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Daniela Soto-Hernández, "Lithium Extraction in Chile: Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions" (Routledge, 2025)
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welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Elliot, a sessional lecturer from Melbourne in Australia, recording on the lands of the Bunurong people whose sovereignty was never ceded, and I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Daniela Soto Hernandez to the show. Dr. Soto Hernandez is a social anthropologist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sussex. Welcome. Daniella thank you so much, Eliot.
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B
Delighted to be here.
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A
Thank you very much for joining us. And we're very lucky to have Daniela on the air to hear about her most recent book, Lithium Extraction in Chile, Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions, published with Routlich. Using ethnographic methods and intensive field work in Chile, specifically in and around the Atacama Desert, Daniela's book takes a relational view on lithium mining in the region. Chile is the largest and oldest producer of lithium in South America and the second largest in the world, accounting for nearly 32% of the global supply in 2022. And Daniela's book, Lithium Extraction in Chile is a crucial and new way of seeking to understand not only lithium, but the worlds that are created around the resource, inclusive of sacred indigenous relations, the ubiquitous role of water, the discursive and practical dimensions of lithium production, and the social tensions manifest throughout These processes. Now, before we dive into the analysis within your book, Taniela, could you please tell us more about how you came to study lithium in Chile in terms of what sparked your interest and what are the dominant debates framing lithium extraction in the country?
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B
Thank you, Ellip. Yeah, so it was really a combination of interests and experiences I had as a Chilean. So on the one hand, I've been interested in the mining industry in Chile since 2010, and I worked with a group of people trying to understand what we call strategic industries in Chile. And then also I've been quite interested in environmental issues in general, but climate change in particular and how that affected the global south. And also trying to understand the deep root of those issues and how to address them. Like what types of development could really help us to move away from the threats we're self creating. But also I've been to the region, to Antofagasta region, many times for personal trips, like tourism, visiting friends. I also worked and study their mining, migration, education, like also different elements, not only mining, which I think helped me to understand how interconnected different elements were. And finally, also I've been studying and working with indigenous peoples across Chile. I worked in a center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at the Catholic University in chile more than 10 years ago. And it also helped me to have a better understanding of how complex that relationship has been over time and how internal colonialism has deeply shaped the way Chileans perceive indigenous peoples. But of course the relationship with the state. Um, so I think all those interests and experiences came together in my, in my doctoral research. And it kind of felt natural to, to wanting to understand how the new processes that we were seeing, lithium extraction and, and the notion of critical minerals were playing roles and being narrated in a way that seemed that they were kind of saving the next, were kind of savers and key part of the next extractive wave in Chile.
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A
That's really fascinating and obviously bringing a lot of interests and a really diverse background to this critical question. And maybe let's go into how you understand this problem in some detail, because at the start of your book you put forward what you call a fragmentation interconnection device to further understand the approaches of energy transformation, which was informed by your fieldwork. Could you tell us a bit more about your approach about conceptualizing this here and how this fragmentation interconnection device or framing helps understand energy transition?
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B
Sure. So the fragmentation interconnection device was my way to frame what I've seen more broadly in debates about sustainability and really how to address complex social issues. So the contrast between technocratic managerial approaches, which for me and in the book are related to the notion of fragmentation and alternative ways or versus alternative ways of framing problems in a more complex and systemic way, really pushed this device forward because I saw that not only when analyzing climate change, but also we could think about when we analyze the biomedicine approach or inequality, migration and so on. The focus on specific problems and then a set of 1, 2, 3 actions was really reducing the complexity of the problems. And rather I was very interested in highlighting what indigenous peoples and first nations have been long, long saying that problems are interconnected and that humans and non humans are inextricably connected to the web of life of Mother Earth in multiple chains of exchange. And so that everything one do, one does or people do has an effect in someone else or in something else later or sooner. And so there is a strong knowledge and experience passed over, we know, centuries, in the case of indigenous peoples and thousands of years that they know by firsthand experience. How important is to frame interconnection in a way that really orients your practice and how you think about problems and of course, then how you solve them. So the rational and fragmented perspective is simply not even close to be able to deal with the complexity of the issues we now face in social terms, economic terms, political terms. We're seeing a terrible situation in a geopolitical arena and. Yeah, so we really need to develop new ways of framing and dealing with the problems.
