Week 5 - Peru

PART 1. Introduction to Peru
Associated Readings

Readings

Peter Winn, “Peru’s Shining Path,” pp. 564-572

Cynthia McClintock, “Precarious Democracy and Dependent Development in a Divided Nation,” pp. 429-442

NOTE: This week and next (Peru and Chile), I will rely more heavily than usual on PowerPoint slides to introduce you to recent history and key themes. When we get to Argentina, I will return to a more narrative-heavy format on this blog.

I. Introduction to Peru
Please work your way through slides on Blackboard ("Peru Slides 1") in "Course Documents" content area.

II. The Shining Path and It's Legacies
Please work your way through slides on Blackboard ("Peru Slides 2") in "Course Documents" content area.

PART 2. Extraction and Mining
Associated Readings

Readings

Nicole Fabricant and Bret Gustafson, “Moving Beyond the Extractivism Debate, Imagining New Social Economies,” NACLA 48(3), pp. 40-45 (2016)

Heather Williams, “Peru’s Media-Friendly Mining Ban Conceals Toxic Inaction,” NACLA, pp. 58-63 (2016)

Raúl Zibechi, “Community Resistance Against Extraction,” NACLA, pp. 43-46 (2016)

Readings by Fabricant and Gustafson, Williams, and Zibechi give you a strong sense of how central debates around extraction and mining have become in present-day Peru (and elsewhere in the Andes). Indeed, mining is arguably the most important social, economic, and political issue in the region today, as it brings together major issues of development, environmental protection, and indigenous rights – and as you will see, these three agendas do not always align and tell us much about Latin America’s contemporary “post-pink” moment.

As you are getting started with the three associated readings, please watch the following short video from the New York Times (“Relocation in the Andes”), which tells of a new town being built by a Chinese mining company to which 5,000 people will be relocated.

Across Latin America, governments on left have joined those on right to promote policies that accelerate extractivism in its various forms. Such policies typically have the following characteristics: (a) They weaken regulatory, democratic, or environmental protection mechanisms; (b) They criminalize protest; and (c) They expand extraction into unconventional terrain (offshore oil fields, Brazil’s pre-salt reserves, Bolivia’s gas fields)

On the left, there are some countries who pursue mining and extraction with a semblance of more “redistributive” approach. The key examples here are Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Venezuela. As you will read, these cases exemplify the so-called “new” or “progressive” extractivism, claimed to be about sovereignty, anti-poverty, and public investment. Other countries pursue extraction in a more neoliberal line, focused on extraction for export, integration into the world market, and an embrace of foreign investment and privatization. This is the model that Peru currently falls into.

As the readings show, the reality of extractivism today is that it generates little employment (mostly for men), and it depends on ever-expanding frontiers (colonial mentalities, destructive attitude toward nature). As such, extractivism tends to view rural/indigenous communities as obstacles to national “need.”

Debates around extractivism are highly polarized, but there are many voices shaping the conversation. These include:

1.    The Ecological Left, which includes grassroots social movements, NGOs, and prominent leftist intellectuals

2.    Indigenous organizations, who typically embrace the pan-Andean notion of Pachamama (an earth spirit) and a spiritual foundation for opposition to extraction (i.e., seeing extractivism as a form of violence to nature which will result in Pachamama’s wrath)

As you are finishing up the readings, please have a look at this longer clip.