Reclaiming the lake Citizenship and environment-as-common-property in highland

Mattias Borg Rasmussen

Abstract: Since the early 1990s Peru has experienced an expansion in mining activities and an expansion in what the Peruvian ombudsman defi nes as socio- environmental confl icts. Th is article examines the dynamics through which an en- vironmental issue is transformed into a matter of citizenship and social belonging during a weeklong uprising in defense of Lake Conococha. Highlighting the col- lective actions and personal narratives from participants in the region-wide block- ade, the article therefore seeks to understand how dispossessions of environmental resources perceived as common property are cast in terms of individual rights that move well beyond the site of confl ict. It is therefore argued that the actions to reclaim Lake Conococha were not only a battle for natural resources and clean water, but more fundamentally an attempt to repossess a citizenship that may be constitutionally secured but all too oft en fails to be a lived reality in the high of Peru. Keywords: citizenship, environmental struggles, mining, Peru, property

Defending what? has gotten to its feet!” he had yelled to me, try- ing to make his voice heard through the noise of “Who would not defend his rights?” the old man shouting, whistles, and the intensity of a large asked. crowd in movement. “¡Ya basta!” he ended our We were sitting in his cobbler’s store in the conversation. small highland town of Recuay in the northern “Enough is enough!” Th e protests of the high- Peruvian Andes. Old shoes were stacked on the land region Ancash that culminated in eight days shelves on the wall, its blue paint cracking, and of paro, or blockade, in December 2010 were peeking out from behind the curtain that hid his directed against a proposed mining exploration bed I could see his old watchdog, Bobby. A week in the headwaters of the , near the prior to our meeting, I had tried to call this shores of a lake known as Conococha. Orga- man, Don Lucas. Th e roads were then blocked nized by the Conococha Defense Front created by angry peasants, and I was unable to reach the in response to the mine, peasants from the co- town that was the site of my fi eldwork. “Recuay munidades campesinas Cátac and San Miguel

Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 74 (2016): 13–27 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2016.740102 14 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen de Utcuyacu blocked the Parco Bridge with the headwaters of the rivers Santa, Pativilca, and wooden poles and rocks, thus preventing the Fortaleza. Th is article takes as its starting point transport of people and goods to and from the the question posed by Don Lucas and examines regional capital of . Other groups did the the dynamics through which an environmental same on the bridges Bedoya and Ucushchaca, issue is transformed into a matter of citizenship and later Velasco. What was initially meant to and social belonging. Having direct impacts on be a twenty-four-hour preventive blockade to water, land, and territory, mining raises questions call attention to the lack of transparency regard- about the management and property regimes of ing the mining concession exploded with the these resources and how they are negotiated (or death of Muñante, a young peasant leader from violated) in the process. It thus concerns con- Utcuyacu. Th e authorities claimed that the cause verging and colliding regimes of spatial control must have been bullets fi red from the protest- that are enacted in the context of mining. Here ers, while the organizers of the blockade insisted I stress the discrepancies between the state pol- that the bullets had been fi red by the police. icies of concessions in which the Ministry of Four days of blockade culminated in two days of Energy and Mines acts as the legal proprietor violent encounters in the city center of Huaraz, of the underground, and the territoriality and led by an alliance of student and peasant orga- moral economy of water of the rural popula- nizations. Large amounts of teargas were used. tions. I argue that the struggle between, on the Th e protesters shattered the windows of all state one hand, the state and the mining company and fi nancial institutions, thus attacking the and, on the other, the participants (fi rst peas- physical sites of what in their interpretation was ants and later other regional residents) in the an unholy alliance between state and capital. region-wide strike against the exploration and Th e blockade was called to an end aft er a week resource extraction around Lake Conococha when the mining company decided to withdraw manifested itself partly as a discussion about from the site, and the Peruvian Ministry of En- citizenship. Having asserted its right to control ergy and Mines annulled the rights granted. I and extract resources throughout the Peruvian was then trying to make sense of the dynam- territory, and the mandate to promote and de- ics of the protest and the involvement of the fi ne economic development, the Peruvian state people that I had been working with who were links notions of “proper development” to no- living 60 kilometers downstream from Conoco- tions of “proper citizens”: proper citizens are cha Lake. Don Lucas’s question to me on that those who endorse proper development. How- day is intriguing, for all its apparent simplicity. ever, the protesters claim that their citizenship is What kind of rights was it necessary to defend? embedded in particular territories and environ- How are these rights constitutive of citizenship? ments, and, consequently, damage to their envi- What are the dynamics of deprivation and dis- ronment constitutes an attack on their rights as possession that make a mining exploration not citizens. At the root of the disagreement regard- only a matter of environmental sustainability but ing the mining activities are, therefore, diff erent also an issue of rights and citizenship? In other notions of citizenship and rights. words, how does a transformation from envi- Th is article has four parts. First, I explore ronmental matters into a question of citizenship how the new geographies of mining (Bury et al. occur? And what is being repossessed as the 2013) are strategically created through forms of peasants of Recuay and elsewhere take to the state presence and absence. I focus particularly streets in defense of their water and life? on the convergence and collision between min- Th e confl ict that erupted in confrontations ing policies, environmental property regimes, between the peasants and the police across An- and citizenship formation. Second, I examine cash in December 2010 was born out of a pro- the relationship between mining and techniques posed mining exploration around Conococha in of spatial control, highlighting how forms of Reclaiming the lake | 15 collective property intersect with eff orts of land Andean veins acquisition and local-level political dynamics. Th ird, I turn to the question of the ownership Th e basic equation I set out to explore is this: ac- of Lake Conococha in particular, and of the en- cording to Don Lucas, the (alleged) disposses- vironment in general. And last, I examine the sion of the lake prompted people to defend their new idioms of rights and wrongs that emerge in rights. Th ese rights, connected to a direct chal- the encounters between state and citizens in the lenge to the perceived environmental property context of mining. In the conclusion I argue that regimes with the attendant threat of pollution the actions to reclaim Lake Conococha were not of the commons, were the sparks that ignited only a battle for natural resources and clean wa- broader claims to citizenship. Th e exploration ter; more fundamentally, by claiming specifi c of the underground near Lake Conococha was rights that the highland protesters believe are seen as a violation of rights: a violation with fu- granted by the constitution, they attempt to re- ture ramifi cations. I understand here “rights” as possess a citizenship that may be constitution- a recognition of a claim, and therefore as a socio- ally secured but all too oft en fails to be a lived political rather than a legal category. Rights and reality in the high Andes of Peru. property are closely related insofar as they both Th is article is based on interviews, newspa- refer back to political institutions with the abil- per articles, offi cial documents, radio broad- ity to sanction claims. Rights recognized by the casts, and observations related to the events that state are particularly salient in this regard, but evolved around Conococha during my fi eldwork they are not the only rights people can acquire in Ancash in 2010–2011. I was working in the through claims. Since rights understood both communities adjacent to Cátac on questions of as citizenship and as property rights depend on water management, local politics, and environ- mutual recognition, any question of rights also mental change. Aft er the confl ict withered (tem- implies a question of authority. Consequently, a porarily, as it is still classifi ed as dormant by the protest against government violation of rights Defensoría del Pueblo, the ombudsman dealing is simultaneously an acknowledgment of the with human rights issues), I began exploring how rights-granting institution (e.g., the state) and and why people in the Recuay area had gotten a challenge of the policies and practices of the involved in the confrontations. I conducted a concrete government institution that carries series of interviews both with my own interloc- them out (e.g., granting rights to explore the utors, who had been active in blockading the underground). I elaborate on this point below. bridges and roads, and with leading fi gures in Property entails a claim to something that is the orchestration of the protest. Refl ecting the of value to somebody. It is a social relationship. political vernacular of the area, all interviews and Th at claim can be recognized by custom, con- documents were in Spanish, and excerpts repro- vention, or law and the authorizing institution. duced here are my translations. By agreement It follows that diff erent normative orders can be and request, Don Lucas is the real name. Other brought forward simultaneously to legitimize names have been changed to protect the identity competing claims (Lund 2011: 72). In this un- of the persons mentioned. Th e article focuses derstanding, where property is beyond the stat- on the experience of a challenged and emergent utory legal realm, customary claims as well as citizenship among the peasants, and I do not in- legal claims to territory, resources, and water clude the perspectives of representatives from the can be legitimate. Claims to property are there- Chancadora Centauro SAC, the mining company fore linked to particular political institutions. that had proposed the explorations, or represen- Th is relationship between people and authority tatives from the corresponding public authorities invokes the notion of citizenship. It makes up from the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) the complex of who can have rights, and what or the National Water Authority (ANA). rights they can have (Lund 2011). 16 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen

