Modulaciones etnotécnicas: patrimonialización, extractivismo minero y economía política del pasado en el salar de Atacama (norte de Chile)

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This article examines how Indigenous Atacameño Communities mobilize the past as a political and economic resource amid lithium extraction in northern Chile. Based on ethnographic research in the Salar de Atacama basin, as well as archival work on regional archaeology, it develops the concept of ethnotechnical modulation to describe how archaeological knowledge, heritage discourses, and narratives of deep historical continuity are articulated with contemporary Indigenous politics and extractive economies. Over the past decades, narratives of millennia‐long occupation of the desert—largely produced through archaeological research and museum practices—have become central to Atacameño territorial claims. Community leaders mobilize these historical narratives in negotiations with the Chilean state and lithium companies, particularly in agreements that channel financial transfers to Atacameño communities. These arrangements should not be understood simply as heritage politics or corporate compensation, but as a form of modulation of the past that articulates an Atacameño position at the limits of the state and its extractive political economy, one that is neither fully captured by governance nor adequately described as resistance.