Struggle from the margins: Juridical processes and Entanglements with the Peruvian State in the Era of Mega-mining

• In Event: Shared, Negotiated and Contested Sovereignties at the State Margins

Abstract

This paper examines the creation of a space of legal marginalization of anti-mining social activists in the region of Cajamarca, Peru. Peruvian State policies meant to encourage a course of extractive ‘development’ have simultaneously undermined many of the legal conditions for political engagement assumed to obtain in ‘developed’ liberal democratic states. Based on fieldwork in Lima and Cajamarca, I examine how legal marginalization is produced and experienced in a State where citizens are guaranteed fundamental rights. I highlight two processes: the transfer of jurisdiction for Conga cases from Cajamarca to Chiclayo and the systematic archiving of activists’ claims. These processes reveal the manner in which political actors co-create paradoxical spaces of law that are played out in the daily life of grass-roots activists. I argue that the rule of law is rendered flexible and that members of grass-roots organizations like the Frentes de Defensas and the constitutionally recognized Rondas Campesinas are actively positioned in marginalized legal spaces outside of juridical processes.

Author

• Natalia F Guzmán Solano, Washington University in St. Louis