[News] Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South America’s Lithium
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Mar 11 12:08:45 EDT 2020
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/11/elon-musk-is-acting-like-a-neo-conquistador-for-south-americas-lithium/
Elon Musk Is Acting Like a Neo-Conquistador for South America’s Lithium
by Vijay Prashad – Alejandro Bejarano
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/vijaybeja4813/> - March 11, 2020
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, wants to build an electric car factory in
Brazil. He was supposed to meet Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil,
in Miami in early March, but he was too busy; instead, Musk will go to
Brazil sometime this year. All eyes
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/brica-da-tesla-no-pais-03-mar-/dlcxs9/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
are on the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, whose Secretary
of International Affairs Derian Campos is in direct contact with Musk.
Two automobile manufacturers—BMW and GM—already have factories in Santa
Catarina. Marcos Pontes (Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation,
and Communications) held a video conference with Anderson Ricardo
Pacheco, a senior Tesla official. They were joined by Daniel Freitas, a
congressman, and Claiton Pacheco Galdino, who is the business
development director for Criciúma, a city in Santa Catarina. They are
eager for Tesla to open a Gigafactory—Tesla’s name for a big factory—in
South America’s largest economy.
It helps that Brazil has considerable lithium deposits—mostly in the
southeastern states of Minas Gerais and Paraíba and in the northeastern
states of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. The production of lithium is
limited, largely having been used for ceramics and glass production. The
Bolsonaro government is interested in increasing the production of
lithium, including as a key raw material for the lithium-ion batteries
that power electric cars such as those made by Tesla. But Brazil’s
lithium will not be sufficient. Tesla would need to import lithium from
elsewhere.
*The Lithium Triangle*
Over 50 percent of the world’s known lithium deposits are in the
“Lithium Triangle”—the lithium concentrated brine sources in Argentina,
Bolivia, and Chile. Bolivia’s high mountain deserts—the Salar de
Uyuni—have by far the largest known reserves of lithium.
In a bizarre tweet
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ina-status-1231329703853723651/dlcxsc/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>,
the Bolivian entrepreneur Samuel Doria Medina wrote that since Elon Musk
and Jair Bolsonaro will discuss the Tesla plant in Brazil, they should
add to this initiative the following: “build a Gigafactory in the Salar
de Uyuni to supply lithium batteries.” Doria Medina is not just an
entrepreneur. He is the vice-presidential candidate alongside the
“interim president” Jeanine Áñez for the May 3, 2020, Bolivian
presidential elections. Áñez came to power only because of the /coup
d’état/ against Evo Morales in November 2019. Doria Medina’s welcome mat
to Tesla should, therefore, be seen as having the full authority of the
coup government behind it.
Morales’ government had been very cautious with these lithium reserves.
It had made clear that these precious resources were not to be turned
over to transnational corporations in deals favorable to the firms; what
gains come from lithium, Morales had pointed out
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/m-question-looms-large-bolivia/dlcxsf/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>,
must be properly shared with the Bolivian people. The point that
Morales’ government made is that any deal must be done with
Comibol—Bolivia’s national mining company—and Yacimientos de Litio
Bolivianos—Bolivia’s national lithium company. The monetary gains from
the mining would come into the Bolivian exchequer and then fund the
social programs so necessary for the country. This sensible socialist
policy was too much for three major transnational firms—Eramet (France),
FMC (United States), and Posco (South Korea)—all three of whom turned
tail and went to Argentina.
*The Lithium Coup*
It was Morales’ socialist policy toward Bolivia’s resources that doomed
his government. The oligarchy, which was angry with Morales’ government
and its socialism, used every mechanism to undermine the election of
2019. Forest fires in the northern and eastern regions of Bolivia
provided the oligarchy’s media with the weaponry to suggest that Morales
had abandoned his commitment to the environment and to /Pachamama
/(Mother Earth), and that he was now working to benefit the cattle
ranchers; it is important to point that this is not only ridiculous, but
that as soon as the coup government of Áñez came into office, it passed
legislation that allowed the ranchers to extend their lands into
forested areas.
Morales’ opponent—Carlos Mesa—and other senior leaders of the
oligarchy’s political parties openly said long before the election that
Morales could only win by fraud. A self-proclaimed Council for the
Defense of Democracy said that Morales was an illegitimate candidate
because he had lost the 2016 constitutional referendum. The media—backed
by these corporate and neofascist interests—banged the drum of fraud,
while Carlos Mesa—on the night of the election—said that there was
“monumental fraud” in the election. These provocations from Mesa, the
neofascists, and the corporate elites resulted in street violence; in
the midst of this, the police—sections of whom were angry with Morales
for cracking down on police corruption—mutinied. The 36 Bolivians who
died in the immediate post-election aftermath are victims of Mesa’s
incendiary language. The Organization of American States (OAS), egged on
by the U.S. government, came up with a “preliminary report” of fraud in
the election; the hard conclusions in the report were not substantiated
by the data in it. The OAS report played an important role in
legitimizing the coup against Morales.
