Negotiating belonging and place: an exploration of mestiza women’s everyday resistance in Cajamarca, Peru

Abstract

Since 1993, the Cajamarca region of Peru has been home to the Yanacocha gold mine, associated with environmental degradation, negative health impacts, and socio-economic consequences. In 2012, large-scale protests broke out across the region over the newly proposed Conga mine. Increasingly, scholarship is devoted to recognizing socio-environmental struggles outside of mass-mobilization and public protests, at the local, household and everyday level, often performed over much longer timescales. In this context, I critically explore the everyday resistance of mestiza-identifying women in Cajamarca city. Through a discussion of how their on-going resistance critically constructs who/what belongs in place and who/what is ‘other’/‘stranger’, I analyse how they mobilize gendered local values and knowledge to continue opposing large-scale mining in the aftermath of the Conga conflict.