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EXIS-56; No. of Pages 12

The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Extractive Industries and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/exis

Original Article

The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and

indigeneity: Anti-mining protests in Puno, Peru
Emma McDonell *
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, 701 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: In June 2011, over 25,000 protesters congregated in Puno, Peru to demonstrate against a recent mining
Received 22 July 2014 concession to a multinational mining corporation. Protesters employed an ‘eco-ethno’ rhetoric that
Received in revised form 15 October 2014 centered around the potential for the mine to contaminate local water sources and made explicit their
Available online xxx
indigenous identity. The mobilizations eventually provoked the central government to revoke of the
mining license and temporary halted all new extractive industry projects in the Puno region. The Puno
Keywords: protests present a case study to explore the impacts of neoliberal economic policies on indigenous
Peru
peoples, the factors contributing to the emergence of a national indigenous movement in a country
Puno
Extractive industries
where previously ethnic activism was absent, and the utility of eco-ethno narratives for indigenous
Indigenous movements. The paper is composed of three main sections and arguments: (1) that while overall the
Protest acceleration of extractive industry investment caused by neoliberal policies threatens indigenous
Mining livelihoods, international governance structures and communication technology provide important new
methods for indigenous peoples to secure international allies and legal support (2) that an indigenous
movement centered around opposing resource extraction is emerging in the Peruvian Andes (3) that the
eco-ethno narratives that won Amazonian indigenous peoples first-world environmentalist allies may
not be successful in the Andes, but that a different variant of ecological rhetoric has proved useful in
challenging state policies.
ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction culminating in the largest mining conflict in the Puno region in

In May 2011, 25,000 protesters congregated in Puno, Peru to
demonstrate against the Canadian Bear Creek Mining Company’s
plans to erect a 5400 hectare open-pit silver mine in Chicuito, a
province in southern highland region of Puno, adjacent to Lake
Titikaka, and alongside Peru’s border with Bolivia. Local commu-
nities were not informed when the federal government discreetly
overrode a constitutional ban on mineral concessions within
30 km of national borders to transfer mineral rights to Bear Creek
in 2007.1 Yet, as plans for the mine materialized and became public
over the next three years, fears of water contamination grew and
resentment of the lack of community consultation escalated,
* Tel.: +1 707 694 9082.
E-mail address: ekmcdone@indiana.edu
1
‘‘Decreto Supremo’’ (Supreme Decree) is allows the executive powers to override
legislative process for needs in the ‘‘national interest’’ that are immediate and
pressing. The sale of the Santa Ana silver deposit rights to Bear Creek occurred in
Decreto Supremo 083-2007.
recent history.
The protesters, most of whom identified as indigenous Aymara,
closed down the Desaguadero border crossing and blockaded all
entrances and exits to the city. Businesses closed, no cars ran on the
streets, and the police force retreated. Marching through Puno’s
streets day and night, they carried banners reading ‘‘Viva la lucha
Aymara’’ (Live the Aymara fight) and ‘‘Agua si, mina no,’’ (Water yes,
mine no) while chanting ‘‘Humala, Keiko, la misma cochinera’’
(Humala, Keiko, the same pig, in reference to the candidates in the
upcoming presidential election). ‘‘We are engaging in a much more
radical form of protest. Puno is under siege and we ask the
government to solve the problem now, ‘‘declared Walter Aduviri,
head of the Natural Resources Defense Front of the Southern Zone
of Puno (Frente de Defensa de los Recursos Naturales de la Zona Sur de
Puno; FDRNZP), the Aymara organization that led the protests
(‘‘Perú: se agrava protesta antiminera en la frontera con Bolivia,
2011’’). In late-May, Quechua anti-mining organizations joined in
solidarity and protests intensified, culminating in the sacking and
burning of multiple federal government offices in Puno. On May 24,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
2214-790X/ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
G Model
EXIS-56; No. of Pages 12
2 E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
President Alan Garcı́a declared the situation a ‘‘national emergen-
cy,’’ thereby authorizing military intervention and suspension of
the protesters’ civil rights. On June 26, after seven weeks of
protests, police shot and killed six demonstrators attempting to
take control of the nearby Juliaca Airport (Perú 21 2011; CNN Wire
Staff, 2011a,b). Later that day, President Alan Garcı́a’s cabinet gave
in, revoking Bear Creek’s license and enacting a three-year
moratorium on mining licenses in the Puno Department.
While the threat of water contamination was a central concern
for protesters, they invoked broader claims about the nature of
indigenous citizenship and livelihood rights. In a nation suppos-
edly characterized by a ‘‘peculiar absence’’ of indigenous activism,
the Santa Ana protests present evidence of a burgeoning pan-
ethnic indigenous movement directly linked to neoliberal restruc-
turing, and corresponding increases in extractive industries
activity.
This paper draws on media reports, email correspondences of
Puno residents, and first-hand experience in during the protest,
with the aim of situating the Puno conflict within an emergent
indigenous movement. I argue that the nascent movement, and its
explicit organization around indigeneity, is related to shifts in
Peru’s political economy and maturation of international indige-
nous rights discourses, both of which are linked to national and
global-level neoliberal restructuring, respectively. This coupled
anti-mining/indigenous movement can seen as a neoliberal-era
Polanyian ‘‘double movement,’’ a reaction to usurpation and
commodification of natural resources due to increases in extractive
industries activity made possible by market deregulation (Inaya-
tullah and Blaney, 1999; Polanyi, 1944). Yet, perhaps most
interesting is not the mobilization itself, but its organization
around indigenous, as opposed to class, identities. The Puno
protests illuminate not just the impacts of neoliberalism on
‘‘indigenous peoples,’’ but also the complex relationships between
neoliberalism and indigenous identification itself.
The Puno case also shows that while neoliberal economic
policies threaten rural livelihoods, new protections for people
identifying as indigenous are institutionalized in international
human rights law; and, that multicultural state policies encourage
certain forms indigenous identification. We see that neoliberalism
is not impacting people who are already ‘‘naturally’’ ‘‘indigenous,’’
but rather that the processes of neoliberal restructuring and
indigenous identification are intertwined in complex ways. The
violent repression enacted by the state in the Santa Ana protests
demonstrates the contingency of indigeneity as states aim to
discipline which types of indigenous politics and expressions are
‘‘legitimate.’’ Last, I compare the Andean indigenous movement to
nearby Amazonian struggles to show that the ethno-ecological
rhetoric employed by Puno protesters is distinct, and while
‘‘indigeneity’’ is considered a universal category, the ways groups
draw upon and use this identification is situated and particular.
With the fastest growing economy in South America, the
highest production of gold, silver, zinc, lead, and tin in Latin
America, and by some estimates the second largest indigenous
population in Latin America, Peru presents an exceptional site to
examine relationships between indigenous identity politics,
extractive industries, and neoliberal restructuring (IndexMundi,
2013; IWGIA, 2006).2 The Puno Department in particular can be
seen as a distillation of interactions between extractive industries
investment and indigeneity. With 1274 comunidades campesinas,
2
The criteria used by the national census defines an indigenous person was if the
head of the household or the head’s spouse had a non-Spanish, non-foreign mother
tongue. Other criterion yield drastically different figures, as high as 47% of Peru’s
population (OIT, 1999).
3
The legal designation campesino emerged in the Velasco-era Agrarian Reforms
and refers to someone living in a communal landholding. While campesino may be
seen as equivalent to peasant, many campesinos also identify with an ethnic group.
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
the Puno Department is home to 22.43% of the nation’s
comunidades campesinas (INEI, 1994).3 While the vast majority
of campesinos in Peru identify as Quechua, the country is also
home to a small population of Aymara, an ethnic group comprising
an estimated one-third of Bolivia’s population. The Aymara are
concentrated in southern Peru, and Puno is home to approximately
300,000 Aymara, about 67% of the nation’s total (INEI, 2012). As the
Aymara were never conquered by the Inca, they speak their own
language and consider themselves distinct from the Quechua even
as they overlap in territories. While many Aymara are living in
cities and employed in myriad industries, the majority who live in
Chicuito practice agricultural livelihoods centered around farming,
fishing, and alpaca herding and thus depend on access to fertile
farmlands, freshwater from Lake Titicaca, and open spaces for
llama herding.
