Ritual for Pachamama
The night is pitch-black when Dominga begins to dig a deep hole in the courtyard. It is freezingly cold and she digs with her bare hands. For several days the entire family prepared a variety of meals and drinks, and tobacco and coca were bought. Today is finally the day. In the late evening – the thermometer has already dropped below -15 degrees Celsius – the ceremony begins. Under the open sky, in pairs and covered by a thin blanket, we kneel in front of the hole. According to strict rules food, drinks, coca and cigarettes are offered to the Pachamama to thank her for the animals, the family and health. For each mistake one has to drink. Later on, the ritual is also repeated in the yard of Clemente’s daughter and his son.
After several rounds, the alcohol level and the mood have risen significantly. I can no longer feel my feet, but the cold is unable to harm me. Instead, we exuberantly dance to a copla in a circle. When the hearts are finally opened by the alcohol, the family stands in a semicircle around the offering. One after the other express their deep gratitude to the Pachamama and to the family. “I thank the Pachamama with all my heart. I thank her for giving us food, for my family’s health, and that we have everything we need”. Clemente firmly holds my shoulder and looks deep into my eyes. A tear runs down his cheek. “That’s what it’s all about, you know?”
Evo’s Electric Joyride
“With my heart full of joy and pride, today we presented the first car assembled in Bolivia and it works with energy from lithium batteries made in La Palca […] We are combining investment with education to advance our industrialization towards a #FuturoSeguro (Secure Future)”
On October 1st 2019, with political campaigning in full swing, Evo Morales and the Bolivian nation were in for a surprise. On the occasion of an Institute for Lithium Technology being opened in Potosí, engineers of the La Palca plant presented the then-president with an electric car they had built themselves. Morales promptly went on to try it out for a ride, visibly enthusiastic and waving to the crowd.
Directly afterwards Morales published the above tweet along with a photograph on which we can spot an engineer from La Palca who himself seems to be struggling to grasp what is happening. While Morales is beaming, covered in confetti and flowers, driving and pointing ahead, the engineer looks onto the scene, somewhat dumbstruck. For some reason it was this engineer that caught my attention more than anything. Is this the face of someone who is anxious to see if the prototype he helped build will pass the acid test? Or is he struggling to comprehend how the prototype has suddenly been turned into a national spectacle?
For me, this scene seems to capture some of the tensions within the Bolivian project of lithium industrialization, Morales in full political campaign, signaling full speed ahead for Bolivian decolonization by industrialization. And the engineer who becomes sucked into the spectacle, not quite sure of what to make of it.
Global battery arms race
“We are in the midst of a global battery arms race.” This is how Simon Moores opened his statement for the U.S. Senate hearing on the Outlook for Energy and Minerals Markets on February 5, 2019.
The idea had gotten to him during the flight that took him to the hearing, inspired by a speech that Eminem once gave when accepting a prestigious award: his testimony ought to be short and meaningful – a simple list of significant facts that people would remember.
“How much of the electric vehicles battery supply chain does the U.S. control?” he asked. The answer was simple but significant: “For Nickel it’s zero. For Cobalt it’s zero. For Graphite it’s zero. And for Lithium it’s one percent. That’s something.”
Simon knew what he was talking about. He is founder and managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, one of the most important market research companies for the lithium-ion battery industry. His business is to research and sell data on the entire supply chain, from battery metal mines to electric vehicle markets.
With his testimony he sought to awaken U.S. policy makers to a fact that he knew well, but which they seemed to have overlooked: shifting to electric vehicles will require an entirely new industry and huge amounts of raw materials, both of which are currently controlled by China.
His words were meant for a U.S. public back in 2019, but they might have been heard in Europe, too. In September, the European Union launched its Raw Materials Alliance, alarmed by its dependence on other countries to supply its economies with critical raw materials.
It all seems that the geopolitics of the energy transition, with their scramble for raw materials, are quickly gaining traction.
Worlds of connection
Why tell these three stories together? What does an intimate ritual in the Argentinian highlands have to do with Bolivian electoral campaigns and global raw material politics? How does a Bolivian engineer relate to a British market expert and an Argentinian peasant activist?
Lithium, as you might have gathered, is the connecting element that allows us to tell these stories together–in their very own ways these are all stories about lithium. But what do we gain from doing so? What are the worlds that emerge from lithium connections? This question is what drives this project. Lithium Worlds is an invitation to think lithium otherwise by exploring its connections in a constantly evolving collective process.
Today, lithium is most commonly known as a crucial ingredient for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which can be used to power anything from mobile phones to electric bikes, cars and buses. Because they store renewable energy, lithium-ion batteries are increasingly important in a world where most people seek to extend their industrial ways of life into a future beyond fossil fuel. The climate crisis urges us to shift quickly to renewable forms of energy to preserve our planet. Doing so will require vast amounts of metals such as lithium.
This is why lithium is often dubbed as a metal of the future. It matters for livable futures, globally. But it does so unequally.
In places of consumption, where industries depend on imported raw materials, lithium is a matter of concern because it might soon be in short supply. Think of Simon and the urgency he carefully crafted into his statement to wake up US policy makers to their geopolitical dependency on China.
In places of extraction, in turn, lithium is a source of deep ambivalence, evoking both dreams of better futures and fears of renewed exploitation. Think of Evo and his political message of a better life for his impoverished people thanks to industry and technology. Think of Clemente, who refuses mining projects in his territory, rejecting industrial ways of life and the resource extraction they depend on. What should life really be about?
Dwelling on such ambivalence this project wants to explore diverse lithium worlds: worlds between and beyond extraction and consumption, global south and north, technology and ecology. It embraces lithium’s capacity to travel between different yet related worlds, forging unexpected connections along the way.
Exploring lithium worlds can only be a carefully crafted collective process. To follow far-flung connections in meaningful ways requires steady grounding in particular places, issues, and matters. We invite those who can identify with our principles to participate in this exploration from where they stand and in their very own ways. Together, we can offer slow thinking and careful connection as an alternative to dominant stories, provoking new thought and action on all sides involved.
Lithium Worlds offers room for content beyond the rush of daily news, made for diverse publics in disparate places. The stories emanating from different lithium worlds can only matter if they reach those who inhabit these worlds. We do our very best to make them available to a wide and diverse audience, translating our content between places, languages, and fields of expertise. We are happy to count you among us.
