River Protection as Bloodwork: The Afterlife of Patagonia’s Anti-Dam Movement

• In Event: Ecosystems, Ecology, and the Boundaries of Life

Abstract

This paper analyzes how activists and ecologists seek to protect rivers as veins of the nation, through policy-oriented research and environmental advocacy. Drawing on applied ethnographic fieldwork, it traces the afterlife of a successful social movement: the Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams) campaign in Chile. As a direct result of the celebrated Patagonia Sin Represas movement, grassroots environmentalists in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia defeated HidroAysén’s proposal to build five mega-dams on the Baker and Pascua Rivers. They did so by defending watersheds as “reserves of life.” This study outlines how the social movement grew into a new national network of river protectors, connecting vital basins from across Chile: the Red por los Ríos Libres (Network for Free-Flowing Rivers). The paper pays particular attention to how the Network has reframed Chile’s body politic as an ecological assemblage of living watersheds. Local environmental activists, Indigenous leaders and international scientists have re-articulated rivers as the lifeblood of Chile’s national ecosystem in order to monitor environmental health, reclaim water rights and raise awareness about sustainable alternatives to proposed dam and mining projects. As a former international advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a member of the Network’s research committee, I provide an inside perspective on what forms of life come to matter in ecological distribution conflicts. Taking an engaged approach, the research ultimately sheds light on the boundaries of life as conditions of possibility for environmental advocacy to enhance sustainability in collaboration with local residents.

Author

• James J. A. Blair, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona