Community protocols as tools for collective action beyond legal pluralism – the case of Tracks in the Salt

This chapter explores the case of the 2015 Kachi Yupi (Tracks in the Salt) community protocol produced by Kolla and Atacama communities in the Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc area of northwest Argentina. This community protocol describes a detailed procedure for consultation and consent with reference to the communities’ worldviews, history and livelihoods. It was drafted at a time of heightened interest and permitted applications from extractives companies regarding lithium deposits in salt flats. The companies did not engage in proper local consultations in line with international, federal and provincial laws. The chapter describes the communities’ protocol as part of a longer chain of collective action to protect their lands and livelihoods ranging from litigation to blocking roads. It draws on concepts and approaches from scholarship on social movements to reflect on these different collective action choices, including the choice to draft a community protocol, and seeks to explain why the protocol did not translate into respect for the new consultation rules proposed by the communities. The case suggests the need for favourable political contextual conditions for community protocols to lead to formal legal change, but equally underlines that their potential for underpinning collective action goes beyond this. The process of drafting a community protocol can expand the action repertoires of local communities by strengthening them as collective actors.