From a White Desert to the Largest World Deposit of Lithium: Symbolic Meanings and Materialities of the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia

What is it about?

The Uyuni salt flat (Salar de Uyuni) in Bolivia possesses the largest lithium deposit in the world. Over the past 40 years, this location has been commodified and radically transformed. This paper explores how and why the symbolic meaning of this strategic location has changed over time for the Government and the surrounding indigenous communities and how the different materialities of the salt flat (as landscape, as ulexite and as lithium) are mutually constitutive in socio-environmental changes.

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