by DAVID FELIBA
With plummeting prices and slowing demand for EVs, the once-thriving mining towns of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia are now struggling.
- The global electric vehicle boom brought investments, jobs, and infrastructure to towns across Latin America’s “lithium triangle.”
- Lithium prices, which hit an all-time high in 2022, have been on a downward spiral in recent years.
- Lithium-rich towns that once thrived on the influx of foreign mining companies are wrestling with unemployment.
Tolar Grande, a windswept settlement perched at 11,500 feet above sea level in northern Argentina, once received little more than a trickle of visitors. Then, in the late 2010s, hostels in the lithium-rich town began filling up with workers at mining companies, while the handful of small eateries shifted from serving the occasional tourist to feeding miners.
“Mining absorbed almost everyone,” Marta Ríos, who runs the civil registry in Tolar Grande, home to around 300 people, told Rest of World. “At first it was strange to see trucks all the time, buses full of workers — suddenly, there was no unemployment.”
As demand for electric vehicles soared, the so-called lithium triangle — spanning northern Argentina, Chile, and southern Bolivia — became the beating heart of the energy transition. Home to nearly half the world’s known lithium resources, the region drew a flood of foreign investors eager to secure “white gold,” as well as workers from across the country keen to cash in on the boom. The output of some of these mines ultimately ends up in batteries for Toyota, Hyundai, and Ford.
But after peaking in late 2022, lithium prices have fallen sharply as supply outpaced demand with a weakening Chinese economy and slower EV sales growth. Large operators scaled back investment and cut staff, leaving locals who had redirected their businesses to serve the industry scrambling to find new clients or new work altogether.
“In many of these remote towns, there’s no alternative economy,” Martín Fellner, a lawmaker in Jujuy, one of Argentina’s largest lithium-exporting provinces, told Rest of World. “Communities themselves [are] asking for more mining projects because without them, there are no formal jobs, no decent salaries.”
At first, the lithium boom led to the creation or expansion of local catering companies, water suppliers, and even small security outfits in these towns, according to Ríos. Along desert highways, buses with signs that read “at the service of mining” became a common sight, part of the ecosystem that developed around the industry.
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