El Precio de la Tierra
2017 - Ongoing
“El Precio de la Tierra” is a 8-year journey through 4 South American countries chronicling the coexistence between large-scale mining and indigenous communities in Andean territories.
South America has a vast mineral wealth. Mining accounts for a significant portion of the continent’s incoming foreign investment. But it is also accompanied by a high risk of environmental degradation and adverse impacts on local communities, leading to socio-environmental conflicts.
This project started in Peru, the world’s No. 2 producer of copper and silver. Mining is more than twice as important as tourism to the Peruvian economy. But for the Andean communities, the arrival of mining is seen as an imposition that transforms their lives and territories and affects their health. For locals, mining plunders their wealth and water sources, creating dead fields and killing livestock, the engine of their economy.
Similar tensions surround the mines in the Andes of Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia.
A few kilometers away from Peru, lie the two mining projects with which Ecuador inaugurated large-scale mining. One of them, called Mirador, led to indigenous protests in 2012. When the Chinese company arrived, more than 30 families were forcibly evicted. As part of their struggle, Ecuador's environmentalists invoke the Rights of Nature, which the country was the first in the world to recognize.
In Argentina, civil resistance managed to stop for a while 2 mining projects in the town of Andalgalá, although they were later integrated into what is now known as the Mara project. Since 2010, not a Saturday has gone by without this community taking the streets to protest.
As the green transition progresses, Argentina is positioning itself at the forefront of the global scramble for lithium, along with Bolivia, which last December inaugurated its first industrial-scale lithium plant in the Uyuni salt flats. But just 3 hours away from it, dozens of miners continue to die every year underground in search of minerals in the city of Potosí.
Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Bolivia share a similar story when it comes to large-scale mining. Andean communities accuse the companies of contaminating their natural resources and contributing to the appearance of toxic metals in their blood, causing serious health problems. Mining has also unbalanced their sacred relationship with Pachamama (Mother Earth), a deity for Quechua, Kiwcha, Aymara, and Kolla communities.
