Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona. Associate Professor of the Department of Historical and Geographical Sciences of the Universidad de Tarapacá (Arica, Chile).

My research agenda is at the intersection of cultural and political ecology, political geography, and environmental science. I seek to understand how traditional ecological knowledge, political economy, the process of state formation and the articulations of subaltern identities are assembled with nature in the production and reproduction of unequal territories. In my current projects I focus on understanding the socio-ecological transformations of the high Andean wetlands and the agricultural valleys of the Atacama desert in association with climate change, the privatization of nature, the cultural management of water, changes in land use and industrial activities.

Selected Publications

Mendez, M., Prieto, M. &. Godoy, M. Enlightenment of subterranean resources in Atacama. The 19th and early 20th century mining/water extraction in Taltal district, Northern Chile. Political Geography. 81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102194. (AOP). 2020.

Babidge, S., Kalazich, F., Prieto, M., & Yager, K. That’s the problem with that lake; it changes sides’: mapping extraction and ecological exhaustion in the Atacama. Journal of Political Ecology. 26(1), 738-760. 2019.

Bustos, B., Délano, J., and Prieto, M. Chilote Tipo salmón”- Relaciones entre comodificación de la   naturaleza y procesos de producción identitaria, el caso de la Región de Los Lagos y la industria salmonera. Estudios Atacameños. Arqueología y Antropología Surandina. 63, 383.402. 2019

Prieto, M., Salazar, D. & Valenzuela M. The dispossession of the San Pedro de Inacaliri river: Political Ecology, extractivism and archaeology. The Extractive Industries and Society. 6(2), 562-572.

Bustos, B. and Prieto, M. Nuevas aproximaciones teóricas a las Regiones-commodity desde la Ecología Política. EURE (Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales). 45(135), 153-176. 2019

Cupples, J., Prieto, M., & Palomino-Schalscha (Eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development. Routledge: Abingdon & New 2018.

Prieto, M. El Riego que el Mercado no Quiere Ver: Historia del Despojo Hídrico en las Comunidades de Lasana y Chiu-Chiu (Desierto de Atacama, Chile). Journal of Latin American Geography, 16(2), 69-91.2017

Prieto M. Practicing costumbres and the decommodification of nature: The Chilean water markets and the Atacameño people. Geoforum, (77), 28-39.2016

Prieto M. Transando el agua, produciendo territorios e identidades indígenas: el modelo de aguas chileno y los Atacameños de Calama. Revista de Estudios Sociales (55), 88-103. 2016

Prieto. M. Bringing water markets down to Chile’s Atacama Desert. Water International, 41(2), 191-212. 2016

Contact: mprieto@academicos.uta.cl

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4262-3786