Struggle from the margins: Juridical processes and entanglements with the Peruvian state in the era of mega-mining

Abstract

This paper examines the creation of spaces of legal marginalization for anti-mining activists in the region of Cajamarca, Peru. Central state interests in promoting the course of extractive ‘development’ have simultaneously undermined many of the legal conditions for political participation and rights assumed in ‘developed’ liberal democratic states. Based on a series of interviews in Cajamarca, I examine how legal marginalization is experienced in a nation-state where citizens are “guaranteed” fundamental human and indigenous rights. I highlight two processes: the transfer of jurisdiction of Conga Mine cases from Cajamarca to Lambayeque and the systematic archiving of activists’ claims. These processes reveal the manner in which political actors co-produce paradoxical spaces of law that are played out in the daily lives of activists. I argue that the “Rule of Law” is rendered flexible and that members of rural communities and grass-roots organizations, such as the legally-recognized Rondas Campesinas, are actively positioned in marginalized legal spaces outside the functioning of regular juridical processes.