2. Background and context: the protests overview
The Peruvian Government sold the rights to the Santa Ana silver
deposit to the Vancouver-based Bear Creek Mining Corporation in
2007 (‘‘Decreto Supremo-083,’’ 2007). Utilizing a Decreto Supremo,
President Garcı́a overrode the Peruvian constitution’s stipulation
that barred foreign businesses from owning resource or land rights
within 50 km of a border, arguing that the sale was in the ‘‘public’s
interest’’ (Molleda, 2011).4 Bear Creek planned to erect the mine
atop part of what was previously the Reserva Aymara Lupaca, a
conservation area where a small population of alpaca herders
resided (Mincetur, 2007). The mine would extract 47.4 million
ounces of silver over an 11-year period, yielding an estimated
US$173 million in earnings over the course of the mine’s lifetime
(Bear Creek Corporation, 2011). Construction was scheduled to
start in late 2011 with operations beginning in 2012.
In early 2011, tensions rose in Puno as multiple battles between
local people and the national government erupted around
extractive projects. While residents of the Azangaro District had
been calling for the restoration of the Ramis River since 2003 which
no longer supported fish populations due to contamination from
illegal gold mining, in March 2011, the community renewed its
demands. Later that month, 2000 southern Puno residents called
for the regional president, Mauricio Rodriguez, to declare Puno an
agricultural area, making it off limits to mining (‘‘Puno: Piden
cambio del presidente de la mesa de trabajo sobre minerı́a,’’ 2011;
‘‘Vuelve la calma tras protestas antimineras en Perú,’’ 2011).
The Santa Ana protests began May 9th when approximately
100 demonstrators blocked the Desaguadero border crossing in
response to a meeting the day before between the regional
president and the Deputy Minister of Energy and Mines (MEM) in
which Bear Creek’s Environmental Impact Assessment was
rejected (MEM, 2011). The protests were originally led by the
predominately Aymara FDRNZP, but in mid-May, the Quechua-
dominated organization, Confederación Nacional de Comunidades
del Perú Afectadas por la Minerı´a (National Confederation of
Peruvian Communities Affected by Mining; CONACAMI), joined
the protests, greatly increasing the size, transforming an Aymara
struggle into an indigenous rights issue.
The protests began with two main objectives directed at the
national government: a repeal of the sale of the mining rights to
Bear Creek, and cancelation of other extractive activity in the Puno
Department (Achtenberg, 2011a,b; ‘‘Vuelve la calma tras protestas
antimineras en Perú,’’ 2011). In addition to concerns about water
pollution, protesters argued that local people were not consulted
about the Santa Ana project, a violation of the International Labor
Organization’s Convention on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
4
Decreto Supremo is a special executive power to override the constitution, or
enact laws in special circumstances.
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E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
(ILO-169), which Peru ratified in 1994. Beside these discrete
demands, the protests were not simply about the Santa Ana mine.
They also crystallized a broad cluster of claims about indigenous
autonomy, livelihood rights, and the role of the state, as clarified by
one protester’s declaration: ‘‘President Garcı́a has sold our country.
We have nothing left, so we must fight to defend our land’’ (George,
2011; Perreault, 2006).
Over the next few weeks, an estimated 25,000 Aymara and
Quechua farmers congregated in and around the city of Puno. At
the peak of the protests, 600 trucks were stuck on the Bolivian side
of the border, unable to transport exports to Peruvian sea ports;
300 tourists were trapped, and economic losses for the entirety of
the protests is estimated at US$100 million (de Mendoza, 2011).
Protesters sacked government buildings, banks, and burned
several vehicles (Fernández, 2014).
The national government was relatively powerless against the
demonstrators. Even after President Alan Garcı́a sent 2000 grossly
outnumbered federal police to Puno, they did not confront the
demonstrators (de Mendoza, 2011; George, 2011). When an arrest
warrant was issued for the head of the FDRNZP, Walter Aduviri, he
resisted arrest by hiding in the Panamericana Television Building
where he had just been interviewed. Soon, protesters surrounded
the building in solidarity and he was even able to make a statement
on television in his defense (‘‘Walter Aduviri sale de Panamericana
TV,’’ 2011).
Protesters announced a weeklong truce on May 31st to allow for
presidential elections to take place on June 5th. Protests resumed
with renewed vigor after the election of Ollanta Humala, and
expanded to include protests of the Inambari Dam projects and
pollution of the Ramis River. On June 13th, over 300 demonstrators
traveled to Lima to demand a meeting with Prime Minister Rosario
Fernandez. On June 22nd, protests leaders Walter Aduviri, Rufino
Machaca Quinto, and Congressman of Puno Yonhy Lescano,
presented documents to the Deputy Minister of Mines indicating
irregularities with the original Santa Ana concession, and argued
that the mining permit was illegal as no water contamination
report was ever released. They also argued that the concession was
illegal as it was requested by a legal representative for Bear Creek
posing as a Peruvian citizen (Faura et al., 2011). On Friday June
24th, Garcı́a’s cabinet gave in to protester demands, revoking Bear
Creek’s license and enacting a three-year moratorium on mining
licenses in Puno (‘‘Puno: aimaras levantaron esta noche paro
indefinido luego de 45 dı́as,’’ 2011). The same day the compromise
was made, which is also the Peruvian ‘‘Dı´a del campesino,’’ violence
erupted at the nearby Manco Capac Airport in Juliaca when police
opened fire on a group of demonstrators occupying the runway in
opposition to the Inambari Dam.5 Six protesters were killed and
50 more were injured. This incident was caught on video and
provoked international media attention in numerous mainstream
outlets like FOX and CNN. June 26th, the federal government
revoked Bear Creek’s license and issued a three-year moratorium
on mining in Puno, and then declared it would honor prior
consultation, which was guaranteed when Peru had ratified ILO-
169 in 1994, but had not enforced (‘‘Decreto Supremo-032,’’ 2011).
Aduviri spoke before a group of 20,000 protesters in Desaguadero,
announcing the official end of the 45-day strike and expressed
condolences for the untimely deaths in Juliaca (Achtenberg, 2011a;
Faura et al., 2011; ‘‘Vuelve la calma tras protestas antimineras en
Perú,’’ 2011).
While clearly a victory for protesters, the battle continues. Bear
Creek’s CEO Andrew Swarthout has sued the national government
after losing 25% of the company’s share price in June 2011,
asserting that the contract withdrawal was unconstitutional and
5 7
Dı´a del Campesino was previously called Dı´a del Indio, and many still refer to it as
such.
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
3
violated free trade agreements between Canada and Peru. In an
effort to regain the concession, Bear Creek is considering offering
2–3% of net profits to the local community (Hill 5/1/12). In early
2014, the national government issued a 200-page report, calling for
prison sentences for 21 people accused of leading the protests.
These sentences range from 16 to18 years, and include Walter
Aduviri, as well as Juan Carlos Aquino Condori, the mayor of the
Chicuito Province, and Pablo Charca, CONACAMI’s president
(Fernández, 2014). Later in 2011, Congress passed by a unanimous
vote a new Law on the Right of Consultation of Indigenous peoples,
which mandates that indigenous communities be consulted on any
plan, activity, administrative or legal, that would involve, affect, or
take place of their ancestral territories (Rodriguez-Ferrand, 2011).
3. Theoretical background
3.1. Neoliberalism and indigenous rights: pillaging or protection?
Neoliberalism can be seen as a reorganization of capitalism to
facilitate free markets, strong private property rights, increased
privatization, the creation of new markets, and the intensification
of resource extraction (Harvey, 2010, p. 19). In Peru, while
capitalism may be unbridled in state policies, the neoliberal dream
faces new types of resistance in the form of communities
organizing and protesting against the transfer of land and
resources from local community ownership to the hands of distant
corporations.
The impacts of neoliberal restructuring on extractive industries
have been pronounced in Latin America, and especially so in Peru,
due in part to the nation’s exceptional natural fecundity in
minerals and other natural resources (Bebbington and Bury, 2013,
p. 11). Mining investment increased 90% globally between
1990 and 1997, 400% in Latin America, and 2000% in Peru (World
Bank qtd. in Bebbington and Bury, 2013, p. 10). Private investment
in Peru has accelerated since 2000, increasing from US$15.2 billion
in 2006 to US$21.5 billion in 2007 (IMF, 2008). The flows of
investment to the region are both intensifying extraction in
traditional mining regions, and are also expanding into frontiers
without previous mining investment. While the particular
manifestations of neoliberal restructuring are situated and
particular, as a distillation of some universal effects of neoliberal
restructuring, Peru presents an important case study to examine
patterns and contradictions arising with the reformulation of
global capitalism for indigenous peoples globally.
