Porous Forms. Times, Mobility and Border Economies between San Pedro de Atacama and Lípez

Abstract

The border between Bolivia and Chile is examined using ethnographic methods for the specific case of the convergent social relations, mobility and economies that characterised the relationship between San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) and the province of Sud-Lípez (Bolivia). The paper identifies three moments in the emergence of this phenomenon. The first is related to the historical animal-based movement of goods that has characterised this region, and which we explore though the interviewees’ oral memory. The second concerns the mid-twentieth century sulphur-mining boom which unleashed its own mobility rationale, in addition to the proletarianisation and monetarisation of the economy. The third is linked to the transnationalisation of migratory flows, their intensification and the development of emergent migrant economies, in the framework of global or globalising formations. Hence the contradictory and porous dynamics with which the border has been drawn, producing and distributing old and new identities.