The women of the riojano people in resistance. Water guardians of Famatina hill Photographic testimony

Abstract

Through visual language we want to pay tribute to the numerous and diverse women who participated and participate in the fight to defend our source of water and life. The Famatina mountains, with peaks that They reach 6,000 meters high, supplying water to five departments in the province of La Rioja, in the Argentine Republic. These photos are part of a collective record that spans from 2006 (to the present), when we began the fight in opposition to an open-pit mega-mining venture of the Barrick Gold Corporation company. Our towns have managed to expel more than five mining corporations throughout all these years. Today we continue to resist the plunder of the global north, which, excused in what it calls the "energy transition", now comes for the lithium of the high-Andean wetlands. It is difficult to reflect so many years of struggle in a few photographs, because there are numerous shared situations in which women come together to go through the multiple violence that, above all, extractivism imposes on our bodies-territories. This gathering strengthens us and, until now, the greed of extractivism has not been able to penetrate.