Competing cosmographies and territorializing projects around El Mirador Mine, Ecuador

• In Event: Environmental Governance Trends in Latin America: Resources, Conflicts and Exclusion/Inclusion

Abstract

Over the last decades, extractive industries have expanded and created new mining frontiers in Latin America, including the Amazon region. In this context, large-scale mining and sub-national development are heavily debated topics, as mining operations have the potential to transform the landscapes and development trajectories at these mining frontiers, for better or worse. The governance of the sub-national mining-development nexus is marked by very diverse and often conflicting views of what development entails and what these territories should look like in the future. This has led to an up-swing of mining conflicts. Following Paul E. Little’s study of Amazonian frontier struggles, I will approach mining operations and overlapping and competing territorial claims of state and community actors as territorializing projects that relate to particular cosmographies. The aim of this paper is to understand the competing cosmographies and territorializing projects at play around the new El Mirador copper mine in El Pangui in the province of Zamora Chinchipe, Ecuador. The paper presents the results of an in-depth fieldwork period including the results of participatory mapping of territorializing projects and related cosmographies.

Author

• Karolien v van Teijlingen, Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA)