This time it’s different: lithium extraction, cultural politics and development in Bolivia

Abstract

As governments throughout Latin America have increased their dependence on resource extraction, the debate around extraction-based development has been reinvigorated. This article argues that, despite historical failures and recurrent conflicts associated with extraction-based development, the way in which development is experienced and conceptualised at the subnational level demonstrates why extraction continues to be perceived as a legitimate means for development. These findings show that, as resource extraction continues to play a critical role in the overall development transition of Latin America, the process must be understood and theorised in relation to the experiences and expectations of actors at multiple scales.

Keywords:

• Bolivia
• lithium
• (neo-)extraction
• development
• cultural politics

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the numerous Bolivians who participated in this research, particularly those living near the Salar de Uyuni, for their time, patience and generosity. I also thank Alan Klein and Liza Weinstein, my colleagues Chris Prener, Lisa Pal, Yingchan Zhang and Anjuli Ferreira-Fahlberg, and the anonymous reviewers for all providing insight and comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Notes

1. Author interview, March 10, 2014.

2. Gudynas,“Diez Tesis Urgentes.”

3. Goodale and Postero, Neoliberalism Interrupted, 49.

4. There have been two small-scale protests associated with the lithium industry. Both involved only employees of GNRE, who were contesting working conditions and salaries. Neither was against the overall industry itself. See Guarachi, “Trabajadores de Recursos”; and Juárez Huarachi "March de Trabajadores." While lithium and evaporative resources have at times been included in larger demands stemming from protests and strikes, such as those in Potosi in 2010, they have not yet been the driving force. See Farthing and Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia; and Mares, “Lithium in Bolivia.”

5. Bridge, “Contested Terrain,” 205–259; and Bridge, “Global Production Networks,” 389–419.

6. ECLAC, Statistical Yearbook, 2014.

7. Kohl et al., From the Mines, 27. See also Bebbington, “Contesting Extraction,” 7–12.

8. Crabtree and Whitehead, Unresolved Tensions; Kohl et al., From the Mines; Nash, We eat the Mines; and Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism.

9. CIA, World Factbook: Bolivia.

10. Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints”; and Webber, From Rebellion to Reform. See also Perreault and Valdivia, “Hydrocarbons.”

11. The official document of the Morales administration that details the nation’s development objectives and strategies. See Filho and Gonçalves, “The National Development Plan.”

12. Hydrocarbons serve as the primary revenue source for the Bolivian state. For the period 2013–2017 the EIU estimates that they will provide over 45% of total government revenue. EIU, Country Report: Bolivia. The launch of the pilot phase of lithium industrialisation began in 2008 with the building of the necessary infrastructure in Llipi Llipi, including evaporation pools, laboratories and pilot production plants. The state mining corporation, Comibol, has established an industrialisation plan that is divided into three phases: (1) the pilot phase, with a goal of producing 40 tons of lithium carbonate per month; (2) the industrial phase, with the goal of an annual production of 30,000 tons; and (3) the battery production phase. With $115 million invested to date, there is promise of a total investment of $925.2. See GNRE, “Gobierno Invierte.”

13. The lithium triangle is made up of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, which are estimated to hold 70% of total global reserves. See Göbel, "La Mineria Litio en Atacama" 137–166; Göbel, "La Mineria Litio en la Puna de Atacama."

14. Talison Lithium Limited (Australia), Sociedad Quimica y Minera (Chile), Rockwood Holdings (Chile) and FMC Corporation (Argentina) currently control about 85% of lithium supply globally. However, there was a doubling of lithium consumption between 2000 and 2012. See Kaskey, “Largest Lithium Deal.” Some projections anticipate a growth rate of 11% per year up to 2017, and others foresee a quadrupling of lithium consumption over the next two decades. Maxwell, “Analysing the Lithium Industry.”

15. Bebbington, “Natural Resource Extraction”; Goodale and Postero, Neoliberalism Interrupted; Grugel and Riggirozzi, “Post-neoliberalism in Latin America”; Gudynas, “Diez Tesis Urgentes”; Gudynas, “El Nuevo Extractivismo”; Rosales, “Going Underground”; Simarro and Antolin, “Development Strategy”; and Veltmeyer, “The New Geoeconomics of Capital.” 117–132.

16. Helwege, “Latin America’s Boom”; Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints”; and Weisbrot, Bolivia.

17. Escobar, “Latin America at a Crossroads”; and Lang and Mokrani, “Beyond Development.”

18. Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints.”

19. Auty, “The Resource Curse Thesis”; and Humphreys et al., Escaping the Resource Curse.

20. Arellano-Yanguas, “A thoroughly Modern Resource Curse?”; Humphreys et al., Escaping the Resource Curse; Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints”; Perreault and Valdivia, “Hydrocarbons”; Rosser, The Political Economy of the Resource Curse; and Schrank, “Reconsidering the ‘Resource Curse’.”

21. Bridge, “Global Production Networks”; Rosser, The Political Economy of the Resource Curse; and Rosser, “Escaping the Resource Curse.”

22. Gudynas, “Diez Tesis Urgentes.” See also Gudynas, “El Nuevo Extractivismo”; and Rosales, “Going Underground.”

23. Acosta, “Extractivism and Neoextractivism”; and Gudynas, “El Nuevo Extractivismo.”

24. Fuentes, “‘Bad Left Governments’.”

25. Bebbington et al., “Contention and Ambiguity”; and Helwege, “Challenges with resolving Mining Conflicts.”

26. Haarstad, New Political Spaces; and Kennemore and Weeks, “Twenty-first Century Socialism?” See also Kaup, Market Justice; and Lopez and Vertiz, “Extractivism.”

27. Gudynas, “Diez Tesis Urgentes”; Gudynas, “El Nuevo Extractivismo”; Svampa, “Commodities Consensus”; and Svampa, “Resource Extractivism.” See also Farthing and Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia; Hindery, From Enron to Evo; McNeish, “Extraction Protest”; and Pellegrini and Arismendi, “Consultation, Compensation and Extraction.”

28. McNeish, “Extraction Protest,” 224.

29. Bebbington et al., “Contention and Ambiguity”; Bebbington and Bury, Subterranean Struggles; Helwege, “Challenges with resolving Mining Conflicts”; Hindery, From Enron to Evo; Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints”; McNeish, “Extraction Protest”; Pellegrini and Arismendi, “Consultation and Compensation”; Perreault and Valdivia, “Hydrocarbons”; and Svampa, “Commodities Consensus.”

30. Hindery, From Enron to Evo; and McNeish, “Extraction Protest.”

31. Bebbington and Bury, Subterranean Struggles.

32. Svampa, “Commodity Consensus,” 68.

33. Fuentes, “‘Bad Left Governments’.”

34. Ibid; and Katz, “Dualities of Latin America.”

35. Fabricant and Gustafson, “Moving beyond the Extractivism Debate”; and Fuentes, “‘Bad Left Governments’.”

36. Burchardt and Dietz, “(Neo-)Extractivism.”

37. Bebbington, Social Conflict, 5.

38. Bebbington, “Natural Resource Extraction”; Bebbington and Bury, Subterranean Struggles; Burchardt and Dietz, “Neo-extractivism”; Radcliffe, “Development Alternatives”; and Svampa, “Resource Extractivism.”

39. Bridge, “Contested Terrain”; and Bridge, “Global Production Networks.”

40. Perreault, “‘A People with our own Identity’.”

41. Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations.”

42. Prior consultation, as it pertains to resource extraction, has been identified as a requirement by the International Labor Organization (Convention 169). It has also been legally incorporated in Bolivian Supreme Decree 29033 and in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution. See also Perreault, “Performing Participation”; and Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations.”

43. Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations.”

44. Humphreys Bebbington, “Consultation, Compensation”; Perreault, “Performing Participation”; Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations.”

45. Humphreys Bebbington, “Consultation, Compensation and Conflict.”

46. Warnaars, “Territorial Transformations,” 149–172.

47. Baviskar, “For a Cultural Politics,” 5051.

48. Alvarez et al., Cultural Politics, define cultural politics as ‘struggles over meanings and representations’, while McCann, “Cultural Politics”, defines it as ‘a set of discursive and material practices in and through which meanings are defined and struggled over’.

49. See Carney and Watts, “Manufacturing Dissent”; and Moore, “The Crucible of Cultural Politics.”

50. McCann, “The Cultural Politics of Local Economic Development.”

51. Fabricant and Gustafson, “Moving beyond the Extractivism Debate.”

52. Data collection included recorded interview accounts from Bolivians living in nine communities near the Salar de Uyuni, as well as those in the cities of Uyuni, La Paz, Potosi and Cochabamba. Interviewees included professors, various government representatives such as regional and local officials, NGO representatives, civic organisations, citizens, peasant unions, and businessmen and -women. Observations, daily participation and casual conversations in the city of Uyuni and surrounding communities involved community meetings, markets, protests, festivals, and everyday conversations and practices. Observations of the lithium industry included visits to laboratories, evaporation pools and production plants, including the pilot battery plant. The literature collected included government literature and policy documents; articles and text from the Centro de Documentacion e Informacion Bolivia (CEDIB) archives; and articles and text in the mainstream media.

53. Baviskar, “Cultural Politics”; Bebbington, “Natural Resource Extraction”; Moore, “The Crucible of Cultural Politics”; and Radcliffe, “Development Alternatives.”

54. Radcliffe, “Development Alternatives,” 865.

55. Ströbele-Gregor, “Litio en Bolivia”; Ströbele-Gregor, “El Proyecto Estatal del Litio”; and Ströbele-Gregor, “Litio y Desigualidades.” 137–166.

56. According to Narvaezm et al., “Priotizacion de Lineas Estrategicas,” this includes 70% of the population in some communities.

57. MMGTL, Plan de Desarrollo; and UDAPE–UNDP, Human Development in the Department of Potosi.

58. Author interview, May 16, 2014.

59. Author interview, July 16, 2013.

60. The National Institute of Statistics for Bolivia lists that, in addition to high poverty rates, 60% of the population in the region of Potosi lacks access to adequate water and sanitation. www.ine.gob.

61. Author interview, July 6, 2013.

62. Author interview, March 7, 2014.

63. Author interview, March 14, 2014.

64. Author interview, March 16, 2014.

65. Author interview, March 18, 2014.

66. Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints,” 227. See also Molina, El Pensamiento Boliviano; and Kohl et al., From Mines to Streets.

67. Author interviews, 7 and 14 March, 2014.

68. Bebbington, “Natural Resource Extraction.”

69. Goodale and Postero, Neoliberalism Interrupted, 3.

70. Author interview, March 31, 2014.

71. Author interview, April 15, 2014.

72. Göbel, "La Mineria Litio en Atacama" 137–166; Göbel, "La Mineria Litio en la Puna de Atacama."

73. Molina, El Pensamiento Boliviano, 7, 9. See also Farthing and Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia.

74. As noted in the country’s 2009 Constitution and in Carbonnier and Zamora, “Can Lithium Energize?”

75. See also Arsel et al., “Property Rights”, 109–128; and Strobele-Gregor, “Litio en Bolivia.”

76. Comibol, “De Bolivia.”

77. Comibol, “Memoria Institucional.”

78. Author interview, July 24, 2013.

79. Cisneros-Lavaller, “Resource Nationalism”; Mares, “Lithium”; and Perreault, “Nature and Nation.”

80. Bebbington and Bury, Subterranean Struggles.

81. In the 20th century the principles for resource nationalism can be traced to the 1937 nationalisation of Standard Oil, and again in the extensive campaign for nationalisation during the 1952 Revolution. See Rochlin, “Latin America’s Left Turn,” 1328; and Filho and Gonçalves, “National Development Plan,” 179.

82. Shultz and Draper, Dignity and Defiance; and Perreault, "From the Guerra Del Agua."

83. Perreault, “Nature and Nation,” 72.

84. Author interview, April 25, 2014.

85. Haarstad, “Globalization and the New Spaces”; and Nash, We eat the Mines.

86. The nationalisation is more accurately described as a renegotiation of contracts in which the Bolivian government increased its share of the hydrocarbon rents. See Kaup, “A Neoliberal Nationalization?”

87. Humphreys Bebbington and Bebbington, “Extraction, Territory, and Inequalities.”

88. Kohl and Farthing, Evo’s Bolivia.

89. Burchardt and Dietz, “(Neo-)Extractivism,” 470.

90. A non-profit civil organisation created in December 2003. It includes eight municipalities combined in four provinces. They have taken a leading role in generating economic and human development for the region, particularly as it relates to quinoa, livestock, tourism and mining.

91. Author interview, April 28, 2014.

92. Author interview, April 15, 2014.

93. Author interview, March 31, 2014.

94. By the time of my departure in mid-2014, no such changes had occurred.

95. Author interview, April 15, 2014.

96. Author interview, May 7, 2014.

97. Author interview, March 31, 2014.

98. A similar notion is expressed in Jasonoff and Kim, “Sociotechnical Imaginaries,” 190.

99. K-Utec AG Salt Technologies, a German firm, was awarded the contract for the design and engineering of the industrial lithium carbonate plant. See Pagina Siete, “Firma K-Utec hará la ingeniería de la planta de carbonato de litio,” May 22, 2015. http://www.paginasiete.bo. EMC Green Tech, a French firm, signed a contract to build a pilot plant for lithium cathode materials, which are a critical component in lithium batteries. See “Empresa Francesa instalará en Potosí planta piloto de materiales catódicos por BS 26 millones,” La Razón, November 12, 2015. http://www.la-razon.com.

100. The limited literature generally overlaps in its discussion of problems with Bolivia’s lithium industry, which include geographic location, lack of basic infrastructure like roads and limited water resources, a long rainy season, high levels of magnesium, and potential environmental impacts. See Fletcher, Bottled Lightning; Wright, “Lithium Dreams”; Hollender and Shultz, Bolivia and its Lithium; Ruttinger and Feil, Sustainable Prevention of Resource Conflicts; Friedman-Rudovsky, “Natural Resources”; Mares, “Lithium in Bolivia”; and Kohl and Farthing, “Material Constraints.” For a report on the potential environmental risks associated with lithium extraction, see Ortega et al., “Un Presente sin Futuro.”

101. Göbel, “La Mineria del Litio en la Puna,” 140.

102. Author interview, March 5, 2014.

103. Jose Luis Pereira, quoted in Farthing and Kohl, Evo’s Bolivia, 95.

104. Among several examples, see Humphreys Bebbington, “Consultation, Compensation and Conflict”; Humphreys Bebbington, “Extraction, Inequality and Indigenous Peoples”; Perreault, “Performing Participation”; and Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations.”

105. Humphreys Bebbington, “Extraction, Inequality and Indigenous Peoples,” 445.

106. Warnaars, “Territorial Transformation,” 149–172.

107. Gidwani, “The Unbearable Modernity of ‘Development’?”