Neoliberal restructuring in Peru has tailored state policies to
engender a ‘‘safe’’ investment environment that attracts foreign
investors through maximizing the risk/reward ratios of mining
investment (Bridge, 2004; Krever, 2011). This has entailed
implementing policies that ease concession acquisition, reduce
tax burdens on foreign companies, enable the sale of property not
titled to a single owner (and thus transfer of lands from local
communities to investors), enable the use of ‘‘legal repression’’ in
resistance activities, and provide lenient environmental regulation
(Bury, 2005; Claps, 2014).6 Indigenous communities have borne
the brunt of resource exploration and by some estimates, over half
of the Peruvian campesino7 communities are affected by mining
concessions, making neoliberalism restructuring a threat to
indigenous livelihoods (De Echave, 2009).
6
Article 137̊ of Peru’s constitution permits special executive powers to declare a
region in ‘‘state of emergency’’ in a case of emergency, or perturbation of peace of
internal order, thereby permitting a temporary suspension of constitutional rights.
This power was used extensively during the Shining Path years, and today is
commonly used to stem anti-mining protests.
Campesino translates to ‘‘peasant,’’ and is a marker of a rural class rather than
ethnic identity.
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4 E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Enclosure and exclusion are necessary processes for the
creation of value that resource extraction relies upon. Enclosing
the subsoil also blocks access to surface resources, which are
integral to the livelihoods of people who live nearby subsoil
extraction projects. Thus, commodification of minerals often
ignites territorialized conflicts, as changing relations of access
are challenged (Bebbington and Bury, 2013, p. 8). In Karl Polanyi’s
famous exploration of early 19th century capitalism, he used the
concept of a ‘‘double movement’’ to describe how free market logic,
and the inherent commodification of resources, provokes reac-
tionary uprisings as people seek to defend human livelihoods and
the environment from the incursion of market logic. A double
movement is ‘‘a situation where attempts to expand the reach and
depth of capitalist commodification are met by more or less vocal
(even violent) forms of resistance’’ (Castree, 2007, p. 27; Polanyi,
1944). The early capitalist expansion that Polanyi describes
parallels, and is magnified in, the current expansion of neoliberal
policies, considered the maximum expression of unbridled
capitalist logic which calls for aggressive deregulation of markets
(Inayatullah and Blaney, 1999). Thus, the unprecedented enclosure
of natural resources linked to increased extractive industry
investment would, according to Polanyi’s model, yield a powerful,
and possibly violent, oppositional uprising.
Yet, processes of neoliberal restructuring and corresponding
increases in resource extraction cannot be read simply as processes
that work to extinguish rural (and/or indigenous) livelihoods, but
rather as dynamics that catalyze indigenous identification and
organization in complex, and often contradictory, ways. Peluso and
Watts (2001) argue that resource conflicts are not just disputes
about resource access, but are sites where broader issues of
citizenship, the nation, rights and identity are contested, meaning
that the rapid expansion of extractive industries is shifting and
reshaping Peruvian identities and group relations to the state. In
various case studies, resource extraction has been linked to
‘‘militant identities of various forms and scales’’ as it often
compromises citizenship in the face of nonlocal actors usurping
local resources (Bebbington and Bury, 2013, p. 4).
Neoliberal restructuring is also linked to new modes of
representation and legal power for indigenous peoples. Brysk
(2000b) describes how accelerating rates of global information
exchange are a ‘‘double-edged sword’’ that threatens human rights
through facilitating resource transfers to distant actors, while
creating opportunities for protection of many of these resource
rights through the internationalization of political institutions
(Brysk, 2000b). Globalization has brought about a ‘‘maturation’’ of
indigenous rights bodies, discourses and laws, such as ILO-169,
which construct special rights for indigenous people. Thus, the
category of ‘‘indigenous’’ is now a powerful identification that
allows access to special powers and legal instruments.
While discussions of indigenous identity often focus on
inflexible binaries between authenticity and fabrication, or
survival and extinction, Li Murray’s (2000) concept of articulation
helps us to understand identity as something that is not natural or
innate, nor invented, adopted or imposed. Indigenous identity is a
positioning that ‘‘draws upon historically sedimented practices,
landscapes, and repertoires of meaning, and emerges through
particular patterns of engagement and struggle’’ (p. 151).
Therefore, the contexts in which people come to identify
themselves as ‘‘indigenous’’ are the contingent products of agency
and the cultural and political work of ‘‘articulation’’ (Li Murray,
2000, p. 151). Li Murray’s problematization of the assumed
naturalness of indigeneity pushes us to consider not just the effects
of neoliberalism on indigenous peoples, but also the ways
processes of neoliberal restructuring and processes of indigenous
identification are co-constitutive. Thinking about (indigenous)
identity as a process linked to the delineation of collective agendas
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
illuminates the entanglements between neoliberalism and indi-
geneity. As neoliberal policies encourage surges in mining activity,
people affected by these operations define collective agendas. This
process of consolidating a collective agenda and coalition-building
in turn provides a ripe environment for collective identification.
This articulation of indigeneity is related to the establishment
of ‘‘multiculturalism’’ in national policies, which promote certain
kinds of ethnic identities. In Peru, the state deems multiculturalism
the recognition of cultural difference and ‘‘development of
respectful relationships between and among different cultural
groups in the country’’ (Garcı́a, 2005, p. 5). In recognizing cultural
difference, such ideology is ostensibly progressive for indigenous
agendas, as laws mandate recognition of cultural particularities,
and special programs are inaugurated for indigenous peoples.
However, as Hale (2002) notes, there is often collusion between
neoliberal agendas and the institution of multicultural policies.
Authorities utilize multiculturalism to judge indigenous struggles,
deeming some acceptable and others, radical, and therefore
unacceptable. Neoliberalism’s cultural project entails recognition
of a certain set of cultural rights, and vigorous rejection of the rest,
making a clear distinction between recognized indigenous subjects
and defiant and unacceptable ones (Hale, 2002, p. 485). Thus,
examinations of multicultural state policies must involve scrutiny
over which forms of indigeneity are accepted, as favorable
terminology can coat ‘‘menacing’’ policies.
The concentrated impacts of neoliberal restructuring in Peru
means indigenous peoples must negotiate the contradictory
dynamics of neoliberal economic policies, and increasing legal
power to people identifying as indigenous, and the policing of
‘‘indigeneity’’ in multicultural policies. As neoliberalism provokes
rapid increases in mining investment and changes in both national
and international indigenous rights policies, new identities,
struggles and political relationships are produced at rapid speeds
(Postero and Zamosc, 2006, p. 4).
3.2. The Peruvian indigenous movement: disappointing absence or
nascent presence?
The rise of indigenous movements across Latin America over
the past two decades has forced states to respond to peoples’
demands, which include concerns over territory, autonomy,
cultural recognition, and reforms of state structures (Postero
and Zamosc, 2006). While Latin America as a whole has seen a
‘‘return of the Indian,’’ most scholars agree that Peru is character-
ized by a strange paucity of indigenous activism (Albó, 1991; De la
Cadena, 2000; Gelles, 2002; Postero and Zamosc, 2006; Yashar,
2005).
Research on indigenous social movements in the Peruvian
highlands has focused on explaining the ‘‘peculiar’’ lack of ethnic
mobilization (Garcı́a and Lucero, 2004). Gelles (2002, p. 246)
argues that ‘‘the way that activists have organized along ethnic-
based lines [in other Andean nations] is virtually impossible in
Peru.’’ Yashar (2005) agrees that indigenous mobilization ‘‘barely
exists,’’ And Marisol de la Cadena adamantly asserts, ‘‘no
indigenous social movement exists currently in Peru that rallies
around ethnic identities’’ (De la Cadena, 2000, p. 323). In a nation
which, by some accounts, is home to 9.3 million indigenous people,
it seems quite odd that no sustained ethnic movement has formed
while neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia both have influential ethnic
activism represented in national politics (OIT, 1999). Three
theories aim to explain this anomaly.
The first explanation attributes the lack of indigenous activism
to President Juan Velasco Alvarado’s (1968–75) populist govern-
ment policies in the 1960s and 1970s that organized indigenous
Peruvians around class-based terms rather than ethnic or cultural
identities. The ‘‘de-Indianizing’’ agrarian reform attempted to solve
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E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
the ever-present ‘‘Indian problem,’’ or the cultural, economic, and
political legacies of conquest and colonialism, through attempting
to extinguish ethnic and class divisions by outlawing the colonial
hacienda and creating peasant-owned cooperatives (De la Cadena,
2000, p. 323). Not only did this de-Indianization erase state-
sanctioned ethnic identity, but indigenous people also appropriat-
ed class-based identities in later resistance to the conflict-laden
institution of the agrarian reform, indicating that they had
internalized such categories (Garcı́a and Lucero, 2004, p. 63).
