The expertise of extraction: On the construction of miningscapes in the Salar de Atacama Basin (northern Chile) 16th-19th centuries

This article follows the historical production of expert knowledge involved in the efforts made to frame the Salar de Atacama basin as a miningscape between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. While several studies emphasize on 1980s neoliberal reforms as key for understanding the privatization of natural resources, logics of mineral extraction, environmental degradation, and indigenous/workers struggles in Chilean mining regions, fewer have discussed how these tensions are rooted in longer histories of knowledge production and economic intervention. For the Salar de Atacama basin, the historical sources consulted in this article show that the attempts to assess, objecty, and govern its resources and population stumbled with a contradiction that conceptualized this territory either as an oasis in the middle of the desert or as a barren wasteland. Following a sociohistorical approach to science and technology studies, I argue that these contradictions did not hinder the production of expert knowledge; rather, they enabled it by generating recurring tensions that shaped the ways the Salar de Atacama basin was understood and governed. I use the concept of dialectic of the despoblado as a methodological key to follow how the circulation of conflicting descriptions of this territory coexisted, the ways experts attempted to manage them, and its effects on the indigenous population. I argue that the production of miningscapes is not the result of coherent narratives, rather by contradictions that moved the associations between expert knowledge and the economy.