Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet
ALONG THE OLAROZ-CAUCHARI SALT FLATS, ARGENTINA — In the thin air of the salt flats here, nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, the indigenous Atacamas people face a constant struggle.
They herd llamas and goats on arid land, knit Andean hats for extra money and chew coca leaves to fight off the altitude’s dizzying effects. They live in mud-brick homes with roofs made of sheets of corrugated metal weighed down with rocks against the stiff winds.
Yet beneath their ancestral land lies a modern-day Silicon Valley treasure: lithium.
The silvery-white metal is essential for the lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles, and the popularity of these products has prompted a land rush here. Mining companies have for years been extracting billions of dollars of lithium from the Atacama region in Chile, and now firms are flocking to the neighboring Atacama lands in Argentina to hunt for the mineral known as “white gold.”
But the impoverished Atacamas have seen little of the riches.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/tossed-aside-in-the-lithium-rush/?wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-economy%252Bnation
