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Conflict has become a central concept to understanding the recent expansion of mining across the Andes. Yet, while contestation can emerge and has done so, the continued extraction of minerals requires scholars to attend to how mining projects maintain viability. This article moves beyond analyses of conflict to elucidate the role of compromise in achieving temporary states of homeostasis. Using ethnographic data collected at the Las Bambas copper mine in the highlands of southern Peru, I explore the agential navigation of communities affected by mining and the projects they develop in pursuit of ‘a better life’. The article elucidates the challenges that industrial production presents for professional employment, the limitations of boomtown hustling (informal economic activity) for aspiring individuals, and the rise of artisanal mining as a project of social mobility. Ultimately, the acceptance of such ‘illegal’ mining by corporate proprietors demonstrates the complementary nature that informal and formal extraction play in allaying the momentum of conflict.

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This article elucidates the unintended outcomes produced by extractive industries and Indigenous activism in eastern Apurímac, Peru. The article documents the rise and fall of an identity-based organization in the shadow of the Bambas copper mine using the concept of emergence amid Indigenous spaces to interpret the negotiated products of ideals and realities. I show how notions of historical debt and desires for "a better life" undergird the lived experience of Cotabamban peoples, placing particular demands upon any Indigenous awakening. Over time, creative alterations to activist endeavors shift from a right to culture toward a right to action, infusing artisanal mining ventures with moral credibility. Restorative extraction becomes an Indigenous practice of redress, tackling realities of marginalization and national reciprocity that have been exacerbated by corporate development. Rather than articulating an acceptable identity, restorative extraction temporarily redeems prolonged states of exclusion pertinent for certain potentially Indigenous communities enmeshed in resource booms.