‘We won’t have electric cars,’ say local communities ravaged by lithium mining for car batteries.
Calcha K, Bolivia – Teófila Cayo Calcina, 56, stands among her rows of quinoa plants, pointing towards the horizon. “The lithium plant is 50km in that direction. We are worried that the mining could leave us with not enough water to survive,” she says, clearly disheartened.
Calcina lives with her husband in one of the houses overlooking the central square of the tiny village of Calcha K, an hour’s walk from her quinoa fields, where she grows quinoa real, a variety which is native to the Uyuni region of Bolivia and is considered a “superfood” in Western countries such as the US and Europe.
The village is home to 400 people who speak Quechua, an ancient Inca language but still very widely spoken in South America. This community, where most people’s livelihoods are tied to farming quinoa and herding llamas, lives on the edge of the Uyuni salt flat in the Potosí region, part of the Bolivian Andes.
The Salar of Uyuni forms the world’s largest salt flat, stretching for nearly 10,500sq km (more than 4,050 square miles) – slightly larger than the size of Lebanon – and attracting tourists from all over the world who come to marvel at its unique landscape.
For the rest of this article: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/3/16/surviving-the-white-gold-rush-life-in-south-americas-lithium-triangle-2