Global ideals and restorative extraction: Negotiated Indigeneity on the margins of a Peruvian copper mine

Abstract

AbstractThis article elucidates the unintended outcomes produced by extractive industries and Indigenous activism in eastern Apurímac, Peru. The article documents the rise and fall of an identity‐based organization in the shadow of the Bambas copper mine using the concept of emergence amid Indigenous spaces to interpret the negotiated products of ideals and realities. I show how notions of historical debt and desires for “a better life” undergird the lived experience of Cotabamban peoples, placing particular demands upon any Indigenous awakening. Over time, creative alterations to activist endeavors shift from a right to culture toward a right to action, infusing artisanal mining ventures with moral credibility. Restorative extraction becomes an Indigenous practice of redress, tackling realities of marginalization and national reciprocity that have been exacerbated by corporate development. Rather than articulating an acceptable identity, restorative extraction temporarily redeems prolonged states of exclusion pertinent for certain potentially Indigenous communities enmeshed in resource booms.