A sick geography. The appearance of the Puna de Atacama in the notion of the desert

This article explains how the Puna de Atacama appeared in scientific narratives about the desert, based on the analysis of the texts of different travelers who, in the service of the Chilean government, traveled through that space during the second half of the 19th century. With this, the aim is to show a process of significance of the desert plateau, in which the void gave way to an orographic labyrinth, with a particular sociability and history, which was then again represented as a marginal space. All notions that allow us to reflect on the dynamism that characterized the images of the Puna de Atacama, the desert mountain ranges and, ultimately, of a frontier place, whose definitions depended on the contexts and actors that participated in its construction.