Minería a gran escala, pluralismo territorial y contención:

Abstract

Over the last decade, Ecuador has become a new frontier for large-scale mining expansion and this article aims to analyze the territorial transformations and contentious politics that are induced by this new capitalist activity. It therefore presents a case-study of Ecuador’s first large-scale mining project, the Mirador copper mine in the Cordillera del Cóndor in the Amazon region. Using analytical insights from the current debates on territory, specifically the recently coined concept of “territorial pluralism”, the article shows the multiple historical territorialization processes that shaped the Cordillera del Cóndor and describes the interruptive reconfiguration introduced by the mining project. It furthermore examines the visions and strategies of local resistance group. Based on this analysis, I conclude that this particular approach to territory contributes to our comprehension of mining conflicts by revealing the distinct forms of understanding and relating to space and nature, and the power relations that constitute them. I moreover argue that territorial pluralism helps to explain how the repertoires of contention and alternatives that surge from these struggles are structured.

Variations in Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities and Biological Quality in the Aguarico and Coca River Basins in the Ecuadorian Amazon

“…This type of disturbance usually generates inconveniences in the biological communities that inhabit the rivers and therefore can lead to the decrease of biodiversity and abundance. However, the case of oil or mining exploitation can be even more devastating because their impacts persist over time and are more complex and challenging to remove from the environment [10][11][12][13]64]. The impact of the latter type of stressors is very severe and interrupts the dynamics and ecological functions that normally are given by the site-specific conditions, the seasonal fluctuations of the physical-chemical variables, or the temporal patterns of rainfall, which determine the composition of aquatic invertebrate communities.…”

“…In both basins, there are also some illegal mining activities (specifically artisanal mining and alluvial gold mining). Legal mining or authorized concessions in the sector are very scarce [10,64]. Other anthropic activities identified in these basins are agriculture, especially short-crop species (i.e., cassava, cocoa, coffee, corn, banana, palm), livestock (specifically cattle, pigs, and breeding of chickens), and to a lesser extent fishing (for self-consumption purposes rather than trade) [65,66].…”

Imaginaries of place in territorialization processes: Transforming the Oyacachi páramos through nature conservation and water transfers in the Ecuadorian highlands

“…In the same special issue Hoogesteger et al (2016) and Duarte-Abadía and Boelens (2016) point out how territories and their socio-material properties (subjects, objects, boundaries, and relationships) are always contested. Their creation and recreation are often disputed from ‘within’ as well as from ‘the outside’ as diverse actors strategize to shape ‘their’ territory according to ‘their’ notions (Hoogendam, 2019; Van Teijlingen, 2019). For external actors with specific social imaginaries of place, a territory embodies the socio-natural space where a population needs to be governed and steered towards specific outcomes such as nature conservation (Vela-Almeida, 2018).…”

Cuando los sujetos se mueven de su lugar: Una interrogación al extractivismo y la movilidad en la ecología política latinoamericana

“…La zona donde se comenzó a expandir el proyecto minero no era prístina o vacía, sino un territorio sumamente complejo resultado de un vaivén histórico de grupos y actores (van Teijlingen and Warnaars, 2017;van Teijlingen, 2019). Por siglos era el territorio de familias seminómadas de la nacionalidad Shuar, pero a partir de los años 1950 se establecieron misiones Salesianas y Franciscanas, campesinos migrantes, las fuerzas armadas, mineros artesanales y ONGs de conservación.…”