Thus, the leftist discourse in Peru obscured the reality of ethnic
conflict, coating it with classist terminology and rhetoric (Garcı́a
and Lucero, 2004, p. 74).
The second explanation compares the emergence of indigenous
social movements in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, concluding that
the ‘‘striking absence’’ in the former is due not to lack of ethnic
identification, but to the repressive civil war in the 1980s and
1990s (Albó, 1991; Gelles, 2002; Yashar, 2005). The author
challenges the idea that the mutually exclusive chasm which
exists between class and ethnicity is responsible for the absence of
indigenous identification because campesino directly implies
indigeneity. The pervasive terror induced by the Maoist guerilla
insurgent group, Sendero Luminoso, which notably derided
indigenous affiliation, and the repressive state policies the war
provoked, severely inhibited other political organization (Yashar,
2005, p. 227). The key ingredients for ethnic social movements,
‘‘trans-community networks’’ and ‘‘political associational spaces,’’
were missing in Peru. As Sendero Luminoso assassinated
community activists and silenced existing organizations, it
rendered organization along ethnic lines impossible. This struc-
tural analysis argues that the Sendero years left a deep fear of
organization, especially in rural Peru, that continues to effect
ethnic identification and organization today.
The third explanation, delineated by De la Cadena (2000), takes
a cultural approach to explain the mystery. In Making Indigenous
Citizens, de la Cadena rejects the idea that Peruvian Indian identity
has been erased by national projects of mestizaje as asserted by
authors such as Gelles, arguing that middle class cuzqueños,
residents of the highland city of Cuzco, are appropriating and
redefining the term mestizo ‘‘to develop de-Indianization as a
decolonizing indigenous strategy’’ (De la Cadena, 2000, p. 325).
Urban elites, university students, intellectuals and shopkeepers
alike are practicing indigenous activism, challenging mainstream
perceptions of Indians as ‘‘backward, irrational and illiterate’’ and
essentially redefining what it means to be indio to include literate,
educated urbanites (De la Cadena, 2000, p. 316). De la Cadena’s
book helps complicate the distinction between Indian and mestizo
and problematizes post-colonial Peruvian identity. Yet, while
challenging other authors’ notions of an absolute lack of
indigenous activism, she ignores rural indigenous activism that
is not mestizo, such as explicitly indigenous organizations that I
will show do indeed exist.
In contrast, Garcı́a and Lucero (2004) and Garcı́a (2005)
challenges depictions of Peru as deficient in ethnic mobilization,
arguing that the scholarly obsession with explaining absence has
obscured a ‘‘vibrant presence’’ in Peruvian indigenous activism
that deserves attention. The author argues that the problem is not
with Peru, but with simple causal chains and narrow academic
conceptions of what counts as a social movement. Garcı́a does not
declare Peru’s indigenous movement triumphant and scholarly
analyses wrong; she rather outlines a more complex picture of
Peruvian indigenous politics (specifically in the realm of educa-
tion) that addresses the diversity of Peruvian indigenous activism.
Garcı́a also discusses the emergence of post-Fujimori actors and
spaces that are creating new opportunities for indigenous activism,
suggesting that scholarship on indigenous activism in Peru must
acknowledge rapidly changing local and global conditions and stay
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
5
current with emerging identities and novel forms of activism
(Garcı́a and Lucero, 2004, p. 159).
I take Garcı́a’s call for scholars to examine the multiple scales at
which social movements emerge as a point of departure. I append
to Garcı́a’s work a regional analysis of certain indigenous
mobilization around extractive industries in Puno, examining
the complex and creative ways indigeneity is articulated to
confront international mining industries and ecological destruc-
tion. Paying attention to regional-level trends helps us see a
nascent presence undetectable at the national scale and pushes us
to see spatial unevenness in the development of a mining-related
indigenous movement. I will show that the Garcı́a and Lucero
(2004) framework, which readjusts the academic gaze from a futile
obsession with national movements to a focus on the dynamic
local movements, allows us to see the multiplex and innovative
ways in which Peruvian indigenous people are engaging in
conflicts, resistance, and organization.
3.3. Eco-ethno rhetoric: Amazonian indigeneity in the Andes
For Garcı́a (2005), articulation of indigeneity in the Peruvian
Andes aims to fuse the colonial recognition of ethnic difference
with populist policies of national inclusion (p. 11). Indigeneity is
invoked in national politics, where some people are classified as
indigenous and others not, granting them certain rights and
compensation, while also reaffirming stigmas and racism. Indi-
geneity is relevant far outside national borders, as it is produced
across scales, both from ‘‘below’’ and ‘‘above,’’ making negotiation
of indigenous identity a sort of bridging of local and global
(Conklin, 2006; Lucero, 2006, p. 32). Paying attention to the
articulation of indigeneity in resource struggles helps us see
indigenous identity as a strategy that can garner power and
resources from a variety of sources.
While many scholars have asserted a lack of indigenous
activism in Peru, a few argue that this consensus demonstrates
an academic blind spot that systematically ignores the Peruvian
Amazon where indigenous groups have practiced innovative ‘‘eco-
ethno’’ politics for decades (Conklin and Laura, 1995, p. 330).
Amazonian Indians articulate an indigenous identity that inte-
grates indigenous agendas with environmental conservation
discourses. As indigeneity implies a unique relationship between
native peoples and environments based on lingering ideas of a
‘‘noble savage,’’ this idea has been reassembled to fit modern ideas
of sustainable development, casting indigenous peoples in roles as
‘‘ecological stewards,’’ essential partners in the environmental
movement (Greene, 2006; Haselip, 2011; Haselip and Romera,
2011). Eco-ethno rhetoric fosters powerful transnational alliances
with NGOs and development organizations that have been integral
to the victories of Amazonian indigenous peoples. However, the
eco-Indian ‘‘middle ground’’ is inherently unstable as it is primarily
a symbolic politics that cobbles together symbols and images, but
not common identity or economic interests (Conklin and Laura,
1995, p. 696).
Some of the successes of Amazonian indigenous groups in the
realm of resource rights can be linked to the internationalization
and ‘‘neoliberalization’’ of ‘‘green’’ politics, whereby the capitalist
mainstream seeks ways to off-set extraction and pollution and
prioritize conservation, while increasing opportunities for the
capital accumulation (Arsel and Büscher, 2012; Chapin, 2004). As
large-scale corporations (including but not limited to mining
corporations) pursue partnerships with, and thus fund, large
conservation organizations (e.g. World Wildlife Federation),
opportunities for groups in conservation ‘‘hotspots’’ expand.
However, while the relationships between indigenous groups
and international NGOs enable powerful alliances and create
transnational networks, they are rooted in contradictions between
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6 E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
First-World perceptions of Indians and indigenous realities
(Conklin and Laura, 1995, p. 696; Haselip and Romera, 2011).
Western audiences prioritize certain more ‘‘authentic’’ forms of
indigeneity over others, favoring Indians who live in tribes,
preferably deep in tropical forests, who don ‘‘feathers and body
paint,’’ and definitely do not own modern technology (Conklin,
1997). Amazonian Indians have engaged in this symbolic arena,
conforming to Western notions in order to harness the support of
environmentalists, assistance that often includes contingencies
and stipulations (Conklin, 1997). Nonetheless, while many
Amazonian indigenous groups have leveraged their particular
form of indigeneity to foster partnerships with environmentalists,
this is by no mean the only form of resource politicking these
groups engage in and should not be read as a strict division
between indigenous politics in the Andes and the Amazon. The
Amazon has also seen many ‘‘negotiation via confrontation’’ events
(e.g. Bagua) even as opportunities for partnerships with envir-
onmentalists grow.
Thinking through similarities and differences between Amazo-
nian and Andean ethnic activism allows us to illuminate unique
characteristics of an Andean eco-ethno narrative and problematize
the idea of a single indigenous activism model.
