Mexico: AMLO nationalizes lithium “so that foreigners cannot exploit it”

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ordered Saturday by decree the nationalization of lithium, an essential mineral for the manufacture of electric batteries, with the aim that a foreign country cannot exploit this resource.

“What we are doing now (…) is to nationalize lithium so that it cannot be exploited by foreigners, neither from Russia, China, or the United States. Oil and lithium belong to the nation, they belong to the people of Mexico, to you, to all those who live in this region of Sonora, to all Mexicans”, stated López Obrador during an event in Sonora, according to the newspaper ‘El Financiero’.

The Mexican president pointed out that “the conservatives” promoted support for lithium to be handed over to foreigners.

For this reason, he warned that the Judiciary and Congress have already approved this law.

“There are, of course, injunctions; you know how conservatives are; they would like Mexico to become a colony of foreigners, for it not to be an independent, free, sovereign country. They are just not going to be able to handle their support or their controversies in the Judicial Power”, he reiterated.

Nationalization is only the first step towards exploitation, said López Obrador.

“Now comes the technological part because the lithium here is, according to the technicians, in clay (…). So it requires special treatment, but researchers are already doing studies to find a way to extract it, process it, that is, separate it from the clay and have this raw material, which is basic for the production of batteries”, he explained.

The Mining Law establishes that the exploitation, extraction, and processing of lithium is an activity of public interest, which would threaten the rights of access to water, warned Aleida Azamar Alonso, a researcher at UAM Xochimilco.

For this extraction process, large quantities of water are used, but also large quantities of wood.

With information from LGI

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