Mining Implantations and Territorial Trajectories: The Argentine Northwest, a New World Extractive Center[Implantaciones mineras y trayectorias territoriales. El noroeste argentino, un nuevo centro extractivo mundial]

The mining industry has become very dynamic in Argentina and is in fact essential to the country's economy, repositioning the Andes mountain chain at the heart of economic, political and social issues, on di erent scales. The specialization of the mountain territories as reservoirs of raw materials to be obtained through mining is questioned because of the weak development that seems to result from it in these still marginal, poor and scarcely populated territories. The trajectories of three provinces —San Juan, Catamarca and Jujuy— make it possible to analyze the role of governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in developing the industry and the values attributed to it. These interactions give rise to alternative development models for the Andean territories, that progressively take the local development issues into account.