It is important to point out that there was no controversy about
Morales’ election in 2014; in that election, Morales won 61 percent of
the votes to defeat the entrepreneur Samuel Doria Medina, who won 24
percent (Doria Medina is the same person who is now running for vice
president and welcomes Tesla to Bolivia’s lithium). Morales’ term, from
the 2014 election, had not yet expired in November 2019; the removal of
Morales then violated the mandate of 2014, a point that has received
almost no discussion either inside Bolivia or abroad.
John Curiel and Jack Williams of the Election Data and Science Lab of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) went over the Bolivian
election data and found no fraud: “There is not any statistical evidence
of fraud that we can find,” they wrote
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/found-no-reason-suspect-fraud-/dlcxsh/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
conclusively in the Washington Post. Curiel and Williams contacted the
OAS, but they note, “We and other scholars within the field reached out
to the OAS for comment; the OAS did not respond.” By their assessment,
Morales won the election in November 2019 and should have been
inaugurated this year to a new term.
Terrible pressure by the coup government against the party of Morales
(the Movement for Socialism, or MAS)—as well as the presence of USAID
monitors and a U.S.-backed head of the election commission, Salvador
Romero—suggests
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/-the-midst-of-an-ongoing-coup-/dlcxsk/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
that this election on May 3 is not going to be at all fair; it will
likely favor the coup government, including the entrepreneur who wants
to turn over Bolivia’s lithium to Elon Musk’s Tesla and Jair Bolsonaro’s
Brazil.
*A World of Lithium*
In 2019, the benchmark Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s “Energy Storage
Outlook 2019” report
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/new-energy-outlook-/dlcxsm/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
anticipated that by 2030, the price of the lithium-ion battery would
drop dramatically, and that—as a consequence—renewable energy (solar and
wind) plus storage of energy in batteries will expand exponentially. By
2040, there is an expectation
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ttery-costs-halve-next-decade-/dlcxsp/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
that wind and solar will produce 40 percent of world energy consumption,
rather than the 7 percent it now produces. For this, demand for energy
storage will increase. “The total demand for batteries from the
stationary storage and electric transport sectors is forecast to be
4,584GWh (Gigawatt hours) by 2040,” write
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/ttery-costs-halve-next-decade-/dlcxsp/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>
the Bloomberg analysts, “providing a major opportunity for battery
makers and miners of component metals such as lithium, cobalt and
nickel.” The current use is merely 9GW/17GWh.
The key point to emphasize here is that this will provide “a major
opportunity” for “miners of component metals such as lithium, cobalt and
nickel.” When Bloomberg’s analysts use a word like “miners,” they do not
mean the Bolivian miners or the Congolese miners, but the transnational
firms, such as Tesla and its chief, Elon Musk. As far as Bloomberg and
Áñez are concerned, South America is no longer to follow the resource
nationalist project of Evo Morales; this is Elon Musk’s South America, a
place for the neo-conquistadors to make money and leave behind them
social carnage.
*Vijay Prashad* is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a
writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/globetrotter-/dlcxsr/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>,
a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of
LeftWord Books
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/y976jlvu/dlcxst/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8> and
the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has
written more than twenty books, including /The Darker Nations: A
People’s History of the Third World/
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1595583424--tag-alternorg08-20/dlcxsw/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8> (The
New Press, 2007), /The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global
South/
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/1781681589--tag-alternorg08-20/dlcxsy/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8> (Verso,
2013), /The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution/
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/0520293266--tag-alternorg08-20/dlcxt1/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8> (University
of California Press, 2016) and /Red Star Over the Third World/
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/B0799NP7DD--tag-alternorg08-20/dlcxt3/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8> (LeftWord,
2017). He writes regularly for Frontline, the Hindu, Newsclick, AlterNet
and BirGün.
*Alejandro Bejarano* is a Bolivian musician, documentarian, and social
media manager. In 2016, he received the Medal of Honor for Cultural
Merit of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia.
/This article was produced by Globetrotter
<https://go.ind.media/e/546932/globetrotter-/dlcxsr/571991948?h=nXsURcNoUmBGXufRPejzm9bDLPYh3pTdgi2GDw2NLu8>,
a project of the Independent Media Institute./
--
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