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A
Yeah, excellent. I mean, this really speaks a lot to me too, and I think also is related to a bit of a relational way of understanding the world too, which I think we'll touch on a little bit later as well. And going a little bit into your book now to the second chapter, Daniello, you look at the Atacama Desert in Chile and you know how it's being produced as what you call a desolate scape. Could you tell us more about this and how it also relates to processes of global capitalism and coloniality?
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B
Yes, of course. So, yeah, they're central to how this space has been framed. And, well, the Atacama Desert is smaller than the Australian one, but then it's been said to be the driest desert on Earth. And of course, in Chile and elsewhere, particularly when people haven't lived in a desert, we hear the word desert and we imagine empty spaces, desolated areas. And usually it's also the misconception that those are ugly places and hostile places to inhabit. There's quite a forest centric notion around the landscape and what makes habitable or an inhabitable place those places. So for me it was fascinating to go over the historical way in which this misconception was built in the case of Chile. As a Chilean, I'm also very used to hearing that there's nothing in the Atacama Desert but minerals. And of course you see how this misconception helps to enable extractivism and destruction to take place. Arguing that because nothing else is affected or there is nothing you can pollute, you can extract, you can damage the socio environmental area, you can just leave waste and so on. And this conception is quite, in Chile is quite tightened to the development of the self letter industry. So also capitalism and rising in the 1930s century with people and operations that would install in places that were actually uninhabitable. Like people in the desert wouldn't go to live in areas where there was no water, of course, because therefore you cannot grow, you can't grow anything. But then for foreigners to the desert, this was the.
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The.
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It started to be the common sense that the deserts were hostile. And then, and then the, the industries and the companies, also usually foreign, that, that started to build the sal. The salpeter industry had to put together the operations and the. The mining villages for people to live there. And they brought water from. From very distant places. They had to build railways, you know, like all the infrastructure. But because they were placed in these areas, they, they wouldn't realize how rich the desert was in a broader sense. And where the water actually was, there were places inhabited, but by people over thousands of years. And you actually go in the Atacama Desert we have a phenomenon called the Flower Desert. So in times of the year you see the area covered in flowers, in colors. So it's actually a bit weird, I would say, to think that there's nothing in the desert. And then importantly for coloniality. So Chile took this region away from Bolivia in a Pacific war in the late 19th century. And it was only because they were interested in the salpitar, of course, not in the people, not in the territory. So then they paid European experts, engineers, geologists and so on to go and find minerals and what other things could be extracted from the desert. And of course foreigners that weren't used to the desert, that had no relationship with the territory, no knowledge about it as well, previous knowledge at least. They would write reports saying that the desert was horrible, hostile, that they wouldn't imagine anyone living in this empty and horrendous land. So then those narratives really built on the notion for the Chilean state that there was nothing in there but minerals, which of course interconnects processes of coloniality and capitalism. Because then apart from complex ecosystems and salt, floods and indigenous peoples, there were tons of minerals as well and sands you can use for different purposes. So then the mining industry came and took the land and made really what whatever they wanted with it, with it. They started because of the, of the nature of, of mining. And Australia suffers from this as well. They consume enormous quantities of water. They, they pollute in ways that are not really at a human scale. So we can say they pollute these places forever. And before environmental laws they wouldn't even manage those waste and pollutants. They would do whatever they want. Also the state and the regulations were far away and continue to be far away from these places. I've also worked in the mining industry and it's insane. They find water and if they don't declare it, nobody's going to see it. The state is never going to know. So they really do what they want with, with, with the areas where they work. And same as a hundred years ago. And in the case of Codelco, that's the state owned copper company, they've also and strongly appropriate indigenous people's resources. They, they, they took rivers for example, and made what, what they wanted with, with it to have water for, for themselves. So they displaced indigenous communities and polluted areas, making them uninhabitable. So you also see how this notion of a desolate scape, a place where nothing grows, where nothing, where there's no live way to live there. Right. Or living beings that's worth saving, was also a device to actually create such places. So you say well there's nothing, therefore I'm gonna make this, this place uninhabitable for anyone, human or non human. And therefore there are places where nothing grows. But out of that pollution. That was also interesting to see how, how global capitalism and coloniality transform places. They, they kind of set up a goal like there's nothing but what I'm going to extract. And then they create, they actively create those places.
