The slow violence of mining and environmental suffering in the Andean waterscapes

Abstract

The acceleration of mineral extraction in many parts of the world since the early 2000s has raised concerns of mining-related pollution. However, the environmental harms of mining are not always immediately visible, but rather accumulate gradually over time through processes of slow violence. This article analyzes how the slow violence, including material pollution, malleability of mining companies’ discourses and political practices and state authorities’ ambivalent environmental regulation, shape local people's experiences of environmental suffering in the Peruvian Andes. The study is based on ethnographic-oriented fieldwork done in the Cunas watershed in 2019 and 2022, examination of the mining industry's environmental impact assessments and hydrological analysis of the water and sediment quality of the Cunas River in 2021. We argue that a combined analysis of the politics and discourses of mining-related environmental-social responsibility, the materiality of pollution, and residents’ interpretations of it, help understand the multiple impacts of slow violence on everyday environmental suffering. Examining the intersects of the sociopolitical and hydroecological aspects of slow violence is crucial, especially in the fragile waterscapes of the global South, such as the Andean highlands, altered by long-term extractivism.