The Atacama Desert's 400 Year Draught | TRACKS

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] deserts the driest places on earth covering more than a fifth of all the world's land mass as dangerous to life as the highest peak or the coldest glacier but in these harsh and barren wastelands nature endures people have lived in the desert since the beginning of time resilient and resourceful they have developed unique cultures and deep spiritual bonds with these arid lands [Music] but the modern world of commerce and industry is encroaching on the desert claiming its resources changing the delicate balance of life now more than ever desert people must adapt to survive this series tells their story of struggle and endeavor of humanity's continuing relationship with the most challenging places on earth [Music] there's just one word that's needed to describe the atacama [Music] dry parts of the desert are completely arid virtually sterile not even bacteria survive the atacama stretches for a thousand kilometers along the shores of chile and peru coastal mountains to the west and the giant andes to the east block out the rain clouds in some places it hasn't rained for four centuries and yet miraculously people have found ways to live here the human face of the atacama expresses joy as well as a simple determination to survive but there's a darker side to this desert story the atacama is so dry it preserves like nowhere else the dirty secrets of its ancient past [Music] and there's no hiding place here for the evidence of much more recent terrors [Music] today water has become a precious private commodity mining corporations buy it up residents go thirsty [Music] yet these barren moistureless planes may give us our best chance of finding water and life billions of miles away a place awash with contradictions this is the atacama the driest desert [Music] here in the giant shadow of the andes is where the high desert in the story of human survival begins [Music] benita panira is a survivor for 60 years she's farmed an isolated patch of land in these mountains [Music] 3000 meters above sea level life for bonita is a daily battle with the elements benita's animals are her lifeline providing milk and meat and something to trade she has no electricity and no running water she used to walk several kilometers to draw supplies from a mountain spring but these days the journey is too much for her she's forced to depend on the generosity of neighbours even so she has to eke out every last drop bonita's most dependable helper is her nephew renee renee feels a family responsibility to lend a hand as bonita's only close relative as it happens it's also a civic duty for him he's the head man of the nearest village ikena life there can also be a struggle [Music] sprawling across the hillside aikina looks for all the world like a substantial settlement in fact its permanent population is no more than 70. [Music] most of these buildings are holiday homes for much of the year they lie empty until it's party time [Applause] ikina's festival lasts for days [Music] the festivities honor the lady of guadalupe the story goes that the virgin mary appeared on this very spot in 1646 but no one seems to be quite certain of the exact date the miracle happened and some say the virgin showed herself more than once the people of ikea staged several celebrations marking one of the most holy events in its history [Music] family ties are strong here and everybody has a path to play renee's aunt makes the popcorn it's a real feast for everyone but this isn't just a little family occasion at the height of festive season during the first week of september the town's population swells to 75 000 catholicism takes center stage but religion here is enriched with customs that were already sacred when christianity arrived with the spanish conquistadors the villagers are descendants of the imara indigenous people who have farmed in the shadow of the andes for more than two thousand years the costumes the music the dances all date back to an era before europeans ever set foot here [Music] so too does the secret of how the imara managed to establish themselves here [Music] kilometers east of the village lie the ancient ruins of topain [Music] the evidence here is of an amaran village that's more than a thousand years old [Music] in those days the desert was even drier than it is today yet archaeologists like cesar pacero are finding increasing proof that even through the super drought the population here not only survived it thrived [Music] the keys to success were these rock channels the arteries of a sophisticated water distribution system the irrigation watered these specially built terraces nourishing all the crops the imara needed but with no rainfall where did the water come from the answer is in the very andean peaks that block the rain clouds from reaching the desert the summits catch what little precipitation there is and redirect it to glacial springs and underground rivers the imara were able to pinpoint these hidden sources by building simple dams they could even store water for when the streams ran dry aguero [Music] a thousand years later the precious knowledge has not been entirely lost [Music] today on the hill slopes beneath aikina there's a hidden oasis terraces of vegetation are irrigated by water channeled from a mountain spring using techniques pioneered a millennium ago [Music] and the valley below shows what's possible when your husband scarce resources with skill and ingenuity [Music] in turning the desert green the people of akina are also celebrating their imaran heritage [Music] there's plenty to give thanks for but even