"Our territory is very beautiful and connected to our ancestors; our grandparents and great-grandparents also lived in the basin, and we have inherited from them a culture and tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation. We—the Communities—live in them and they are part of our family.
We do not lose hope that we are going to win... and that our Mother Earth will be the real justice. As I always say, we are addicted to crisis. All who drive lithium battery cars say that they will save the world, but I don't think so. Each should ask themselves… how, where the material comes from, what it provokes when it is mined, this mineral, in the zone where it is found, until they reach their community in another country. How many violations of rights occur along its path? We are thinking… how to transmit a means of communication so everyone can ask this themselves.”
—Verónica Chávez, member of the Tres Pozos Sanctuary Community.
The Andean salt flats in Argentina hold the world’s third-largest lithium reserves. Currently, China, Australia, the US, and other countries that aspire for global dominance are locked in a race to mine this valuable earth mineral to power the so-called ‘green energy transition’. Lithium is in electric vehicles, mobile phones, solar panels, and other battery-storing energy systems, fueling monopolies on digital clouds and its hoarding of memory. However, lithium mining comes at a deadly cost for the communities in Jujuy, Argentina, an arid region that may see as little as 300 millimetres of annual rainfall. For every tonne of lithium carbonate mined, 2 million litres of fresh groundwater is evaporated. Critical to life on land they have stewarded for millennia, the communities’ message is clear: “We no longer want to be a sacrifice zone.”
In solidarity with the Communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, Fairclouds serves as a vehicle through which a cosmovision of slower, situated activism can emerge beyond private property, honouring Pachamama (Mother Earth). Faced with violent repression by local governance and police, multinational corporations and power-wielding individuals, acts of media green-washing, and a national government that has repealed historic laws for the protection of Indigenous peoples in Argentina. Fairclouds provides a direct channel for communities to share their resistance to neo-colonial exploitation with a community of contributors in solidarity across the world, towards another art of living on the land.
As a Cloudsteward, you are invited to bring to life an economic model grounded in principles of stewardship and collective value generation to support the Communities’ stewardship of their land. In setting up Fairclouds, we used the principles of fair value distribution that are the heart of an approach to economic exchange called partial common ownership.
What do you see in the clouds? Enter into a cloudscape above the Salinas Grandes in Jujuy, Argentina. Become a Cloudsteward and reveal the hidden ecologies within the clouds, imagined by a transnational group of contributors.
Dear traveler, today you are passing through this route, in which we are constantly demonstrating, providing information and making our situation in our territory known. So we ask for a little bit of...
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