Mining consultations: A challenge to extractivism?

• In Event: Movimientos sociales, y resistencias ante las elites y los estados sobre la extracción minera y de agua en América Central y Latina

Abstract

The reprimarization of Latin American economies has been a conflictive process that has fostered several material and cultural transformations in the region. In Colombia, popular consultations are increasingly becoming an important institution to ask local communities about their position regarding the mode of development to be implemented in their territories. Since the year 2013, when the first consultation of this type took place in the municipality of Piedras, more than forty-four towns are organizing similar initiatives to ask their inhabitants about their approval or disapproval of extractivist projects. The overall result of the vote has been a majoritarian rejection of extractivism. In this paper, I asked to what extent do mining consultations represent a challenge to extractivism in Colombia? I embedded the question on the structure agency debate and by providing a morphogenetic analysis that acknowledge their different ontological and temporal properties, I concluded that mining consultations are creating a morphogenesis in the cultural realm, but are constrained by a material morphostasis, which limits their potential for transformation.

Author

• Ana María Arbeláez