From herders to wage laborers and back again: engaging with capitalism in the Atacama Puna region of northern Chile

Abstract

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, indigenous Atacameo society transited from an agro-pastoralist to a more diversified capitalist-based economy due to a growing mining industry in northern Chile. The puna herders engaged in the new capitalist order as wage laborers in sulfur mines and llareta (Azorella compacta) exploitation companies. In this article we show how indigenous knowledge acted as cultural capital that enabled the herders to work as laborers. This operation led to horizontal treatment among the different agents in the taskscape that those "herder-laborers" inhabited, including those incorporated by industrial capitalism.