Coro Coro and Challapata: Defending Collective Rights and Mother Earth against Development Mining Fetishism

Abstract

Differing attitudes towards development and relationships with nature constitute some of the most significant causes of conflict among peasant and indigenous communities involved in large-scale mining projects. Both the state and the mining companies try to impose a fetishized interpretation of mining, envisioning it as fate, as the only way to bring economic growth to the high Andean regions, a view to which all community expectations and ways of life must be subject. It is a fetishism that shows the world upside down: “it is mining that accounts for society and not society that accounts for mining.” With this logic, other forms of development are denied, and the legitimate territorial defense on the part of the peoples is undermined. However, community mobilization in defense of shared rights is effectively unmasking this point of view. The peoples' actions bring light to a central issue: the right to self-determined development.