Standing in her garden on a rainy February afternoon, Andrea Ruscitti listed the names of the few lifelong residents of Isla Paulino who are still around. “Coca, Marta, Miguel, Rosana … ,” Ruscitti told Rest of World, her voice trailing off.

Isla Paulino lies only 200 meters from the coast inof the province of Buenos Aires, but life there is starkly different from what it is on the mainland: the island is off the power grid, which means its 50 or so residents rely on gas generators to keep food fresh during summers, homes warm during winters, and cell phones charged year-round. Only a few can afford solar panels.

Ruscitti spends $400 — the equivalent of her monthly salary as an administrative worker in the local government’s education ministry — to keep her appliances running.

A couple of years ago, it seemed like Isla Paulino’s luck was about to turn. In 2022, the Argentine government announced a plan to send lithium batteries produced at UniLib — a joint venture between state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the National University of La Plata (UNLP), and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council — to the island. The batteries were meant to power a solar park, finally bringing the community into the 21st century. 

But plans to inaugurate the factory came to a halt in December 2023, just as Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian, became the country’s president. Since taking office, Milei has suggested that his government will prioritize the removal of barriers for foreign companies to source lithium from Argentina, which has the world’s third-largest reserves of the mineral used in EV batteries.

In 2023, lithium exports from Argentina increased by 21.6%.

Rest of World spoke to a dozen people involved in the Isla Paulino project, including current and former public officials, residents of the island, and energy experts, who said the batteries would have changed the fortunes of those living on the 15-square-kilometer archipelago. “We worked so hard,” Andrés Aguiar, a field technician from Buenos Aires who spearheaded the solar park project, told Rest of World, referring to the plan to bring lithium batteries to Isla Paulino. “[The batteries] would have changed everything.”

During a televised interview in December, Milei said that the U.S. government, U.S. companies, and Elon Musk — who is expected to visit Argentina this year — are “extremely interested in [Argentine] lithium.” In February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Milei in Buenos Aires, and the two discussed Argentina’s “critical role in building supply chains for critical minerals that will drive the economy of the 21st century,” particularly lithium.

Companies from China, Australia, Japan, and South Korea have acquired large stakes in the country’s lithium reserves. Israeli company XtraLit recently announced plans to invest $104 million in lithium projects in Argentina. “From now on, it is forbidden to prohibit exports,” Milei said during a televised speech last year.

Aguiar first started visiting Isla Paulino in the early 2000s and moved there in 2011, drawn by the island’s charm. Worried about the persistent lack of connectivity and continual exodus of his neighbors, he turned to community organizing.

In 2022, Aguiar got word of the government’s plans to start manufacturing lithium batteries at UniLib, a factory across the channel from the island, and drafted a proposal to build a solar park on Isla Paulino. The energy captured there would be stored in the batteries before being distributed across the island. Aguiar reached out to UniLib’s team to pitch the idea.

UniLib jumped at the opportunity, Aguiar said. UNLP also trained 18 factory workers — the first lithium-factory employees in the country.

The plan was for UniLib to manufacture 1,000 batteries per year for national use.

By the end of 2023, UniLib was ready to start operating, with technicians on-site and the necessary equipment in place. But when Rest of World visited UniLib in February, three trained workers were guarding the building. They said the factory had been idle since December.

The workers said they hadn’t heard from any authority since the new government took office but that they were told work would resume in March. A spokesperson for YPF told Rest of World that “there has been no progress” regarding plans to inaugurate UniLib and that if it does launch, it won’t be until at least June. The company is currently conducting a review of the businesses owned by the group to narrow its focus on the oil and gas industry, the spokesperson said. 

Roberto Salvarezza, former director of Y-Tec, a technology company created by YPF and the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, told Rest of World he’d be surprised if the new administration revived the UniLib project. “If we use [lithium] carbonate locally, we’re going against a colonial scheme that indicates that value can only be aggregated elsewhere,” he said.

UniLib could create invaluable know-how that would, eventually, boost Argentina’s strength in regard to companies like Tesla. Victor Delbuono, an investigator from Fundar, an organization that monitors public policies in Argentina, told Rest of World. 

“Once you dominate the tech, you have a better influence when it comes to negotiating,” he said.

Back on the island, resources remain meager but loyalty is high.

For people on Isla Paulino, UniLib is less a matter of business than one of survival. The solar grid would have brought “cultural shifts,” said Aguiar, including making the island self-sufficient, since residents would no longer need to regularly travel to the mainland for basic goods. Still, he’s staying put.

Ruscitti, too, has no plans to leave Isla Paulino. She moved there in 2018 after inheriting La Quinta de Miguel, a local farm where she makes wine, liquor, and jams, from her parents. For Ruscitti, every day is a bigger struggle than the last.

“Having accessible electric solar power would have been the best thing that could happen to the island,” she said.