4. Analysis
4.1. Double movements in the neoliberal era
The Santa Ana protests emerged during a historical juncture
characterized by the intensification of neoliberal economic policies
and skyrocketing mineral prices. While neoliberal restructuring
began with the 1992 ‘‘Fujishock,’’ Alan Garcı́a’s administration
accelerated this process, enacting a ‘‘project of state reform
oriented towards the concentration of land and resources in
private hands’’ (Bebbington, 2009, p. 12). Silver and gold prices
increased in the early-2000s and peaked in 2011, encouraging
extractive exploration in Peru (‘‘Real Time Silver and Gold Price
Chart,’’ 2014). These trends clearly manifested in Puno where
mining concessions increased 279% between 2002 and 2010
(Mincetur, 2007).
With 15% of Peru now enclosed in mining concessions, overlaps
with watersheds and indigenous communities have increased, and
so have mobilizations in opposition to extractive industries
(MINEM, 2013). Parallel increases in commodification of Peru’s
natural resources and resource-related mobilizations exemplify a
neoliberal era version of Polanyi’s ‘‘double movement’’ (Polanyi,
1944). As the neoliberal agenda expands, enclosing and excluding
more of Peru, it is met by a backlash of increasingly vocal and
violent forms of resistance. Land and resource disputes in Peru
have skyrocketed in recent years and 74.6% of social conflicts
reported to the federal Ombudsman office are related to the mining
sector and 63% of conflicts are social-environmental (‘‘Reporte
Anual: Estado de Conflictos Sociales,’’ 2013). In fact, social unrest
surrounding extractive industries issues have claimed more than
100 lives since 2008 (Achtenberg, 2011a; ‘‘Reporte Anual: Estado
de Conflictos Sociales,’’ 2013). Increasingly, these backlashes are
organized around indigenous affiliation.
Mining concessions now cover 38% of the Puno Department,
overlapping with multiple geographies (Bebbington, 2009; ‘‘Puno:
Piden cambio del presidente de la mesa de trabajo sobre minerı́a,’’
2011). The Santa Ana mine conflicted with indigenous territory and
water resources, provoking peoples threatened by the water
contamination and thousands more who were linked to it by their
indigenous identity, to join in solidarity. While the ‘‘enclosure’’ of
the mine displaced a small group of Aymara alpaca herders, it was
the feared ‘‘exclusion’’ of many more people to clean water that
provoked the uprising (Bebbington and Bury, 2013). Water
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
resource conflicts provoke especially powerful mobilizations.
Water’s fluidity means point pollution (e.g. mine) travels, and
can mobilize distant communities under common demands for
uncontaminated water. Preoccupation with water pollution
expanded the geographical reach the protests to include hundreds
of whose livelihoods rely upon the Titicaca-Desaguadero water-
shed. Overlaps with territory claims and water resources proved
most controversial and impelled the impressive size of the
protests, illuminating how what matters about mining concession
geographies is not the land claim size, but the degree of overlap
with other geographies (Bebbington, 2009). Yet Li Murray’s
concept of articulation pushes us to question any simple ‘‘linkage’’
of the people displaced by the mine and the thousands of
protesters who joined in solidarity. While Aymara dominate in
Puno, the Desaguadero watershed runs through many communi-
ties which identify as Quechua or may not ascribe to a particular
ethnic identity. As indigeneity comes about through coalition
building, the common threat of water contamination is part of the
process of indigenous identification, not something that unites
already ‘‘naturally’’ indigenous people. In other words, people who
may or may not identify as indigenous, or groups with disparate
indigenous identities (e.g. Quechua versus Aymara) are linked by a
common vulnerability, which allows a common agenda to
crystalize. The articulation of a pan-ethnic indigenous identity
in the Puno protests likely did not exist prior to the protests but
came into being through the formation of a collective agenda.
The frequent use of lethal force and increased declarations of
‘‘national emergencies’’ during indigenous protests can be seen as
the policing of ‘‘permissible’’ expressions of cultural rights. While
the Peruvian state has assertively supported a revalorization of
indigenous culture in the name of multiculturalism (e.g. foods,
dances, customs) in the past decade, demands based on indigeneity
that obstruct extractive operations are not considered acceptable
expressions of cultural rights, and are violently repressed. The
Santa Ana struggle illuminates Hale’s (2002) notion that the
multicultural policies limit the types of negotiations about rights
and citizenship deemed acceptable through categorizing by
delineating which indigenous mobilizations are acceptable.
The Santa Ana protests fell into Hale’s ‘‘radical,’’ and thus
unacceptable, classification. ‘‘There are dark political interests here
that are demanding power,’’ said Garcı́a in a TV interview on June
26th, illustrating the national governments’ refusal to acknowl-
edge the validity of protester demands (Staff, 2011a,b). Garcı́a
blasted the ‘‘absurd pantheist ideologies’’ of the protesters on
national television, saying their ‘‘primitive form of religiosity’’
stands in the way of development (Garcı́a, 2011; Staff, 2011a,b).
Moreover, the use of police repression, indiscriminate shooting at
the Juliaca Airport, and endeavor to exact prison sentences on
protest leaders, illustrates that the national government’s aim to
demonstrate that forms of indigenous expression that impede
resource extraction would not be tolerated. The Santa Ana protests
were not simply about water resources, but sought to contest and
renegotiate the terms of indigenous citizenship in Peru. The
government was forced to cede to protester demands in Puno, and
respect the prior consultation laws it had long neglected, events
that illuminate how these mining-related protests are reshaping
the bounds of multiculturalism.8
Multiculturalism is in dialog with the development of an
international indigenous rights discourse, and the institution of
indigenous rights legislation that offers some leverage for resource
conflicts involving people identifying as indigenous (Brysk, 2000a).
8
Humala’s symbolic acknowledgment of ILO 169 and passage of a national Ley de
Consulta Previa in Bagua in September 2011 was not a product of only the Puno
protests, but the increases in mining-related conflicts and the lobbying by the Bagua
community.
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E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
In 1989, the International Labor Organization instituted ILO-169, a
‘‘legally-binding international instrument’’ that outlines guide-
lines for special treatment of the rights of indigenous peoples. It
mandates free, prior and informed participation in policy and
development processes that affect [indigenous peoples]’’ (ILO,
1989). Countries that ratify ILO-169 are subject to supervision, and
must align national policies to the Convention’s stipulations.
While Peru ratified ILO-169 in 1994, standards were never
implemented at the national statutory level. In 2010, an ILO
Commission made recommendations to the Peruvian state to
rectify failures in compliance with ILO-169. The commission was
especially concerned with the lack of a consultation mechanism,
and suggested that Peru suspend extractive exploration until a
mechanism was established. The Garcı́a government ignored these
requests (CEACR, 2011). Execution of ILO-169 has been haphazard
due in part to ambiguous use of terms such as ‘‘consultation’’ and
‘‘support’’ that allow ratifying countries to ‘‘adapt’’ or ignore such
sanctions. Nonetheless, ILO-169 offers a framework for indigenous
peoples to demand international support if states do not recognize
their claims (Barelli, 2012). In identifying as indigenous people,
ILO-169 gave the Puno protesters a legal basis to argue that the
national government violated international law by neglecting to
enforce consultation measures. Later in 2011, the Peruvian
Congress passed unanimously a new Law on the Right of
Consultation of Indigenous peoples, which mandates that indige-
nous communities be consulted on any plan, activity, administra-
tive or legal, that would involve, affect, or take place of their
ancestral territories, effectively integrating ILO-169 (Rodriguez-
Ferrand, 2011). While the ‘‘participation’’ involved in prior
consultation has critical limitations, and does not necessarily
restructure power relations between communities and corpora-
tions, prior consultation does at least mandate some recognition of
community needs and negotiation with communities (Cooke and
Kothari, 2001). The institution of international indigenous rights
laws encourages the groups who could identify as indigenous
(along with class-based, or other identities) to use this identity in
resource claims.
The Puno region is a hotbed where the contradictory forces of
neoliberalism’s support of indigenous identity and facilitation of
extractive investment converge in the materialization of an
indigenous Andean movement directly related to resource
extraction and corresponding water politics. While neoliberal
economics produce an unprecedented threat to rural land and
resource rights, the recognition of indigeneity through multicul-
tural policies, and emergent legal international mechanisms
provide new opportunities for resistance based on indigenous
identification. Thus, resource extraction, neoliberal policies and
indigenous movements should not be seen as discrete processes
interacting, but co-constitutive dynamics. As indigenous identity is
formed through processes of coalition-building, the surge in
mining investment in the region provides ripe opportunity for the
crystallization of a collective agenda around the threat of water
pollution and opportunity for local groups to share mining profits
(Li Murray, 2000). This collective agenda making is a foundation for
the invocation of a collective (indigenous) identity evident in the
Puno protests.
