Battle lines redrawn as Argentina’s lithium mines ramp up to meet electric car demand

In the vast white desert of the Salinas Grandes, Antonio Calpanchay, 45, lifts his axe and slices the ground. He has worked this land since he was 12, chopping and collecting salt, replenishing it for the seasons ahead and teaching his children to do the same.

“All of our aboriginal community works here, even the elders,” he says, sheltering his weathered face from the sun. “We always have. It is our livelihood.”

As his son watches on warily, Calpanchay points north, to a deviation from the plain’s blistering white – a heap of black stone and mud. “They started looking for lithium there in 2010,” he says. “We made them stop; it was hurting the environment and affecting the water. But now they are back and I am afraid. Everything we have could be lost.”

The Salinas Grandes is the largest salt flat in Argentina, a biodiverse ecosystem stretching 200 miles and sitting within the lithium triangle along with parts of Chile and Bolivia.

Lithium, a silvery metal known as white gold, is an essential component of mobile phone and electric car batteries; its global demand is predicted to rise more than fortyfold by 2040. But its exploitation has also fuelled a moral debate, one that pits the green energy transition against the rights of local and Indigenous peoples.

For 14 years, the 33 Atacama and Kolla Indigenous communities have banded together to halt mining operations, fearful that their water resources will be lost or contaminated and that they will be forced from their land. “Respect our territory” and “no to lithium” reads the graffiti over dozens of road signs, abandoned buildings and murals.

But now, as more than 30 global mining conglomerates encroach on the region, encouraged by the “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei, the battle lines have been redrawn. Communities are increasingly divided by offers of work and investment; one has already broken the pact – more are expected to follow.

“Companies are moving in,” says Calpanchay. “I am worried for the future of my grandsons.”

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The Indigenous people’s primary concern is water. Each tonne of lithium requires the evaporation of about 2m litres, threatening to drain the region’s wetlands and already parched rivers and lakes. Industrial-scale water pumping also risks contaminating fresh groundwater, endangering livestock and small-scale agriculture. The impacts would probably be felt further than the immediate extraction sites. “Water has no border,” as local people say.

Clemente Flores, a 59-year-old community leader, says water is the most essential part of “Pachamama”, meaning “Mother Earth”. “The water feeds the air, the soil, the pastures for the animals, the food we eat,” he argues.

“If they use all the water for mining, the salt flats will dry out. Water is needed for the salt to grow. Without salt, I won’t have work,” says Calpanchay, who relies on freshwater sources to rear his llamas and sheep. “Chemicals from extraction could contaminate the waters and the pastures. It could all be lost.”

Flavia Lamas, a 30-year-old tour guide on the salt flats, remembers when a lithium company began exploration in about 2010. “They told us lithium extraction would not affect our Mother Earth. But then they hit the water. It began draining the salt flat – our land began to degrade in just one month,” she says.

According to Pía Marchegiani, director of environmental policy at NGO Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (Farn), environmental assessments leave gaps in understanding the overall impact of large-scale exploitation. “This area is a watershed – water will drain from all over, but nobody is looking at the bigger picture,” says Marchegiani. “We have the Australians, the US, Europeans, the Chinese, the Koreans. But nobody is adding up all the water use.”

Wildlife in the ecosystem could also be affected. One 2022 study found that flamingos, which feed on microorganisms within the brine, have slowly died due to lithium mining in Chile.

The communities also fear their erasure. The native people have spent centuries on this land, which they consider sacred, ancestral territory, but worry that they will be forced to migrate. “We cannot sacrifice the territory of the communities. Do you think it is going to save the planet? On the contrary, we’re destroying Mother Earth herself,” says Flores.

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Until recently, the 33 communities fought as a united body, but cracks have appeared over the past year as mining organisations have offered economic incentives. “Companies are getting closer,” says Calpanchay. “They approach us alone, arriving disguised. People feel under pressure.”

Lamas says the mining companies have flocked to the region like the Conquistadors of the 1500s. “The Spaniards brought gifts of mirrors. Now the miners come with trucks,” she says. “We have been offered gifts, trucks and houses in the city – but we do not want to live there.”

