Mining and mountain environments in Southern Mendoza (Argentina): A periodisation of the extractive cycles (1929-1976)

OSVALDO SIRONI; FACUNDO ROJAS; DIEGO BOMBAL; FERNANDO RUIZ PEYRÉ

Journal of Alpine research

Open Edition Journals

Lugar: Grenoble; Año: 2025

The Argentinean Mining Code guaranteed the extraction of minerals to promote investment in the country´s mining development, and moderate progress was observed since the end of the 19th century, especially in metalliferous mining, until the First World War. Subsequently, as a consequence of the discoveries of hydrocarbons and minerals suitable for steelmaking and the impact of World War II, the industrialisation process that the country was going through acquired a significant acceleration, forcing the National State to assume a leading role in the evaluation and exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, since private enterprise was neither prepared nor determined to face the significant emerging risks of this type of activity. Our study area, located in the south of the current territory of the province of Mendoza, Argentina, has been a political and cultural frontier zone. The rugged mountainous terrain of the area favoured the deployment of renewed resource appropriation logics by the dominant elites from the mid-19th century onwards. Specifically, in the current departments of the south of the province (San Rafael and Malargüe) a large number of mining ventures were developed at different scales according to a geology equally diverse and rich in mineral resources, both in the Andes Mountain Range. The exploitation of these deposits, which exceeds the traditional metalliferous variety, led to diversification of extraction and, in some cases, the transformation of minerals, within the socio-environmental historical context of the capitalism of the 20th century.