4.2. Puno and the Peruvian indigenous movement
The Puno protests, which were originally organized around an
explicitly and exclusively Aymara indigenous identity and which
grew to include numerous indigenous groups, indicate that
indigenous activism does indeed exist in Peru and that scholars
need to reconsider preconceptions in the quickly changing political
and cultural landscapes of neoliberal restructuring. Each explana-
tion of the ‘‘absence’’ of ethnic activism has merit and impacts the
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
7
particular materialization of the emergent movement, but the
simple binary of indigeneity being ‘‘absent’’ or ‘‘present’’ obscures
the reframing of mining-related protests around indigenous
identity. The Puno protests, which became known in the national
media as ‘‘el Aymarazo,’’ are part of a handful of mining-related
protests that invoked indigeneity and a reformulation of the ‘‘anti-
mining’’ agenda around indigeneity (Fernández, 2014; Presidente
regional de Puno responde por caso del ‘Aymarazo’, 2011;
Echevarria et al., 2013).9 Thus, the nascent movement is not a
sudden presence where there previously was absence, but rather a
rearticulation of mining opposition as an issue of relationships
between indigenous peoples and the state.
The signs and banners at the protests made clear that the
protesters identified as Aymara, even if the government did not
recognize them as such. Protesters flew flags with phrases in the
Aymara language and held banners referencing ‘‘nuestra tierra’’
(our land), framing their resistance to the mine around threats to
an ‘‘Aymara way of life’’ and resource rights particular to
indigenous people. The President of the Aymara communities
affirmed that the water contamination issue was fundamentally an
Aymara issue: ‘‘We have a cause: we want to defend our natural
resources. They belong to the Aymara people, whether in the air or
in the soil. When our people found out that the ground under their
feet had already been concessioned by the government, they
reacted’’ (Baird, 2011). Protest leader Walter Aduviri also
articulated their demands are the mine in relation to indigenous
representation in the nation state: ‘‘Para Alan Garcı´a no existe el
pueblo aimara’’ (For (President) Alan Garcı́a the Aymara do no not
exist’’ (El Comercio, 2011). While indigeneity may have been
dormant in the political arena for decades, the Puno protests
indicate that such identity was by no means erased. Rural
Peruvians, whom since the 1960s organized around class-based
identities, are reuniting with ethnic identities and employing
indigeneity to reframe resource claims around cultural difference.
The transformation from class-based identification to indige-
nous identification is evidenced by CONACAMI’s appropriation of
indigenous rights language. CONACAMI began in 1997 as an
campesino organization that sought to draw attention to the
environmental impacts of mining (Conacami, 2011; Greene, 2006).
While the organization still focuses on mining issues, in 2003, it
rewrote its institutional framework, reconstituting CONACAMI to
focus on indigenous rights and political participation (Conacami,
2011; Poole, 2010). CONACAMI now emphasizes collective
ancestry, self-recognition of Quechua and Aymara communities,
joining the continental Andean indigenous movement, and
cultivation of the sumaq kawsay (translated loosely as ‘‘good life’’;
an Andean concept referring to the idea that ‘‘good life’’ comes
from harmonious social relations with humans and non-humans)
(Zimmerer, 2012). Changes in CONACAMI’s institutional principles
represent a broader move to reinscribe concerns with mining in an
indigenous rights framework that fosters ties with Amazonian
groups, a broader Andean movement, and which potentially
harness power from international legal bodies. Additionally, by
organizing around collective indigeneity, protests can articulate
more complex demands of being either for or against mining.
While an orthodox environmental contamination rhetoric implies
a group is simply ‘‘anti-mining,’’ indigeneity asserts a broader
claim that outside groups (the state, multi-national mining
corporations) must negotiate with local groups, thereby offering
opportunity for local groups to also allow for mines, on their
own terms and after benefits for local communities have been
negotiated.
9
The suffix ‘‘-azo’’ in this context refers to a hit or sudden movement. The use of
‘‘Aymarazo’’ in national media then illuminates that the events were a surprise, and
also the understanding of the events as an ethnic-based uprising.
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The Puno protests were embedded in an emerging Peruvian
indigenous web that connects the FDRNZP, CONACAMI, and the
Amazonian indigenous organization Asociación Interétnica de
Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP). The Conference of the
Permanent Conference of the Indigenous Peoples of Peru (COPPIP)
was created in 1997 to facilitate interaction between these groups
(Greene, 2006, p. 253). The COPPIP is not an organization in a
traditional sense, but an informal conference. Other efforts to bring
together indigenous groups through the state have been marred by
conflict (e.g. First Lady Elaine Karp’s failed attempt to unite groups
in CONAPA) and others have slowly become inactive (e.g. COICA).10
Yet even these failures have fostered the conversation and
communication webs that form today’s nascent Peruvian indige-
nous movement (Greene, 2006, p. 253). The state’s National
Institute for Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian Peoples’ Develop-
ment (INDEPA) lost much of its functional autonomy during the
Garcı́a Administration, and was absorbed into the Ministry of
Culture. In 2011, various indigenous and campesino organizations
formed the ‘‘Unity Pact’’ to demand the recovery of INDEPA’s
autonomy and responsibilities, a move demonstrating that in Peru,
campesino can imply indigenous, and people often move back and
forth between the categories.
We see further evidence of a growing web of horizontal
relationships between indigenous organizations in Peru in
conventions that bring together different indigenous confedera-
tions to discuss collective ‘‘indigenous’’ issues. The ‘‘Agua, Minerı´a y
Desarrollo en el Perú de Hoy’’ (Forum on ‘‘Water, Mining and
Development in Peru Today’’) and the Foro Nacional de los Pueblos
(National Forum on Communities) both of which brought together
numerous organizations and outside experts with the purpose of
‘‘revitalizing communities affected by mining over the current
model of development based on extractive industries, to ensure the
effective exercise of our rights as peoples affected by mining and
public policy’’ (2012). In early-2012, communities from Cajamarca,
Puno, Cusco, and Arequipa marched in their respective regions in
solidarity with the Gran Marcha Nacional por el Agua, a collective
demonstration that sought rights to prior consultation and clean
water for Peru’s indigenous peoples (SERVINDI, 2012a,b). While
the demonstration was implicitly about extractive industries (all
involved communities had experienced recent conflicts with
mining projects), they framed the march around indigenous-
specific rights to water resources. Thus, the reaction to mining was
more implicit in their demands for prior consultation and
uncontaminated water.
While class-based political organization dominated in the
second half of the 20th century in Peru, as the clout of indigeneity
increases due to the globalization of indigenous rights discourse
and law and the institution of multiculturalism, campesinos are
articulating indigeneity and challenging the category of
campesino. Even as the Aymara community is not recognized by
the Peruvian state as ‘‘indigenous,’’ by self-defining as ‘‘indige-
nous,’’ it lays claim to a new set of political rights that are not
available in the state campesino category. While a person’s choice
to identify as ‘‘indigenous’’ does not mean they cannot simulta-
neously identify as campesino, the surge of indigenous identifica-
tion in protest demonstrations seems to indicate a demonstrable
shift in the political identities of rural highland communities.
Yashar’s (2005) argument is that a lack of ethnic activism is due
to the absence of ‘‘trans-community networks’’ and ‘‘political
associational spaces’’ attributable to repressive Civil War era
policies that outlawed the organizing of activities especially in
rural areas. Very little organizing along ethnic lines or otherwise
10
Comisión Nacional de Pueblos Andinos, Amazónicos y Afro-Peruanos (CONAPA)
and Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca Amazónica (COICA) are
both considered failed attempts for state-led indigenous organizations.
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
happened in the 1980s or 1990s due to lack of the structural
preconditions that allow for movements to precipitate. The Puno
protests illustrate that while the national government still
employs repressive tactics (e.g. shooting protesters, exacting
prison sentences on protest leaders), enough ‘‘political associ-
ational spaces’’ are opening up to generate large-scale demonstra-
tions. Dialog spaces, both physical and virtual, are opening up to
foster ‘‘trans-community networks,’’ linking Aymara, Quechua,
and Amazonian indigenous organizations. Inter-organization
forums, and the surge in use of websites and blogs, are evidence
of the development of such spaces. This is not to say that political
repression has disappeared, but that the degree of control and fear
has been reduced enough to allow for a movement to emerge.
