Abstract:
In the last 15 years, Ecuador has expanded its mining frontier in the Amazon at a pace and scale not seen before; this expansion has required the state to modify legal frameworks and institutions to increase territorial control in areas where the state’s presence was previously weak. For example, laws require a portion of mining profits to be invested in the modernization and development of populated areas near extractive sites. Mining investments are used to persuade populations to agree to extractive activities and are utilized as a strategy to modernize rural/indigenous ways of life. Thus, state intervention and mining, and oil activity expansion affect the local ability to respond to changes taking place at a rapid pace while also causing a number of conflicts.
I use case studies of communities facing encroachment of mining in the Amazon of Ecuador to better understand: a) the ways in which affected people struggle to maintain control over territories, b) the ways in which people adapt and respond to the negative effects of state and oil expansion and c) the ways in which indigenous people understand and cope with conflicts and violence produced by mining and oil industry.
My findings show first that indigenous and peasant communities require access to ‘volumetric knowledge’ in order to increase their ability to participate in processes of negotiation with the state. These processes define access to land and redistribution of oil extraction profits. Volumetric knowledge makes reference to understandings of oil volume, quality, infrastructure and environmental impacts in affected territories. Second, my findings show that communities affected by oil extraction respond ambivalently when adapting livelihood strategies to the expansion of oil extraction and increased state presence. Specifically, people partially reject and embrace state-imposed development and modernization programs. I focus on the process that informs families’ decision-making process, suggesting that ‘tactical subjectivity’ informs livelihood strategies at the household level. Third, state modernization and development programs reinforce colonial power dynamics in the Amazon; thus, ‘epistemic violence’ takes place as indigenous traditional knowledge that makes sense of conflicts and violence is undermined and erased by western logic driven by state-led modernization and development.