Abstract
The Tía Maria copper mine situated above the agricultural Tambo Valley, southwest Peru, has sparked nearly ten years of protracted conflict. This conflict began in 2009, yet Southern Copper Peru or Southern, a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, has faced ardent resistance. This article explores the ‘political reactions from above’, examining how Southern and the Peruvian government have negotiated the popular rejection of the mine. Residents have organized a popular consultation, large-scale demonstrations, road blockades and general strikes, which has been met with violent repression. Reviewing the political ecology of counterinsurgency, which studies the socio-ecological warfare techniques employed to control human and natural resources, and relating it to social war discourse, this section lays the theoretical foundations to discuss the coercion and ‘social war component’ present in natural resource extraction. This leads to an overview of the relationship between Peruvian security forces and extraction industries, followed by a brief chronology of the Tía Maria conflict. The subsequent two sections offer a political ecology analysis of various ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ counterinsurgency techniques employed by the Peruvian state and Southern in an attempt to pacify social unrest and socially engineer acceptance of the project. The concluding section discusses the ‘whole-of-government’ counterinsurgency approach employed, recognizing how the present institutional arrangements and business imperatives are designed to override popular socio-ecological concerns. Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state apparatus and politics itself serve as an instrument of social pacification and ecological exploitation regardless of widespread ecological and climatic concerns.
Highlights
On August 1st, 2014, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) approved the second environmental impact assessment (EIA), which allowed the Tía Maria Copper Mine to commence mineral exploitation
Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state apparatus and politics itself serve as an instrument of social pacification and ecological exploitation regardless of widespread ecological and climatic concerns
Supporting social war discourse, the article contends that the state apparatus and politics itself serve as an instrument of social pacification and ecological exploitation regardless of ecological and climatic concerns
Summary
On August 1st, 2014, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) approved the second environmental impact assessment (EIA), which allowed the Tía Maria Copper Mine to commence mineral exploitation. When dialogue failed between the Peruvian Government and civil society groups, the latter declared an indefinite strike on March 23, 2015. This is the second time hundreds of people began protesting to prevent the mine from entering the Tambo Valley in the Islay province, southwest Peru (Fig. 1). At two o'clock on March 28th, 2015, the police began firing teargas canisters into the crowd to disperse the protest and break the barricade—‘with the tear gas people could not breathe and you had to run,’ explains ‘Kali’ who continues: Everybody was running and jumped the irrigation ditch and I couldn't make it.
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