Abstract

This article analyzes the historical and contemporary relationships that the inhabitants of the Pampa del Tamarugal (Tarapacá, Chile) have built with the endemic tamarugo forest (Strombocarpa tamarugo) in the Atacama Desert. This territory has been subjected to continuous commercial exploitation since early colonial times, which now threatens its continuity and the associated ways of life. Working from an ethnographic perspective with different groups of mestizo peasant, Aymara Indigenous, and urban migrant backgrounds in La Huayca and the Pampa del Tamarugal National Reserve, we characterize their practices, discourses, and social imaginaries surrounding the forest, as well as its current situation. The results reveal that the sociocultural particularities of these groups influence their relationships with the trees, leading to certain disagreements among them but also shared diagnoses about the current threats, such as logging and overexploitation of the Tamarugal aquifer. We conclude that local ways of life have developed alongside the trees rather than apart from them, which given the current water and environmental crisisdemands overcoming the fictitious nature-culture dichotomy reproduced by institutional frameworks and recognizing local inhabitants as active agents in management and policy-making processes. © (2025), (Universidad Catolica del Norte), All Rights Reserved.