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A
Yeah, and I mean you're, you're small references throughout too very reflect the Australian reality. Where I'm from. I mean this kind of language is so familiar to me and we have huge deserts which are just said to us to be totally uninhabitable. So this is really fascinating. Thank you so much, Daniela. And I guess kind of in response to that in a sense in the next chapter you discuss how through your fieldwork and experience with the Likkanuntai people, you put forward this notion of a desert scape to express the ways of living for indigenous peoples in the territories of the Atacama Desert. Could you tell us more about this notion of the desert scape and how it relates to this desolate scape?
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B
Sure, yeah. So what was fascinating for me as well was that even though I've lived in the northern part of Chile, close to the Atacama Desert, and I've worked there, I was also used to see the desert as somehow empty. I've been to places for tourism, for example, where there are villages and areas inhabited and you see green. But then it was kind of an isolated or extraordinary phenomenon within the Weiber Desert. But then when I was doing ethnography there and I was living there for a year, I had the luck of being invited to different trips across the region, the entofast region. And in those trips I was able to start seeing the desert in the way that the people that were. That taking me to those areas were seeing it. People would use, usually say that foreigners come to the desert and they see nothing, but it's because they don't pay attention, they don't look at it. And at, at the beginning that, that struck me a lot because I saw, you know, rocks and dust. But with time, I started to connect the dots and to really hear what they were saying in a. In a. In a visual way. So they. People would connect the sky, the geographies of the sky with the geographies of the land. And then they would say, every rock has a history. They listen and, you know, if you're lost, you can trace where you are based on rocks, based on the way the, the land is shaped. And, and that slowly started to change the way I also perceived the desert. And I think that helped me to translate what I was hearing over and over from Nikanantai people that the desert was definitely not empty. And that was. It was very complex, but in a subtle way that you really needed to attune yourself to be able to see it, to pay attention. So by, by looking and by, by walking the desert and by hearing people and by attending ceremonies as well, I, I started to. Or. Or I tried to put that complex understanding, but also based in thousands of years of inhabiting the desert into words. And, and I tried to challenge also what this notion of desert as empty spaces. Also I was reading indigenous perspective on the Australian deserts, for example, the Saharan and in the United States and everything. I mean, all the indigenous peoples that inhabited those Places were saying the same. This is far from empty. You really need to pay attention to what you are seeing. And there is no coincidence that we lived here for thousands of years. It's because it is a landscape that allows it, if you inhibited it with respect, with reciprocity. So there are kind of rules to inhibit it over, over a long period. So then this idea of desert scape is based first and foremostly in the notion that the landscape, that the desert scape is a familiar hole, a familiar landscape. It means again bringing interconnection to the discussion that because we're tightened to the history of the places, because we're tightened to every rock, the rivers, the mountains, the hills, the winds, it means that we cohabited Mother Earth in a way that makes us and non human beings somehow sibling. And we have to respect that balance. And I'm saying nothing new really. Indigenous peoples and first nations have been saying this for too long, for too long. But also that what we see now is, is really the expression of thousands of years of efforts from the ancestors, efforts from the, the brothers and sisters in the way or in the shape of non human beings and very importantly of more than human beings. So sacred hills, sacred volcanoes, water that's sacred more than human being to continue living in, in that territory. So we're all, and they were all making ongoing efforts year after year for thousands of years to inhabit those places in a way that felt fair for everybody. Um, so then when you understand that there are constraints and, and rules that you have to follow for everyone, human and non human and more than human, to inhabit those places, the desert becomes an abundant landscape. And so the desertscape also speaks about this abundant territory where there is enough water for everybody. If you keep yourself in human and non human needs area. Therefore mining or large scale mining is absolutely forbidden because it takes amounts of water that are impossible to sustain for any ecosystem really. So these waste of reshape or rethink say biophysical constraints, but also relationships with key to building the notion of the desert scape, which is really just giving voice of what people have been saying for. Yeah, as I was saying way too long. But also now, of course, the desert scape is not this ideal place uncorrupted, you know, by humans or non humans or that has no conflict. So another important element of the desertscape relates to the fragmented and let's say ruined histories of the desertscape that connect the desert, the desert scape with the desolate scape. It's part of their history, it's part of who they are. And of course, it's of part. Part of the challenges they have currently in modern times. So it also means that indigenous peoples, Lihananti people, have to figure it out in a way how to connect these two worlds that are connected. They don't exist in separate lands. Right. So that's also part of or of the dimensions that constitute the desert scape, this complex scenario where the desolate scape is menacing the existence of the desert scape, but also it challenges Lican and Thai people because they have been key part of the mining workforce, for example, and that cannot be avoided when thinking about the deserts. So the desert scape also brings all these contested elements about their identity and about the ways in which they inhabit and they have inhabited the desert, and really also about the future possibilities of continuing to inhabit it under the increasing challenges and threats that mining copper and lithium particularly are posing to the territory.
