humanly possible. Water is a constant theme as is of course existence because without one you cannot have the other. The Lickan Antay people are acutely aware of this. The saltpeter mines (nitrate) now abandoned were mined to fuel agricultural production in the west in the early 1900’s and a one point counted for over half of Chile’s revenue. The market collapsed when the Germans invented synthetic nitrate. Now the Atacama is at the center of another industrial revolution namely the production of electric vehicles and energy storage in batteries. Chile owns 36% of the world’s lithium reserves in the Atacama and the production of it requires huge amounts of water, the region’s most scarce resource. The landscape could change dramatically as could a way of life.
The Atacama feels on the edge of something and maybe perhaps it’s always been that way. People here have always made their living off the land and still do. The land gives life and the land can take it away here. It’s ecology is unique and sensitive, much of it just beginning to be understood. ‘Infrastructure’ will be built and has been already to facilitate the lithium boom and global demand. It will put pressure on the land and the wildlife. It will demand change of it’s people. It remains to be seen what if any benefits this new technology will bring to this fragile existence which has persisted through the limits naturally inherent in life here.