at party time renee can't be entirely free of worry his family has lived in ikea as far back as their memory goes but there's a big change on the horizon a change that renee fears could rob his children of a future here a few kilometers to the west there are more ruins the remains of a village that once thrived like ikina reni is keen for his son to understand what happened here [Music] [Music] snow melt water from underground streams was what kept this valley fertile today that water is being redirected for industrial use and in massive quantities [Music] every hour wells like this one pump millions of liters down the pipeline all that's left is the little that leaks out renee's nightmare is that one day big business will come for the water that keeps his village green [Music] but the challenge may be far bigger than a boy could imagine his home sits right next to one of the richest mineral fields on the planet [Music] the ground may be parched of water but it's full of precious metals [Music] gold silver iron copper lithium all these have been laid down here by geological processes unique to the desert environment extracting the mineral wealth can be hugely profitable that's why more than 700 mines are now operating in the atacama [Applause] [Music] chile is the world's biggest producer of copper and 25 of the world's lithium lies beneath its surface rock and salt lakes [Music] lithium is an essential component in many familiar industrial products like car batteries without it the modern world would outrun itself [Applause] [Music] but the extreme desert environment that forged the atacama's underground wealth is also the biggest obstacle to extracting it mining requires water and on an industrial scale and water of course is the one resource that's in short supply [Music] this is kiawa according to official records it's the driest town on earth natives of kiawah can only dream of rain on their faces the town's dusty weather gauge hasn't registered measurable rainfall for 40 years it's just as well andrus palape has something else to occupy his time he keeps the only hotel in town each time a guest checks in there's a special conversation to be had [Music] uh on a daily basis the residents of kiagua use 20 times less water than people in the united states the water they are allowed to use has to be brought here by truck okay to survive despite the record-breaking drought and the dryness of the landscape all around [Music] remarkably there's evidence of human settlement here stretching back 10 000 years and more longer than almost anywhere else in south america an ancient civilization known as the chinchiro flourished here the landscape itself bears the evidence the dry desert has preserved this rock art prehistoric statements in stone still visible thousands of years later and there's other proof of ancient human presence here in kiawah proof that's dramatic and macabre [Music] mummies vessels of communication between the living and the spirit world the ancients painted their dead and mummified them with open eyes and mouths [Music] in magic rituals they were said to see this world and the next and to speak to both the mummies have been dated as roughly 2 000 years old in any other museum precious finds like these would have to be preserved in a dehumidified environment but caretaker felicia saucer isn't concerned about that she knows the atmosphere here is so exceptionally dry that nothing rots one body in felicia's collection has a quite separate history this man is from asia he died just a century and a half ago he was a slave a chinese [ __ ] tricked into crossing the pacific and forced to work in mining or farming tests show he had an enlarged liver it's probable his masters paid him nothing but alcohol his body was abandoned where he died the desert did the rest preserving his body graphic evidence of kiawah's slave trading past in choosing to trade here his 19th century masters were no fools [Music] kiawah was an oasis the life-giving water flowed in the form of the river lower fed by andean glaciers the lower is the main watercourse in the atacama at 440 kilometers it's chile's longest river [Applause] for thousands of years the waters of the lower supported a thriving agricultural society in this valley the signs here still read welcome to the spa town of kiyawa [Music] but the reality today is very different [Music] this evening andres is dining with his brother miguel it's a long-standing family tradition they used to feast on local delicacies like freshwater shrimp nowadays the menu is much more limited and today's limited choice is due to the huge environmental change that miguel has witnessed when miguel was young the river lower flowed freely through his parents farmland the family grew crops alfalfa and maize and they fished for shrimp the sweet river variety for which kiawah used to be famous in the late 1980s the government reassigned two-thirds of the river's water for industrial use a decade later much worse was to follow 125 kilometers upstream from kiagua is one of the world's largest copper mines run by government-owned codelco it's the only mine in the region that uses toxic compounds of xanthate in the metal extraction process tests prove that in 1997 and in the year 2000 levels of xanthan mercury in the river lower were extremely high arsenic levels were several thousand times higher than normal it was a fatal dose what happened next sealed kiawah's fate developers offered to relieve people's burdens by buying their polluted water in chile water is a private commodity even in the atacama people can sell their usage rights to the highest bidder unable to farm the polluted and