An Explosive Landscape: Dynamite, Governance, Revolution, and the Andes in the Capitalocene

• In Event: Making Latin American Landscapes in the ?-ocene

Abstract

Once a “hostile” landscape seemingly adverse to governances, public and private, the Andes and its altitudinal variations remained as a natural barrier against the internal territorial integration of postcolonial nations. In Peru, the nineteenth-century construction of railroads into the highlands became the first step towards linking town and country and enhancing dynamics of extraction, trade, and circulation. At the center of this enhanced capacity of taming the geography of the Andes, the 1866 discovery of dynamite and its rapid global availability lied at the center. Over the course of a century, explosives facilitated constructing transportation infrastructure, reaching new depths in mining explorations, and extracting fish in unprecedented amounts and a profoundly depleting fashion. In an unexpected turn of events, towards the end of last century, dynamite also facilitated a weapon for the most important insurrectionary challenge against state governance. This presentation centers dynamite as the primary element for the Capitalocene refashioning of the Andes, their rise as a space governed by extractive capitalism, and their demise amidst the collapse of the infrastructural power of the state.

Author

• Javier Puente, Smith College