Voting against Extracting: The Rise of Popular Consultations in Latin America

• In Event: New Research on the Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in the Andes

Abstract

The advancement of the extractive footprint through Latin America has reconfigured politics, prompting diverse political responses from a wide array of actors. This paper focuses a new form of political response: popular referendums known as consulta popular or popular consultations. Popular consultations have become increasingly common in Latin America in the past decade as a means to resist extractive activities. This paper argues that popular consultations against extractive activities have emerged in Latin America as an alternative way for non-indigenous communities to register their concerns about extractive projects in the absence of other means of resistance. While indigenous peoples have prior consultation as legal tools for resistance, campesinos have creatively resorted to popular consultations, which are forms of direct democracy that were not created for that end. The paper explores the rise, importance, and consequences of popular consultations by focusing on the case of “Piedras” -- the first popular consultation against mining held in Colombia in which citizens put to a vote one of the biggest open-pit mining projects in the world.

Author

• Diana Rodriguez Franco, Northwestern University