unproductive lands many in kiawah felt they had little choice but to sell up and leave 75 of the town sold their polluted water to the industrialists now kiawah is dying almost all the young have left in search of better opportunities in the city [Music] but the story isn't unique to kiawah [Applause] boom and bust is a recurring theme in the history of the atacama the desert is full of ghost towns settlements that prospered with the discovery of mineral wealth only to be abandoned once their resources had been plundered [Music] but the atacama is far from being mined out millions of years ago this desert was covered by a huge inland sea over time the boundless sunshine of the desert dried out the waters leaving a crystal residue with no rainfall to dissolve the crystals other sediments were deposited directly on top over many millions of years huge beds of subterranean salt formed [Applause] [Music] is an open cast mine on the desert coast it's one of the purest sources of natural salt on the planet [Music] the deposits here are five kilometers wide and 45 kilometers long there are billions of metric tons of salt here this one mine alone is big enough to satisfy the world's demand for salt for the next 200 years [Music] another mineral brought the atacama sudden wealth and sudden ruin [Music] this is the town of chakabuko it was built in 1924 to facilitate the mining of one of the most lucrative compounds ever dug from the sand [Music] sodium nitrate otherwise known as chili saltpeter formed over 20 million years by volcanic activity saltpeter was first mined in the atacama in the 1820s [Music] it soon became a key ingredient in products like fertilizers and gunpowder [Music] during the first world war as demand boomed hundreds of mines and processing plants worked the desert industrial towns were thrown up to house workers railways were laid down to transport the nitrate powder to the coast for export [Music] in chakabuko's heyday chile was producing two-thirds of all the world's fertilizer it was hard labor but the workers flooded in the town boasted the best amenities money could buy a plaza a theater a hospital and a church said to be one of the most beautiful in northern chile but the glory days weren't to last in the 1920s germany developed a synthetic saltpeter it proved just as effective as the natural thing at a fraction of the cost [Music] by the 1930s the industry here was in dramatic decline chile's economy collapsed today the atacama is littered with abandoned saltpeter towns nearly 200 of them [Music] but for chakabuko economic collapse wasn't the end of the story the ghost town would be resurrected in a new and dark chapter of chile's history [Music] on september the 11th 1973 general augusto pinochet ousted chile's democratic government in a military coup [Music] backed by the united states pinochet moved quickly to consolidate his grip on power by annihilating his socialist opponents [Music] [Applause] the new regime turned the empty houses of chakabuko into a concentration camp for political dissidence [Music] 1 800 prisoners were incarcerated here students teachers professionals labourers anyone considered an enemy of the state in all under pinochet a quarter of a million people were detained behind the barbed wire under the watchtowers torture and violence were meted out but it's taken a lifetime and a group of resolute women to uncover the truth about the most terrible atrocities they took place outside the camp gates witnessed only by a guilty few a city deep in the desert alone with her five dogs violetta's life wasn't always like this forty years ago she was a young woman in love with yes in september 1973 a chilean army squad was heading for kalama they would become known as the caravan of death led by army brigadier general sergio ariano stark the squad descended on four cities in northern chile their mission to identify socialist sympathizers mario was one of those who was targeted so violetta would never see mario again the caravan of death had got its man we are la carcer a pregnant mario marion mario and 22 others from kalama had been murdered shot or stabbed their bodies were thrown into a mass grave in the desert [Music] grieving wives mothers sisters daughters were desperate to discover their fate their anguish forged an unbreakable bond between them all meeting in secret they became known as the women of kalama 40 years later they still come together every week to share their memories [Music] lorena was just a small child when her father disappeared she sought comfort from friends only to find that pinochet's terror had thrown up barriers of distrust oh yeah but the women of kalama would not be intimidated in secret they resolved to find the bodies of their loved ones just months after the murders they began to search the desert it was 17 long years before they found what they were looking for they dug up the mass grave expecting to exhume bodies all that they found were fragments [Music] a is [Music] today this memorial marks the exact spot where their search ended but in a desert that preserves the dead like nowhere else a mystery remained why did they fail to find whole bodies in the sand eventually in 2007 more than 30 years after the men disappeared witnesses came forward to explain the mystery the women finally learned the truth [Music] a few months after the executions realizing the desert would preserve the evidence of their crimes the military had returned to the mass grave they dug up the human remains using bulldozers they loaded them into a transport plane and dumped them into the sea we may never know precisely what inhumanities happened here that night