Contenu du sommaire : L'extraction minière : entre greffe et rejet

Latin America territorial organization is strongly influenced by the inherited footprints left by the exploitation of natural resources. In Argentina, the 1990's neoliberal turn promoted an extractive model for exportation that affected the spatial distribution of mining and turned the Andes into a global reservoir of raw materials. Transnational stakeholders—which have an important role in building public policies—have largely influence this territorial orientation, whilst common or convergent interests as well as new conflicts have risen among States, private stakeholders and civil society. Through negotiation, they promote the emergence of territorial coconstruction processes.

Since the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia has experienced a contradiction between environmental discourse around the indigenous imaginary and extractive practices. These contradictions are not unique to the government but also affect many social organizations. The subject of mining is particularly revealing of these tensions. From the case of the Northern region of Potosí and the Mallku Khota conflict, we will show that these conflicts are not only based on a multiplication of actors and on competing development projects, but also on both a material reality and a discursive, normative and symbolic repertoire leading to a redefinition of natural resources management. Through a multi-level approach we analyze the flow of imaginaries and the mobilization of resources that the different actors use in a strategic ways. We will therefore see how the discourses of “acceptance” or “rejection” of mining depend less on the ideological environmental discourse than on the construction of coalitions and the development of the conflict.

A consequence of the push towards extractivism is the multiplication of social conflicts over environmental issues. This ethnographic article explores the social and ethnic conflicts linked to mining and the political reconfigurations that this produces within the indigenous movement at local and national level. Amaicha and Quilmes, two indigenous communities in the Argentinean Northwest, are 120 kilometers from the La Alumbrera open cast mine. This proximity constitutes an environmental threat (because of air and water pollution) for the villages in the long run. It also represents, however, an asset for the implementation of local collective projects which are financed through the mines' “social responsibility” program. In this article I will demonstrate how this extractivist multinational company is increasingly involved in the life of both communities. The symbol of the indigene as “guardian of nature”, and her privileged relationship with the Pachamama (mother earth), has helped local activists win a number of agrarian and social battles. It is thus important to analyze the strategies employed by La Alumbrera and the Argentinean government to neutralize all social conflicts and silence the village leaders who have played an important role in the fight for their communities' rights. Both the mine and the government's attitudes towards peasant and indigenous communities are subject of ideological and political controversy and debate. I shall demonstrate how this has divided not only the villages but also the national indigenous movement.

Mining activities' potential to promote growth and equality in Peru is a subject of debate. Contrasting views stem from different ideas as to what constitutes a desirable social and economic model, as well as from substantial power differentials between actors bought together by the sector. This article adopts gender as an analytical perspective in order to deal transversally with the material and symbolic dimensions of the power relations that intertwine with the social and environmental processes « engendered » by mining activities, in a region of intense extraction and mobilisation.

In this article we explore the birth of « self-mobilizing » community associations and the articulation and mobilization process of different stakeholders whose efforts led to the enactment of the Law on Minimum Standards for the Protection of Glacial and Periglacial Environment. By sanctioning rules which lay a common ground of environmental protection at the national level, the Argentinian National Congress produced a powerful legal instrument for activists, including those who used it to mobilize against the growth of megamining.We are interested in identifying how the politicization of glaciers is constructed on a dual scale: one national, one provincial. At the national level, we focus on the process that framed the debate and actions leading to the enactment of the law. In this context, we will investigate how the issue was treated in the legislative sphere and what the role of the national executive was. At the provincial level, we will explore the strategies and institutional structures designed to hinder the implementation of the law by provincial governments that promote the expansion of megamining in their territories.

The years 2000s have witnessed the rise of a new phase in Latin American international relations, more oriented towards Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, regional initiatives continue, and regional integration shows a great resilience. This paper helps to explain the continuity of regionalism by analyzing the origins of the Mercosur Parliament (Parlasur). How to explain this institutional choice ? I argue that ideas have played a central role in this institutional evolution, and that Parlasur was harnessed as a political symbol in order to face trade negotiations with the United States. Methodologically, the paper is based on more than thirty semi-structured interviews conducted within Mercosur.

In Brazil, the period known as the Vargas Era (1930-1945), experienced the strengthening of nationalist ideas that materialized in an authoritarian political project in which the state assumed the role of protagonist in an attempt to control society. Such scenario favored the proliferation of discourses that linked conservative representations of women and nature, uniting these representations in the central idea of a maternal Brazilian nation, who deprived herself for her « children», but in return demanded of Brazilians loyalty and obedience to the official political project.