“Se llevaron la plata y el oro, nos dejaron espejitos de colores”
“They took the silver and gold, they left us colored mirrors”
(popular saying in South America)
An
old 16th-century Spanish colonial legend from South America, “The
White King and the Silver Mountain”, promised that by
traveling up the course of a great river located in the south of the
continent one would reach the domain of a monarch who reigned from a
triangular mountain made entirely of silver.
Today, 500 years later, that same race for
resource exploitation is perpetuated in another triangular form: the
Lithium Triangle, bounded by Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, an area
that concentrates more than 65% of the world's reserves of lithium, a
metal crucial for the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, commonly
known as “new oil” and also “white gold.”
This story would mark the beginning of a race to
exhaust the continent's resources for the benefit of foreign
interests. Yesterday, the river was none other than the Río de la
Plata, today Argentina, and the legendary mountain, the mount Potosí,
today Bolivia: a triangular mound that rises to an altitude of more
than 4,500 meters and is known for being one of the most important
silver deposits in history, emptied during the Spanish occupation of
the region.
With a
documentary approach imbued with a strong dreamlike component,
through photography, sculpture, and archival material, I propose a
parallel between these two triangular shapes and question the
continuity of extractive machinery and its human, economic, and
environmental consequences, exploring how this narrative continues to
shape memory and territory.