Socio-environmental mining conflicts: between women's bodies-territories and disputes in the field of and in the Law

Abstract

This article investigates the rights violations and resistance movements of women affected by mining. A literature review relates the extractivisms of the hegemonic development model and its political and legal arrangements with the forms by which large companies appropriate space. The general objective is to demonstrate that rights violations materialize in the body-territory and are faced by women on a daily basis. One of their resistance strategies is the arpilleras, which are embroidered canvases through which women expose their values, and those of the community, and address the problems they face. Between stitches and embroidering, it is our understanding that the women are not only fighting over the place of normative production but also to guarantee their active participation in decision-making spaces. Their actions reveal other epistemes, connecting art and memory produced in the territories in their search for effective political-institutional responses to the violations suffered and to obtain socio-environmental justice.