While urban elites may have appropriated indigenous symbols
into mestizo identities, the Puno protesters exhibited a form of
indigeneity that was defined based on their relationship to the
land, and little on performing symbolic indigeneity (De la Cadena,
2000). Protesters flew banners articulating their opposition to the
mine as both environmental hazards and a threat to indigenous
livelihoods. ‘‘Agro si, mina no,’’ (Agriculture yes, mining no’’) and
‘‘No a la contaminación del medio ambiente’’ (‘‘No to the
contamination of the environment’’) read banners, drawing upon
an environmental contamination rhetoric. ‘‘No a la Mina Santa Ana.
Viva la lucha Aymara. Fuerza hermanos’’ (‘‘No to the Santa Ana mine.
Live the Aymara fight. Fight brothers.’’) read many other signs,
indicating that mining projects were mutually exclusive with
Aymara agricultural livelihoods, and thus indigeneity was about
relationships to land and resources. In television appearances,
Aduviri often donned a rainbow tassel (characteristic indigenous
symbol for both Quechua and Aymara) and articulated the struggle
as explicitly Aymara. Protesters made clear that they saw their
struggle not as campesino, but about regional autonomy and
indigenous rights. The Puno protests show that while the idea that
everyone in Peru is partially indigenous may render rural
indigeneity not quite as distinctive from mainstream society, as
is the case in some other nations, multiple forms of indigeneity co-
exist and the existence of indigenous mestizos does not preclude or
make a rural, ecologically based indigeneity hollow.
The emergent indigenous/anti-mining movement in the
Peruvian highlands should not be seen as a sudden surge in
protest activity where none existed previously, but rather as a
reframing of the protester demands in mining conflicts. By
invoking ‘‘indigeneity’’ rather than a simple (environmentalist)
‘‘anti-mining’’ position, protesters do not foreclose the opportunity
to allow the mine on their own terms. Indigenous identification
allows protesters to articulate a more complex set of demands and
construct themselves as a groups who must be involved in
negotiations about the mine (Echevarria et al., 2013).
The Puno protests are an example of a broader shift in mining
protest rhetoric evident in all recent high profile conflicts in the
Peruvian highlands. Earlier in 2011, a 17-day protest in the
Arequipa Department surrounding the Tia Marı́a Project was
organized around indigenous identity and water contamination
(La desigualdad social se dispara pese al éxito de la economı́a
peruana, 2011). The protests ended when police shot three
demonstrators and the federal government canceled the project.11
In May 2012, 50 protesters and police were injured when the
federal government declared a ‘‘national emergency’’ in an effort to
dismantle in demonstrations against Xstrata’s Tintaya copper
project in Espinar. These protests also explicitly invoked indige-
nous rhetoric and water contamination rhetoric. In July 2012,
protests erupted over the Conga gold mine project in Cajamarca.
Like the Puno protests, the Conga protests were organized around
11
Conflicts around the Islay community of Arequipa and the national government
around the Tia Maria project continue at present.
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water contamination and indigeneity, and won support of various
indigenous organizations from within and outside Peru (SERVINDI,
2012a,b). Newmont mining suspended the project in 2012 after
five lives were lost in clashes, and the project remains stalled. The
framing of the Puno protests around indigeneity, CONACAMI’s
reorientation around indigenous issues, and a number of other
‘‘anti-mining’’ demonstrations organized around indigeneity
illuminates a decisive turn towards indigeneity rhetoric in
mobilizations around mining in the Andean highlands.
The absence of indigenous activism in Peru is an antiquated
notion, and scholars must pay attention to a lively indigenous
movement emerging in response to increased rates of resource
extraction and the emergence of indigeneity as a powerful
category with the potential to secure global political resources.
While the coupling of these forces may incite indigenous move-
ments worldwide, specific narratives and strategies used to
articulate this universal indigenous category vary. The following
section examines the ecological narrative employed in the Santa
Ana protests.
4.3. A distinctly Andean eco-ethno identity
While ‘‘indigeneity’’ may be a global category, the ways in
which it is understood and invoked are context-dependent. In
other words, there exists not one, but many, indigeneities.12 In this
section, I investigate some particularities about the Andean
indigenous ‘‘eco-ethno’’ narrative employed in the Puno protests
through comparison to Amazonian eco-ethno narratives (Greene,
2006). I address the ways outside actors (e.g. international
environmental NGOs) interpret these different indigeneities, while
pointing to legal, political economic, and institutional factors that
have reinforced the bifurcation of highland and lowland indigene-
ities in Peru.
Essentialized distinctions between highland and Amazonian
indigeneities date back to colonial ideas of racial difference. Early
colonial accounts of Peru located Amazonian and highland serranos
(descendants of the Inca) on different points on the ‘‘yardstick of
civilization.’’ Amazonian natives were often considered racially
inferior due in part to their tribal organization, whereas highland
peoples were considered slightly more advanced and governable.
Alexander Von Humboldt’s 19th century Chimborazo map orga-
nized Peru into a tripartite coast/highlands/Amazon configuration.
This scheme remains a paradigm for imaginations of the nation’s
ecological and racial geography and reinscribed differences
between highland and lowlands (Zimmerer, 2011). While clearly
major cultural differences existed and exist between highland and
lowland indigenous peoples, early ideas about differences in their
degree of indigenousness continue to impact their respective
abilities to make claims to modern indigenous rights.
Differences between highland and lowland indigeneities were
fortified by different postcolonial economic trajectories. While the
semi-feudal hacienda system in which a mestizo landlord rules over
indigenous serfs dominated throughout the highlands, Amazonian
communities were generally more independent from colonial
rulers, and later the Peruvian state. When President Juan Velasco’s
revolutionary government sought to dismantle the hacienda
system during the Agrarian Reform of the 1960s and 1970s, it
set in place distinctions between the communal land rights
arrangements available to lowland and highland peoples. While
the actual legal rights of the different groups are extremely similar
today, the highland communities were designated with the
12
To clarify my point about multiple indigeneities. Indigeneities is pluralized not
to emphasize the many cultures, but the many ways this abstract notion is
conceived and asserted in relation to particular cultural histories, concepts, and
institutional structures for the articulation of indigeneity.
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
9
class-based comunidad campesina while lowland peoples contin-
ued to be ‘‘culturally’’ defined with the comunidad nativa. The use
of a class-based term for highland indigenous peoples essentially
de-emphasized cultural difference by defining them as peasants,
and reified the ‘‘extreme’’ cultural difference of the Amazonian
peoples (Greene, 2006). Thus, differences between highland and
lowland indigeneities are not just a matter of actual cultural
differences, but are also a product of different relationships
between the Peruvian government and the respective groups,
economic histories, and representational histories.
Contemporary Andean indigeneity has been conceptualized in
a couple of ways. Garcı́a (2005) sees the articulation of indigeneity
in the Peruvian Andes a process of ‘‘cobbling together’’ identities
and discourses, fusing the colonial recognition of ethnic difference
with populist policies of national inclusion (p. 11). De la Cadena
(2010) argues that indigenous protests are not just about identity
politics, but can unsettle the Western conception of ‘‘politics’’ as a
realm for humans to debate human matters. By invoking
nonhuman earthbeings (e.g. mountain gods) in political debate,
the intrusion of indigenous belief systems (or ‘‘nature-cultures’’
as she deems them) into Western politics ruptures Western
‘‘politics.’’ In addition, they present a challenge to ‘‘multicultural-
ism,’’ in which ‘‘beliefs’’ are deemed ‘‘worthy of preservation’’ as
long as they do not claim their right to define reality. Instead, the
rise in indigenous protests do indeed claim to define a contrasting
reality (346).
Indigeneity suggests intimacy with the natural world and a
connection to a specific locality, which then further implies special
rights to ancestral territories. The Aymara protesters articulated
indigeneity based on farming livelihoods, which relied on clean
water sources. In signs and banners, they repeatedly made clear
that their unique relationship to land was threatened by the mine,
and thus the struggle did not focus on territory rights, but resource
claims. In the relatively sparse media interviews with protesters,
some used native spirituality to make there arguments, referenc-
ing the Pachamama, or Mother Earth (Vargas, 2011). Others
constructed an ecological narrative expands traditional indigenous
claims to territory to a right to uncontaminated natural resources:
‘‘We are the people who look after the land, who defend nature.
The governments, the authorities have sold us. I am old but I will
strike again if necessary. I want us to go forward and fight. I don’t
want them to poison us, to poison our children,’’ said organizer
Mauro Cruz in a press interview (Baird, 2011). Basing their claims
around pollution, rather than territory, meant that their demands
could not be met by offering land, as is often seen as compensation
in mining conflicts. Yet it was the complex toggling between
invocations of earthbeings and pollution issues (e.g. calling into
question the environmental impact report) that rendered their
rhetoric powerful in its ability to mobilize people with shared
beliefs, and in demanding the state to listen by contesting the
legality of the mine.
