Mining, urban growth, and agrarian changes in the Atacama desert: the case of the Calama oasis in northern Chile

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, Latin American rural territories have undergone significant transformations. One of the leading causes is the expansion of large-scale operations that exploit natural resources for world market exportation with low processing. In this paper, we study the changes in agricultural activities, livestock, and land use in the Calama oasis (the Atacama Desert, northern Chile) in relation to the growth of large-scale copper mining and other chained processes (urbanization and increased demand for water resources); based on a mixed methodology combining descriptive statistics, archival and bibliographic review, ethnography, and spatial analysis. We present the results through a historical reconstruction of the analyzed dimensions and their relationships, accounting for contradictory dynamics in time and space. We identify how mining and urban growth promote some agricultural and livestock activities under certain economic and political conditions, while in other contexts, these activities have been severely weakened, seeing increasing urbanization of rural land, rural-urban pluriactivity, and a growing deagrarianization.