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Chapter Eight. The Risks and Results of Resistance to Resettlement
- University of Texas Press
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Chapter eiGht The Risks and Results of Resistance to Resettlement Just as any action produces a reaction, resistance to DFDr produces concrete outcomes. Regardless of whether the resistance succeeds or fails in halting displacement or at least improving resettlement, there are other outcomes that bring consequences for the community or region that has confronted the development project.The outcomes or results of resistance may or may not fall within the original agenda or goals of the movement. Although for reasons made clear in Chapter 5, I hesitate to refer to these outcomes as losses or gains, costs and benefits; references of this order do not seem inappropriate as long as there is no attempt to render a balance sheet so as to determine whether resistance is a viable option from an economic standpoint. Further, since outcomes are abstracted from the array of DFDr resistance experiences, they can be considered only as potential or possible results in any given situation. The Costs of Resistance Since DFDr resistance movements frequently confront vastly more powerful forces—either the state or major concentrations of private capital—there may be considerable risks and costs involved. At the most basic and most profound level, there can be serious personal risks in resisting. DFDr resistance can be very dangerous. Resisters and their leaders risk death and bodily harm in certain circumstances. DFDr resistance leaders have been murdered by both agents of the state and private mercenaries. Peaceful demonstrators, including women, have been grievously abused and beaten (M. Black, 2001). Detention for an indeterminate period of time without due process is also one of the risks of resistance. Recently in Mexico at least 5 people have been killed in protests against the construction of La Parota Dam in the state of Guerrero. In India Defying Displacement in March 2007, protests against the establishment of a Special Economic Zone (seZ) that would have affected over 40,000 people in Nandigram unleashed a violent attack by police and ruling party cadres that killed at least 14 (“Red-hand Buddha,” 2007), with estimates of the dead reaching as high as 50 (“Nandigram Turns Blood Red,” 2007). Reports of sexual assault and rape of women protesters were common in the narratives of survivors (Sen, Chattopadhyay, Ghosh, Murmu, Mollik, & Marik, 2007). In Guatemala in 1982, military and paramilitary forces killed about 400 Maya Achi men, women, and children from communities resisting resettlement for the Chixoy Dam (Colajacomo, 1999, p. 68; Johnston, 2005, 2009). As mentioned in Chapter 1, in the highly charged post-9/11 climate, opposition to state programs or policies may lead to accusations of terrorism, with all the potential abuses that label may entail. Although authoritarian governments with fewer legal restraints may be more likely to employ violent methods, such methods are not unheard of in ostensibly democratic regimes either. Regardless of constitutional safeguards, neither formal nor informal security forces at the local level may be particularly constrained in their treatment of resisters. Ethnic, religious, caste, or class prejudices may also buttress the ideological justification for such abuse. There may also be considerable economic costs to resistance. Resistance has opportunity costs. Economically, resistance requires the mobilization and expenditure of labor and other resources in novel ways, diverting time, energy, and resources from other important tasks and stressing communities that may already be struggling to meet normal needs. Resistance requires human and economic resources for organization, communication, and mobilization, few of which may be present in sufficient surpluses in project-affected regions to underwrite the costs of resistance. The time, energy, and resources necessary for organizing resistance movements can strain both household and community capacities. Urban people have jobs or work with regular time requirements that they must attend to in order to support themselves and their families. Rural peoples, at certain periods or seasons in the year, may have time to devote to meetings, organizing activities, demonstrations, and other resistance activities, but it is usually limited and at some point, under the pressure of producing their own subsistence, they must return to normal activities. Diverting time and labor from these normal activities thus brings the costs of not producing sufficiently and the risk of impoverishment and marginalization. Such costs can be reduced or avoided if resistance activities are spaced throughout or occur during slack times in the agricultural calendar. Where resettlement is already under way, resisters may run the risk of ex- [18.233.223.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:58 GMT) The Risks and Results of Resistance to...