Aymara identity, and indigeneity in general, is produced from
below and above, bridging the global and local (Conklin, 1997;
Lucero, 2006). Yet, the local and global often misunderstand each
other and may not agree on what authentic indigeniety is or looks
like, forcing indigenous people in an unstable ‘‘middle ground’’
where they must negotiate how others see indigeneity and their
lives (Conklin, 1997). This middle ground has been investigated in
relationships between NGOs and indigenous Amazonian people.
Yet, this friction is even more pronounced in Andean struggles as
the Andean symbols of indigeneity do not match Western
conceptions of the ‘‘Indian.’’ Protesters performed indigeneity
symbolically through flying colorful-checkered Quechua flags and
making indigeneity explicit on banners. But the protesters did not
have a conventional ‘‘indigenous look’’ (e.g. Conklin’s feather and
body paint). Men wore brown pants and ball caps, and women
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EXIS-56; No. of Pages 12
10 E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
wore long skirts, clothing that did not even awkwardly fit into
Western conceptions of Indians.
Many scholars have addressed the success of indigenous
activism in the Peruvian Amazon, commending their utilization
of an innovative ‘‘eco-ethno’’ politics that has won them invaluable
first-world allies in the environmental movement (Conklin and
Laura, 1995; Greene, 2006; Schwartzman and Zimmerman, 2005).
Amazonian Indians are seen as indispensible allies in the fight to
save the rainforest and have been cast in roles as ‘‘ecological
stewards.’’ Yet, this coupling of ecological and cultural extinction
crises cannot apply to all indigeneities, nor can it encapsulate all
indigenous resource claims. Quechua and Aymara do not fit the
privileged stereotypical indigeneity, and accordingly, the Puno
protests did not amass an uproar comparable to that of Amazonian
struggles. The worth of indigenous Amazonian people in the
environmental movement is grounded in the Western ideas of a
‘‘noble savage’’ and their location in a ‘‘biodiversity hotspot.’’ The
Andean people are not seen as ideal ecological stewards as they
practice agriculture, sometimes using technology and often selling
to markets. More importantly, they do not inhabit a biodiversity
‘‘hotspot’’ – a criterion based on a prescribed quantity of endemic
species and a loss of 70% of vegetation – that attracts conservation
NGOs. Moreover, as many conservation NGOs now receive large
donations from mining companies, they hesitate to support
indigenous groups that directly challenge mining (Chapin,
2004). So while NGO-indigenous group alliances seem to promise
a conflict-free future for indigenous peoples in their resource
claims, this model applies to only particular forms of indigeneity,
and particular resource claims (i.e. rarely those that conflict with
mining companies who are now important contributors to
conservation NGOs).
Thus, international conservation organizations had little to gain
from allying with the Puno protests, and perhaps the Peruvian
(non-Amazonian) indigenous movement writ-large. The protests
harnessed meager support from international institutions. Am-
nesty International sent a representative to Puno to confirm the
deaths at the airport and then released a statement urging the
Peruvian Government to enforce prior consultation. The North
American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) has also since
released a handful of articles on the events in Puno and on Peruvian
mining issues at large. However, the support from international
NGOs has been paltry, and no large environmental organizations
have expressed interest in the protests. While claiming indigeneity
facilitates legal mechanisms for groups claiming indigeneity, only
certain indigeneities are able to secure environmental NGO
support and First-World allies. The neoliberalism of ‘‘green’’
politics is not very helpful to the Peruvian Andean movement.
However, the Andean eco-ethno narrative harnesses power in
different ways. Rather than relying on NGO alliances for protection,
they employ ‘‘radical’’ protest tactics that can force legislative
changes that would recognize indigenous rights.
While the protests did not interest environmental NGOs, media
attention brought focus on protest repression in Peru. Notably, the
protests were not considered newsworthy until blood was spilled
and investments harmed. The Associated Press covered the
destruction of government buildings in Puno on May 27th, and
was aired on both FOXand ABC news (Anti-Mining Protesters Sack
Buildings in Peru, 2011). On June 26 violence erupted and Bear
Creek’s mining license was revoked, leading to more extensive
coverage. All major international media outlets from Reuters to Al-
Jazeera covered the event, some even including the YouTube video
of the shootings in which viewers can witness indiscriminate
brutality of national police (‘‘Peru halts mine project after
protesters shot,’’ 2011; ‘‘Peruvian anti-riot police,’’ 2011).
The incident ignited discussion in investment journals specu-
lating a ‘‘declining investment climate’’ in Peru. Many conjectured
Please cite this article in press as: McDonell, E., The co-constitution of neoliberalism, extractive industries, and indigeneity: Anti-mining
protests in Puno, Peru. Extr. Ind. Soc. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2014.10.002
that the revocation of Santa Ana’s license meant an end to an era of
bonanza. ‘‘Perceived protestors’ success in the Puno region has the
potential to empower a more broad-based anti-mining movement
in the country, causing investor uncertainty over the security of
exploration and mining concessions throughout Peru, ‘‘said
investment analyst Andrew Karp (Kosich, 2011). Fear that Bear
Creek’s loss could befall other corporations investing in the region
is pushing investors to be cautious before investing in Peru, or to
recognize the need to negotiate with local communities.
More recently, the issue of defining indigeneity and resource
extraction came to a head in April 2013 when the Mines and
Energy Minister Jorge Merino convinced Humala to exclude
Quechua-speaking (highland) indigenous communities from the
database of communities eligible for prior consultation. During a
keynote speech on April 28th, ‘‘In the highlands, the majority are
agrarian communities, the product of the agrarian reform,’’ he said.
‘‘Overwhelmingly the native communities are in the jungle’’ (Peru
Support Group 2013). Clearly, the surge in indigenous identifica-
tion in mining conflicts has threatened the ability of the MEM to
facilitate extractive exploration at the rate it had been undertaken
before implementation of the prior consultation law (Tummina,
2013).
Whereas alliances with NGOs have allowed Amazonian
indigenous peoples to make significant steps toward protecting
their own territories, the Puno protests forced the national
government to make changes, and induced fear in mining
companies, setting a precedent that the resource extraction
free-for-all in the Andes will no longer be tolerated without
negotiation. Nonetheless, the government’s recent move to
redefine ‘‘indigeneity’’ in the prior consultation law illuminates
that the future of both extractive industries and highland
communities in Peru will depend upon the symbolic politics of
indigeneity and cultural recognition.
5. Conclusion
This paper has examined the June 2011 protests against the
Santa Ana silver mine to analyze a broader reframing of anti-
mining activism as an indigenous rights movement. The articula-
tion of indigenous identity in the Puno protests, and a number of
recent mining conflicts in Peru, is related to increases in extractive
activity and increasing legal rights for indigenous peoples, the
dynamics of which are both related to neoliberal restructuring.
Neoliberalism is often seen as harmful to indigenous people
through facilitating usurpation and contamination of indigenous
land and resources. Yet, in this same neoliberal environment,
‘‘indigeneity’’ has become an incredibly powerful identity that can
procure access to international legal tools and resource claims. The
ways people mobilize around indigeneity and invoke indigeneity
vary, and the emergent Peruvian movement does not, and cannot,
use the tactics Amazonian groups have used to secure alliances
with international environmental NGOs.
However, even as the highland indigenous movement cannot
join the environmental movement as ‘‘ecological stewards,’’
confrontational activism common in highland indigenous demon-
strations may prove more useful in provoking long-term institu-
tional changes that support the autonomy of indigenous
communities. While certainly Andean tactics are subject to
government repression, the intensity and the self-determination
characteristics may prove more helpful in actually changing how
the Peruvian Government and mining companies relate to
indigenous peoples in Peru. Nonetheless, the state’s efforts to
enforce ‘‘acceptable’’ indigenous politics and define who qualifies
as ‘‘indigenous’’ show that indigeneity is always contested and
unstable.
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E. McDonell / The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Extractive industries scholars should pay attention to Peru as a
lively site where new identities are emerging, new struggles are
ignited and creative resistance techniques are employed in
response to extractive activity.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the support and the constructive criticism of
Andrew Mathews and Jeffrey Bury at UC Santa Cruz. I would also
like to thank Gavin Hilson and two anonymous reviewers for useful
comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the article.
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