“The Sanctuary of Water/ Puri Nuckyumtur”
Salinas Grandes, Salta, Argentina
WELCOME
We are the Indigenous Communities of Red Atacama (Lickanantay), and we have lived in this territory for more than 10,000 years. Here, water is life. Water is memory. Water is sacred, and the reason why the Sanctuary exists. We open our territory to you as a place to encounter. Walk with us, listen to our stories, share our food, our music, our knowledge, and our ways of seeing the world. The Puna is alive. Your visit helps sustain our communities and the defense of water that gives life to us all. Hospitality is also a way of caring for the territory.
We are not the past, we are the ancestral future. Our culture is still alive, walking in the territory.
COME AND MEET US
Comunidad de San José de Esquina Blanca
Comunidad de Cerro Negro
Comunidad de Rangel
Comunidad de Cobres
Comunidad de Incahuasi
Comunidad de Esquina de Guardia
Comunidad de Matancillas
Comunidad de Raíces Andinas
Comunidad de Lickan Antai Corralitos
Comunidad de Casa Colorada
Comunidad de Tipán
OUR RIGHT TO EXIST
We have lived here prior to the formation of states. Our presence does not require permission. Our communities have developed their own protocols of participation, for free, prior, and informed consent through Kachi Yupi (“Salt Footprints”) and ENOTPO (the National Gathering of Territorial Organizations of Indigenous Peoples). Our right to decide what happens in our territory is not negotiable.
Consent cannot be sold.
The land is life…
we are land,
we are water,
we are life
THE SANCTUARY OF WATER
Built by our communities from salt and water, Puri Nuckyumtur (The Sanctuary of Water) grows like an apacheta: collectively, stone by stone, through acts of memory, gratitude, and care as an offering to Pachamama. At its center lies a great mirror of water, reflecting the sky and stars. In names that interweave Kunza and Quecha, four mountains—constructed with nearly 6,000 tons of traditionally harvested salt by us — become complete as celestial bodies when the water returns their hidden half. Surrounded by orbital pathways, ~11,900 salt bricks cut and raised by hand formed stairways that ascend to miradors as high as fifteen meters, aligned with constellations important to us, such as the Southern Cross.
The Sanctuary is complete only when the water… mother, mirror, memory… returns its hidden half.
In our worldview, Pacha names the inseparable weave of space, time, and matter
- Mirror of Water: Diameter 81m · Radius 40.5m · Footprint 5,153 m²
- Ckapin/Inti (Sun): Ø 24m · height 12m · 35 steps to the mirador
- Yollestur/Hawcha (Saturn): Ø 15m · height 7.5m · 18 steps
- Haalar/Ch'aska (Venus): Ø 10m · height 5m · 12 steps
- Hoyri/Tiqsimuyu (Earth): Ø 10m · height 5m · 12 steps
- Walkable surface: 1,743 m² of orbital pathways
- Materials: ~7500 tonnes of salt in total
- ~11,900 salt bricks (34×16×12 cm) · 1,035 bags · 5,854 m of belts
We are harvesting the salt that forms the Sanctuary of Water using a traditional, local method that
has been passed down across generations. The salt crust is cut with a hacha (axe) to create salt bricks used to build houses. After these bricks have been collected, water of turquoise colours remain in the space. From this, salt is harvested into mountains and used for domestic use.
Copla
Pachamama of my land, watch over this sacred place;
may the sanctuary of water always be respected
APACHETA
“The apachetas not only mark the path;
they bless it. They are our spiritual beacons.”
There is no future without water
Ancestral futures are possible
Our People-Nation spans the territories
that today form northern Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia.
WATER UNITES US
Water is life, a right, and a memory; without it there is no future, and every drop is irreplaceable. We care for water and for wetlands, for the flora, fauna, landscape, and the people we meet. We care for and reaffirm the value of memory, language and ceremony. The salar is not an empty place and is the responsibility of us all to preserve and maintain its vital cycles of water and life.
Pachamama does not need us to conquer her; she needs us to respect her.
IN COMMUNITY WE ARE MORE
Whoever reads this, and is willing, is invited to join us—to give shape to the unshapable, to listen to the water's cycles and whispers, to build together a Sanctuary of Water. There is no single way to walk this path. From wherever you read these words, or upon the Salinas where the Sanctuary is rising, to welcome you is itself an act of resistance: proof that this land is loved, defended, alive—and that our way of living here, buen vivir, is possible. The Sanctuary may not endure. It may be stopped before it is finished, or fall once it stands. But to raise it together proves that another path exists. Every grain of salt, every drop of water… counts.
A SANCTUARY FOR ALL
The Sanctuary is not only for us:
it is a home for the the Puna de Atacama:
the vicuñas, flamingos, foxes, guanacos,
the parinas, eagles, and other animals.
The water we defend is the water they drink.
Nobody should be left behind.
Life exists in many forms.
Leave no one behind
THE CHALLENGES WE FACE
Climate change. The loss of ecosystems. Decisions made without consultation. Water scarcity and extractive pressures that see 2 million litres of groundwater extracted to produce one ton of lithium for electric mobility and monopolised intelligence elsewhere, leaving our territory—one of the most arid places on Earth—a sacrifice zone in the name of the so-called green transition. In contrast, the Sanctuary of Water proposes honoring water, the Earth, and our territories. No energy transition can be fair if it threatens water and life.
We, the Indigenous peoples, are barely 5% of the world's population, yet the lands we have cared for across generations hold much of the biodiversity that remains on Earth.
We are not a sacrifice zone
ONE ROAD, TWO ENDS
The materials extracted here travel thousands of kilometers to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles and digital memories. Decisions made elsewhere affect the waters beneath our feet. This conversation belongs to everyone. How do we confront climate change while protecting life? We are not asking anyone to stop moving, we are asking how we can generate a movement together in which no one is left behind.
Digital clouds erode ancestral memories.
FOOTER
“The Sanctuary of Water” was conceived by artist Tomás Saraceno following a direct request by the Indigenous Communities of Salinas Grandes, northern Argentina, for a permanent sculpture to facilitate community-based rural tourism. It is being constructed with Red Atacama, northern Argentina; the Aerocene Foundation; Studio Tomás Saraceno; and the support of Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, among others.