yet the women of kalama are relentless in their search for answers [Music] [Music] everywhere the atacama tests the human heart but the challenges are at their most extreme at its western edge [Music] the world's driest desert sits right next to a vast body of water along the pacific coast a string of small settlements are fighting for survival at the edge of the continent communities like chanavaya are so remote they can feel as though they've been forgotten the river lower sweeps into the sea here or would do if it had not been so depleted by industry upstream what little water does trickle through is heavily polluted so chanavaya has to depend on water brought in by truck and for weeks the vital delivery simply hasn't shown up matters are desperate and the authorities aren't returning their calls but today sees an electioneering visit by the district mayor electoral coincidence or not earlier this morning for the first time in 27 days the water truck finally arrived unfortunately it has a very gutsy one sonia moreno counts herself as lucky to have grown up here it was a community that valued education and inspired by her coastal childhood she went on to graduate as a marine biologist but now she's left a successful career in the city to join the fight for chanavaya's future is [Music] sonja takes pride in the small steps that chanavaya has taken to help itself [Music] [Music] one natural resource that's always been available here is fish moment but nowadays even cleaning and cooking the fish is a problem the area's scarce water is so polluted one solution is to use the scales of the fish themselves to filter out pollutants in a process called bioabsorption is but there's no guarantee that chanavaya will continue to get even the little water it does receive along the coast it has a competitor for supply these industrial reservoirs will be left to evaporate and their copper residue exported sonia feels chanavaya has been left high and dry sonja sees multinationals buying up the water with profits boosted by chile's low tax rates whilst chana via is drained of social investments [Music] every drop is precious locally it's pioneering a scheme to scoop water out of thin air these nets catch condensation from coastal fog the droplets are piped down to the town below [Music] sonia is always keen to demonstrate the system to others who may adopt it across the region it's all very low tech and it's just a start but for sonia even such a small scale community project is important it's a sign that she was right to come home and make a stand struggle for survival continues not far away the quest for water has quite a different meaning perched 2 600 meters above the coastal plain is one of the most important scientific research centers in the world here at the european southern observatory astronomers are searching distant galaxies this is an internationally funded venture a scientific oasis [Music] every night here is another working day foreign fernando salman needs to stay alert he's working with the world's most advanced optical instrument it's a complex system of mirrors which can see further into space than humanity ever has before it's so powerful that it can distinguish distant images as small and as dim as the headlights of a car on the moon would be to the naked eye despite all that it has a curiously unscientific name the vlt the very large telescope [Music] the vlt allows scientists here to study the molecular makeup of planets in other solar systems particularly the search for water on distant planets is the holy grail where there is water there may be life and perhaps an answer to the fundamental question are we alone in the universe the atacama is the ideal place to search for evidence humidity levels here are so low there's little danger of atmospheric moisture giving a false reading the atacama is so dry that nasa road tests its martian explorer here parts of this desert are effectively sterile not even bacteria can survive in the soil it's the closest thing to mars on earth and if nasa's probe can search out life here it's mission ready to find life on other planets [Music] by exploring the limits of life on earth astrobiologists are hoping to learn more about how life may survive on other worlds and there are some promising indicators but fernando knows the presence of water is not enough to sustain life it must exist in a stable form si noto is while the ultimate question about life on other planets remains unanswered this unique desert location is a daily reminder to the scientists here that our home in the universe is a very special one [Music] [Music] [Music] the driest desert this place lays bare the most fundamental questions facing humanity questions about the world and our place in it no one here can afford to take even the most basic necessities for granted and yet it's a place where fortunes can be found and extracted it reminds us that how we enrich our lives and what we pass on to our children these are choices about the use of scarce resources if what sustains life is worth pursuing to the ends of the universe and if what denies life is worth exposing no matter what the cost the atacama reveals in the clearest possible light how the balance of nature rests in our hands

Channel: TRACKS

Views: 100,812

Rating: 4.9186912 out of 5

Keywords: TRACKS, tracks travel channel, tracks travel, Documentary movies - topic, full documentary, travel documentary, culture documentary, Desert and Life, South America, Chile, atacama desert, atacama desert documentary, Landscapes, scenery, Sandstorm

Id: AdRIaS0tfJg

Length: 52min 26sec (3146 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021