‘When the whirlwind is moving over the sand’: poetic surrealism of Atacama’s archaeological landscapes

Since the nineteenth century, the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile has been a space of geopolitical tension, asymmetrical socioeconomic power, and a territory for mining extractivism. The knowledge of its natural and cultural resources was assembled by scientific expeditions defining and configuring what we understand as a 'desert,' a peripheral empty and arid space ready to be occupied and exploited. The irruption and expansion of capitalist extractivism created a particular idea of landscape and reconfigured its socio-political contours. Archaeological, scientific, and artistic expeditions actively participated in this 'becoming desert' process. This article examines some trajectories constituting the Atacama Desert as an extractive and sacrificial territory. We propose the notion of 'surrealistic landscapes,' and we use the poetry of the Chilean Canadian poet Ludwig Zeller to highlight the surreal condition of contemporary materialities, constantly feeding the archaeological imagination of Atacama.