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A
And you mentioned before there, Daniela, the role of water, and I want to dive into that topic, metaphorically speaking, is that it appears to be of central importance in the middle of your book and also vital, as you were discussing, as a sacred concept to the Likanuntai people in the Atacama Desert. Could you tell us a little about what you call the heterogeneous assemblages of extractivism you see in water mining in the area?
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B
Yeah. So mainly put forward by environmental NGOs and some lite people, lithium mining is really a water mining because you have to extract thousands of liters of brines. And brines are just very, very salty waters with important minerals in it or in them. And those brines are evaporated, importantly to extract potassium, lithium, boron. And of course, that has an effect in the ecological equilibrium of the salt pan, the Atacama salt. So then it also affects, and this is something that has been also acknowledged by experts on salt floods, is that the delicate balance of, let's say, the inflow and the outflow of water and the balance between salty water and fresh water is critical for the balance of the salt flood as an ecosystem. So the salt flats are very complex ecosystems. Really. They encompass, you would say, different ecosystems within one. So you have areas where there's fresh water, for example, flamingos. Then you have unique species of flamencos that nest and live certain amounts of the year in the Atacama salt flood. You also have unique species that constitute a key part of this ecosystem. And yeah, so tons of new research has also shown that this delicate balance between fresh water and salt than brines or Very, very salty waters is key to maintaining the ecosystems and the humans and non humans that depend on them. Because you also have people that take llamas for example, two lagoons in the, in the Salar de Tacama to have water for example, or they used to give them salt to sheeps or llamas for their well being. So it's really when you, when you see the ecological dimension of what is actually taking out from the ground, it's actually water. So if you of course again put it in perspective and think that you are extracting all those litters that on the one hand it's a desert where, where water is let's say less abundant than in other places, so you cannot easily recharge this ecosystems, but also that brines are actually fossil waters because brine to be made, it takes thousands of years. It's not something that you would create one night to the other, which means that you are extracting something that cannot be replaced. So then if the balance is broken, it's broken forever in human timeframes. And of course it also speaks about, it directly speaks about pressing problems that Lican anti communities and non indigenous communities that also inhabit the surroundings of the Salavada Gama are experiencing, which is the lack of fresh water. And we also know that importantly the copper industry had been extracting fresh water for 20 years and that has impacted tremendously the entire balance of the basin. So by looking at brines rather than lithium, you connect the social and environmental impact that mining water is having in one of the, or the driest desert on earth. But also, and, and I would say very importantly for me, these debates were missing a key element around the notion that the, the Salar Atacama, the Atacama salt flood is a sacred being. It's a more than human entity. And that water cycles or, or Puri cycles, how they call water in Kunsa, were connecting temporalities through this material fossil waters. But also as I was saying before, that for the ecosystem to be in the condition that it is at the moment, even though it is quite affected already by these extractive industries, you can start to understand the deep impact that water mining has for a nation or people or communities that define themselves as water people because for them to inhabit the Atacama desert they have, they had to master the relationship with water. So you're in a way when you're extracting water, you're extracting their possibilities to continue to live in the Atacama destination. And the final element I would say about water mining is that water is a central element to all the life, the web of life, of course in the ecosystem. So it means that when you affect. And again this notion of interconnectedness, so when you even take brine that you could say, well, the company say nobody drinks wine, nobody uses it. But then the main problem is that it is a key part of the overall balance. The balance between brine and fresh water is key to maintaining the ecosystems and is key to maintaining the cycle of water that happen in the, in the watershed of the Salar de Atacama. Which then means that when affecting this element that for humans has no direct purpose. You are really affecting humans and most importantly non humans, which depend directly. Like you have microbes and biomes that are fundamental for the ecosystem to keep going and that in turn help to feed other species, such as the flamencos. So so basically this balance is key to sustaining the life of most importantly non humans and more than human beings. Because the Salar de Atacama is key to maintaining the balance, let's say the spiritual balance of the ecosystem, but also key to maintaining the web of light that is possible in the Salar de Dacama as an ecosystem.