Marchegiani accuses companies of deploying “divide and rule” tactics. Alicia Chalabe, the lawyer for the Indigenous people of the Salinas Grandes, says the communities face a “permanent pressure” to agree to demands. “It is raining with lithium companies here. There has been a huge increase in the last five years,” says Chalabe, who is working on 20 active cases. “Communities are just the obstacles.”

The community of Lipan was the first to agree to let a mining company, Lition Energy, explore the brine underneath the salt in exchange for promises of jobs and essential services. However, some residents say that its decision was contentious and that some community members allege that not all residents were allowed to vote.

Lition denies that the decision to mine in Lipan was contentious and says that it has complied with all regulations requiring it to seek the community’s support for lithium exploration. It previously told the press it has invested in 15 secondary school and 15 university scholarships, provided computers to local schools and hired 12 workers from Lipan.

Anastasia Castillo, 38, was raised in Lipan and now lives in a nearby commune. She says neither she nor her parents, who remain in the village, consented. “I feel sick about it. Our children’s future has been damaged. I have 100 cows and 80 llamas in the area; it is my main work, and I am worried they will die,” says Castillo. “Now we are split.”

Lition Energy said the majority of Lipan’s families supported the mine, that 41 out of the 44 families in Lipan attended the consultation assembly, and that no negative observations were raised by the families present. It added that inhabitants are “already benefiting” and that it is “committed to the development of the communities,” including through supporting education, improving internet access, and introducing entrepreneurial training programmes.

Other communities are looking to Lipan with interest. Rinconadillas, a settlement of a few hundred people, is considering following suit.

Mariano Cayata, 47, supports lithium mining and is hopeful that the companies will fix services neglected by the government. “We have asked the government for help with work and better conditions many times for 30 years, but they do not care. We have no faith in them,” he says. “The mines can provide what the government does not. They [the mining companies] said they would improve our water and our roads. And they will because they will need them too.”

Some villagers support the economic growth brought about by the mines. On the road to Olaroz , the town of Susques has expanded rapidly due to mining. It has a modern secondary school, a pharmacy, two petrol stations and a hotel. Dozens of houses are under construction.

A hotel manager, Luis Ortega, 42, says lithium has had a positive economic effect. “A labourer there makes more money than people in the city. It’s had a good impact on the community’s growth. There are better homes and shops,” he says.

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While mining projects are already operational, such as those in Olaroz and Hombre Muerto, Argentina’s lithium expansion has just begun. Officials see lithium mining – and the taxes they can collect – as key to lifting the country from its economic crisis as it battles inflation rates, which peaked at 276.4% in April.

Mining companies, meanwhile, are encouraged by the country’s “free market” stance, lax regulation and low taxes. Recently, President Milei announced he would cut further costs for mining companies to bring in foreign currency.

However, some residents and campaigners accuse the provincial government of abusing human rights in favour of commercial interests. In theory, Indigenous peoples have the right to “prior, free and informed consultation”, which guarantees access to information, participation and dialogue with the State. Marchegiani from Farn says this right has disappeared.

Related: Blinded, sexually assaulted, silenced: the war over lithium, Argentina’s ‘white gold’

In June 2023, the Jujuy government made sweeping changes to its constitution, limiting the right to demonstrate and modifying the right to Indigenous lands with the undeclared aim of facilitating lithium mining. Protests erupted, and activists told the Guardian in January that they had been violently repressed. The Jujuy government did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’re not against lithium; we’re against breaching human rights, the criminalisation of conflict, the constant human rights violations, the lack of rule of law, the lack of justice,” says Marchegiani. “Researchers estimate 54% of [energy transition] minerals are in or near Indigenous lands. So what kind of energy transition are we looking at here? One that is going to be imposed on vulnerable people?”

The Argentine Chamber of Mining Companies and the National Lithium Table, two associations that bring together companies in the sector, did not respond to requests for interviews.

In the face of the sector’s economic boom and political repression, many believe that more lithium organisations will begin exploitation in the next year and that their voices will not be heard. “We are losing the fight,” says Chalabe.

Flores asks the international community to consider its priorities. “Our message to all the people with electric cars is that it is not right to ruin a region and destroy communities for a thing that you want to buy, even if it is good for the environment,” he says. “Lithium is like a needle to extract the blood of our mother – and our mother will die. In 50 years, there will be nothing here.”