The Sacrificial Zones of “Progressive” Extraction in Andean Latin America

The Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change held in Lima, Peru, during the first two weeks of December 2014 constituted a powerful statement on the dynamics of contemporary resource extraction in Latin America. Convened by a coalition of Latin American workers’, women’s, peasant, and indigenous movements and organizations, it was meant to take place simultaneously with the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP20, to emphasize the need for alternative visions of the future of development (http://cumbrepuebloscop20.org/). Summit participants underscored that the world is experiencing a crisis of civilization brought on by high levels of fossil fuel consumption that are taken for granted. On the first day, the Third National Unity Pact of National Organizations of Indigenous Peoples of Peru and the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI) stated their positions against the disproportionate effects of climate change borne by indigenous peoples. On the same day, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) linked climate change to neocolonialism, proposing that the current waves of intensified resource extraction in countries such as Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia are a form of internal colonialism that sacrifices the lives and territories of indigenous peoples in the name of development and economic growth. The marches, protests, and strikes of rural peoples in the past few years, from Chile to Mexico, were lauded as seeds of resistance that must become global in order to protect the dignity and well-being of those whose lives are directly affected by resource extraction.

The Peoples’ Summit is but one example of numerous calls for rethinking the form and ideological adherences of “progressive extraction”: the contemporary push for expanding and intensifying extractive economies among so-called progressive leftist and left-of-center governments. Discussions on the Left, until recently, had challenged conventional means of development (e.g., relying on rents from traditional extractive industries such as mining and oil) but as leftist leaders succeeded in occupying national governments, their position shifted.¹ These governments now identify intensified resource extraction (e.g., palm oil, gas and oil, and gold and copper mining) as one major way to encourage economic growth. The rationale behind intensification is that with greater rents from high-demand resources, governments can better support the fight against deep-rooted poverty and marginalization—a direct state response to the political weight of social mobilizations in the 1990s and 2000s seeking a more responsible and responsive social contract between the state and civil society. However, the terms of trade and the rationale behind relying on extractive rather than productive sectors have continued unchanged. Latin American countries remain places of investment that attract global finance flows, and the emphasis on extractive economies continues to have high social and environmental impacts, as the Peoples’ Summit demonstrates. Environmental degradation, weakened local economies, forced displacement of communities, and threats against the lives of those opposing extraction are a few of the ways that extractive economies are concretely experienced by rural peoples. Despite strong resistance and calls for a reassessment of how development promises are carried out, the drive continues toward greater extraction in traditional and nontraditional areas. The Peoples’ Summit and other similar pan-regional events and forums point to the uncanny resemblance between present-day extractive economies in the region and past formulations of extraction-led development: the same territories and subjects are bearing the sacrifices intrinsic to this form of wealth generation. How are these relations of extraction taken up and how do they persist?

The three books reviewed here call for reflection on...