- [36:37]
A
Thank you very much Daniela, for that really fascinating explanation linking so many different ties together and, and I guess moving on from that quite sensibly to the object of lithium, which is especially the title of your book. Can you tell us a bit how you understood Lithium within this relational perspective that you have adopted in your analysis?
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B
Sure. So yeah, again this notion of interconnection was key to framing the problem. And by the time I arrived, I arrived to the San Pedro Valley, that's the area where the Salar de Tacama is placed. Lithium as the topic. Well, it was COVID 19, so of course we were worried about other things. But then lithium had left the public arena, which was in Chile at least, which was mainly associated with huge corruption scandals. Start by sqm, that's one of the. The companies that exploits lithium in Chile. And it's a Chilean company and the company has found, well, many, many, many problems were found, but has found to pay poly pay politicians in their political campaigns across the political parties in Chile, which was illegal and is illegal and there were many corruption issues associating the head by then of the SQM company, Ponce de Le Rou, with the current president of Chile, the right wing government. And it was impressive that the issue of lithium was, you know, silent in, in, in the, in the debates, whereas the, the government that, that preceded it, the government of Michel Bachelet was, had been trying to put forward a strategy to exploit lithium in a private and. And public way. So trying to to what was produced. Because also the lithium industry in Chile was very, very inefficient. They were really wasting water and not investing in technologies to diminish the environmental impact that water mining has. But in contrast, here in Europe, lithium and what's called lithium triangle that encompasses salt floods in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina was all over the place. Everyone wanted to know what was happening. And people were starting to show how unjust this energy transition was in the global south and how it was affecting or continued to affect the same vulnerable populations that capitalism and fossil capitalism has already. So it was very interesting, this contrast. And actually when I started to talk to people, people in like licon anti people and non indigenous people in the territory, apart from being worried about COVID of course. But lithium wasn't an issue for them. It was like a industry that's far away. They don't know what's happening there. They've heard stuff, but they don't really care. They know they have more pressing needs and urgencies. The valley has a lot of social needs still. Like there is no fresh water in all the villages. There's not a profit waste management system in place. So you have really pressing needs. And lithium was definitely not part of the concerns, to be quite frank. And then it was interesting to find where or how lithium was actually a problem. And it was when you talk about water and about tourism, for example, particularly for non indigenous people that also live in the San Pedro Valley. So then for me it was interesting how as a researcher you come with a framing and a problem. And as an anthropologist, I'm always looking at how those problems are framed by local people and the people that I'm interacting with. So by framing lithium and the energy transition, I was getting nowhere. People like, didn't know was like, okay, isn't the energy transition electric cars? And then I. And so by sharing, you know, and traveling and talking about other things, because I was also involved in other projects that didn't relate to lithium. But then speak about the desolate scape, the desert scape, puri water, I was able to construct lithium as an object that was deeply linked to the territory and the complexities of the territory. So it was not alone, it was not lithium already produced. Right. It was rather an effort to see how lithium came to be produced as lithium and what were the pressing problems that came out when you, when you were in the territory. And it also connects with what was, we were talking about the heterogeneous assemblages of lithium in the sense that for the local people and for lithium or mining workers, and particularly for the indigenous villages that are in front of the Salar de Tacama, that are quite far from the main village, San Pedro Atacama, the problem of corruption, the problem of kind of a patronage between the lithium companies and the copper companies and the money they gave to the indigenous peoples to do, I mean, to bring fresh water so basic, to cover basic needs, but also to start businesses. And of course, like the small scale development that this enabled, in contrast with the people that were affected or that saw the strong effects that the lithium industry was already having in the Salar de Tacama and how it was now more yellow and it used to be quite white, with all signs that the ecosystem was dying as it happened with another salt flood. So they were already seeing what they saw, you know, 10 years ago in another salt flood or 10 or five years ago. And so then the relational approach really was a way to frame that in order to see lithium Also for other researchers that go there and are like, okay, here is lithium and this is what I want to research and this is what it is. Right. I think Critical Geography of Resources really helped me to put together a relational approach to make sense of how much do you need to understand before you reach lithium. So basically the book is an entire pathway or, or kind of walk me with, with other people to understand how far are you from reaching lithium if you only pay attention to lithium directly and how lithium is deeply rooted in brines. What does it mean? It's deeply rooted in the water or puri cycle. What does it mean? And in the territory as a desert. And what does it mean to really understand the effects, the social, cultural, economic, legal effects of extracting water or lithium?
