Recent discoveries of important lithium deposits in Peru suggest that the lithium boom in South America’s Altiplano is expanding. Along with salt flats in the ‘lithium Triangle’ of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia, which share 55% of the world's reserves, in Peru, lithium is found in the world’s biggest tropical glacial (Quelcaya) and within the ancestral territory of peasant communities. In this context, this article contributes to discussions about just energy transitions and lithium extraction by exploring the new case of Peru as a potential global lithium producer, an economic and geopolitical goal strongly promoted by state authorities. Some scholars have focused on the diverse discursive strategies and imaginaries of state officials in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia to promote lithium exploitation as a sustainable kind of extractivism that supports the energy transition (Voskoboynik and Andreucci 2021; Barandiarán 2018). Others have delved into how the grassroots mobilizes contested lithium discourses and imaginaries that shape overlapping territorialities and a revalorization of “the indigenous” (Dorn & Gundermann 2022; Soto and Newell 2022) or even conceive lithium as a socioecological and ontologically contested entity that sustains and participates in complex webs of life-supporting, place-based, and more-than-human relations (Quevedo 2023). These dynamics show how similar narratives are invoked to justify divergent paths of action depending on the different interests and temporalities of the actors involved (Carrasco et al. 2023). Considering the relevance of grasping these differences, this study relies on semi-structured interviews with national and sub-national state officials and regional indigenous organizations and fieldwork with peasant communities in the areas of two lithium projects in Puno, Peru. Unlike previous contributions, the article distinguishes between lithium discourses, imaginaries, and ontologies and unravels the spaces of contestation and articulations that shape the material possibilities of lithium extraction in a new extractive frontier.
