We, the communities, declare:
That the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc Basin has the right to the integral respect of its existence and the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles and functions, structure and evolutionary processes. It also has the right to the preservation of its salt flats and high Andean wetlands, and respect for water cycles, their existence in the quantity and quality necessary to sustain life systems and to live free of contamination. We demand the recognition and respect of these rights by public authorities and corporations.
Similarly, exercising the rights of the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc basin requires the recognition, recovery, respect, protection and dialogue of the diversity of feelings, values, knowledge, practices, abilities, transcendences, transformations, sciences, technologies and norms of all cultures that seek to live in harmony with Nature.
That we, the original inhabitants and communities of the territory of the Basin, and its commons, are its Guardians and protectors of its rights.
That, in the exercise of our constitutional rights, ILO Convention 169, the “Escazú” Agreement and concordant laws, we reaffirm territorial self-determination and the total and definitive rejection of all mega-mining, lithium and other mineral projects in the Salinas Grandes and Laguna Guayatayoc Basin as ancestral guardians of the cultural, territorial and natural heritage of the Kolla and Atacama indigenous peoples.
We reject, as unconstitutional, the law that calls for constitutional reform in the province of Jujuy and demand the incorporation of the rights of indigenous peoples in any constituent process.
This declaration was collectively drafted between the 14th and 15th of January, 2023, in the community of San Francisco de Alfarcito, Jujuy, Argentina, during the 2023 Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc Gathering, co-organized by the Aerocene Community and the Indigenous Communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc, with the Action Collective for Ecosocial Justice (Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial), the Mirá Socio-environmental Collective, the Geopolitics and Commons Study Group (Grupo de estudio Geopolítica y Bienes Comunes), the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers (Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas), lawyer Alicia Chalabe, writer Graciela Speranza and curator Inés Katzenstein. The text presented here is slightly edited for contextualization.