- [45:25]
A
Yeah, and I think this is one of the things that I found really valuable about your book was all those like dense interconnections that, you know, you, you think you're just looking at lithium just as a separate object, but no, it's so densely interconnected with so many processes, ways of being life worlds that you really explain so wonderfully and holistically as well, which is so valuable and I guess thinking about your analysis that you've really kindly given us a really lovely overview for. My final question is what are the implications of that analysis for a broader, truly transformative energy transition? I know that's a very big question, but yeah, what are the implications there,
- [46:11]
B
do you think I think that on the one hand, for me, of course, looking at these complex topics with an interconnected perspective is crucial, in contrast with the fragmented perspective that's the hegemonic at the moment. And that means to start kind of from the beginning. And the beginning for me is how we inhabit different ontologies. And it means that the way in which social and ecological relations, relationships are built over time is deeply, deeply, deeply affected and shaped, shaped like materially shaped by the relationships that humans, non humans, and more than humans establish with each other. And from there it means that of course, there's no one energy transition, size fits all, but also that we need to pay attention to what was working before we distribute, destroyed everything or those relationships. And of course, it also means to look at, or to put in Donna Haraway's words, stay with the trouble. So these are not eating places where there's no, there was no issue before. And people, you know, are, are just because they are indigenous, they are, you know, honest and good and they, you know, share common good without issues. I think all those perceptions are very detrimental to really face the, the problems we have. So again, it's like interconnecting, let's say, ancestral practices with modern practices and human challenges and non human challenges and more than human challenges. And basically, I think that the book is trying to say that by fragmenting problems such as the energy transition or climate change, we're not going to address the roots of it. And therefore we're really risking not only to reproduce the roots, but also at this point in time, just making it worse. So we really need to take the debates on justice, decolonial debates on justice, as Carlos Darnell would remind us seriously. So it means not only procedural, distributive, inter generational dimensions and recognition and reparation, but also how can we truly commit to allow different worlds to exist? And well, the Zapatistas have been saying this for long time in indigenous Mexico, that we live in a world of many worlds and taking that seriously, I think can provide us with a transformative approach. Not, not to tackle energy transition only, but most importantly, the detrimental relationships that industrialization, global capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism and coloniality, racism have pushed and established and rather dramatically changed those structures of oppression. So I think, I mean, of course it's a, it's a very, it's a big task, but I think that and, and not only, I think it's, it's widespread in the literature, it's widespread in local communities, in indigenous peoples and first nations, is that we have to address all at once to truly transform the the world we inhabit and to truly, truly tackle climate change and the poly crisis or the multiple issues that we confront or facing currently.
- [50:37]
A
Yeah. And we certainly have a long way to go with many of them. But you know, I think, Daniela, your book is an excellent place to certainly start. And I want to say thank you very much for your, for your time and the excellent discussion as well.
- [50:51]
B
Thank you so much, Elia, for the brilliant question. Yeah. And for the interest. Yeah.
- [50:55]
A
It's wonderful to have you here. And everyone, please grab a copy of Daniela's new book, Lithium Extraction in Chile Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions, published with Routlich.
- [51:05]
B
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