Cerro Rico: Re-Plundering

Cerro Rico: Re-Plundering draws a comparison between the modern-day lithium rush and the brutal Spanish colonial rule of South America, through an intervention at the “rich hill” in Potosi, Bolivia.. The great riches extracted from the mountain came at the expense of lives of millions of indigenous Americans and imported African slaves, where the development of racial theory enabled the growth of a slavery-based system of global capitalism. Ever since, Latin America has struggled to break free of the Eurocentric power structures that have continued to dominate the political sphere of the continent, with the ongoing Lithium rush an example of the continuing colonial paradigm that views countries like Bolivia as “nature-exporting”, while “global north” countries benefit from the stability of value-adding, diversified economies. The purpose of the project is to interrogate the regimes and power structures that have unleashed extreme violence on the bodies of the people and the lands of Latin America. We have looked to the work of Silvia Rivera and Rene Zavaleta Mercado, two Bolivian theorists, and their understanding of crisis. They view a crisis as a possibility of knowledge; it is a time of unveiling, where a stagnant society can be shaken free from its stupor, enabling us to see things about our society that we had previously ignored or failed to recognise. Our project aims to exist within the realm of the uncertain, playing with architectural typologies that are suited to these in between moments. “We live in a situation of cognitive penumbra, which is the moment of crisis. But its flip side is undoubtedly the possibility of a deeper understanding of the nature of the facts, and also the possibility of inhabiting the crisis in a productive way” – Silvia Rivera