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More than half the world's known lithium lies under the salt flats where Chile, Argentina and Bolivia meet. Chile and Peru mine two fifths of its copper. Brazil has the second largest reserves of rare earths. These are the metals of batteries, power grids and magnets, and China refines most of them wherever they are dug. China, the United States and Europe are all trying to secure supplies, and the countries that own the ore are trying, not for the first time in their history, to get more from it than the price of a raw export.
The wider contest and each power's full account: Outside powers in Latin America.
Brazil's Senate passed a regulation of rare earth minerals on 3 September, opening the way for expanded exploration. On 5 September a Brazilian court suspended permits and halted Sigma Lithium's mine. The United States and Colombia signed agreements on critical minerals and nuclear energy on 8 September. On 21 September China cut rare earth magnet exports to the United States ahead of a Trump-Xi summit. The United States and Argentina launched a seven billion dollar infrastructure corridor on 23 September.
Who owns and who processes. Chile has put the state in majority control of new lithium projects. Mexico and Bolivia nationalised theirs. Argentina has done the opposite and offers investors thirty years of fixed taxes. All of them want the refining and the battery plants at home, and almost none has obtained them.
Which buyer. Chinese firms arrived first, own stakes in the largest producers and take most of the output. Washington now offers loans, purchase guarantees and government shareholdings to bring mines into its own supply chain, and asks governments to keep the Chinese out.
Water and land. Lithium is pumped from under some of the driest places on earth, and copper and gold sit under glaciers and indigenous territory. The communities there have stopped projects in court more than once.
These minerals are the region's chance to avoid repeating the story of silver, rubber and guano, exported raw and leaving nothing behind. States will decide who mines, on what terms, and will favour whoever builds processing plants and shares technology. They will sell to China, America and Europe alike. No buyer is entitled to a veto over another.
China controls the processing of nearly every critical mineral and has used that control as a weapon. Mines in the Americas that ship their output to China strengthen that hold on the United States and its allies. America is offering capital on better terms, from its development bank, its export bank and the Pentagon itself, and expects friendly governments to prefer partners who do not threaten them.
Chinese companies invested in South American mining when Western firms were leaving, pay market prices, build roads and power lines, and ask for no political alignment. Attempts to push them out are not about security. They are about denying developing countries the freedom to choose their customers.
Whoever the buyer is, the brine is pumped from under their pastures and the tailings are left in their valleys. The green transition of rich countries is being supplied from their water. They ask for consultation that can say no.
The producing governments' leaves out that changing the rules with each election is why investment is slow; that Bolivia, with the largest resources of all, produces almost nothing after fifteen years of state control; and that they compete with each other to offer the lowest taxes.
Washington's leaves out that it arrived fifteen years after China and still offers less; that government shareholdings and tied loans are what it criticises when Beijing uses them; and that its tariffs fall on the same countries it is courting.
Beijing's leaves out that it keeps the refining, and the profit, in China; and that its mines in Peru and elsewhere have been blockaded for years by the people living beside them.
The communities' leaves out that many of their neighbours want the jobs, and that mining royalties pay for most of what the state provides in those regions.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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Southern Cone
