Mining Extractivism, Commodification of Nature and Indigenous Peasantry in the Atacama Desert: The Political Economy of Yareta (Azorella Compacta) in Historical Perspective (1915-1960)

Abstract

Studies on the agrarian question in Latin America have dealt with the role of capital in the area of agriculture and forestry while paying scant attention to its role in other areas, such as mining. Research on mining extractivism, for its part, has privileged recent socio-environmental conflicts without delving into the configurations of social classes and labor relations as it relates to agriculture. This article integrates these topics, analyzing the connections between copper extractivism, the commodification of the yareta plant, and indigenous peasant labor. We studied the medium-upper basin of the Loa River, in northern Chile, where one of the most important copper mines in the world (Chuquicamata) has been operating since 1915. Using ethnography and bibliographic analysis, we provide an account of how the expansion of extractivism requires a mixture of properly capitalist labor relations mixed with customary Andean practices. The latter are subsumed by capital and have played a key structural role during certain periods.