Recent studies on citizenship have sought to suggesting that these are intimately linked, both move beyond the rights/responsibilities pack- empirically and theoretically. It entails a social age that has dominated much thinking since and political fi eld that produces certain kinds of Marshall’s tri-partition of citizenship into civil, institutionalized belongings. Defending rights political, and social rights (Marshall 1950). In- therefore involves reaffi rming and challenging stead, moving beyond a legal status (Lazar 2008: institutional orders, legitimacies, and authori- 23), citizenship is conceived as a bundle of prac- ties. I return to the question of rights, citizen- tices between people and structures of power. ship, and property in the fi nal discussion. It denotes the relationship between individuals In 1979 the Peruvian constitution granted (sometimes groups) and institutions of public universal suff rage: women were granted the right authority that are not necessarily the state (cf. to vote in 1955, and illiterates—that is, the rural Holston 2011: 336). Looking broadly across a poor—were included in the compulsory electoral Latin American context, Dagnino (2003) argues systems with the new constitution that sought that citizenship has been redefi ned, partly due to to erase the military-left ist revolutionary dicta- the emergence of social movements to include torship of Velasco. Peru is a country marked by cultural dimensions and concerns with subjec- stark internal diff erences, and as in all of Latin tivities, identities, and the right to diff erence. America there is a wide gap between the rich- Moving beyond a legal defi nition, Dagnino ar- est and the poorest in the country. Wealth and gues that rights claims constitute active political rights have long been associated in the political subjects demanding recognition and involve a economy of both colonial and postcolonial re- critique of the practices that reproduce inequal- publican Peru (Th urner 1997). Th e area in ques- ities and exclusion. More than legal rights, this tion was home to elaborate systems of forms of conception of citizenship entails nested sover- servitude that bordered on slavery. Th is is also eignties, processes of mutual recognition, com- an area that has historically been shaped by munity adherence, and aff ect. mining. Geographer Jeff Bury and others (Beb- Citizenship is thus a matter of which politi- bington 2009, Bebbington et al. 2008; Bebbing- cal institution has the authority to grant rights ton and Bury 2009; Bury 2005, 2008) have shown of membership to a particular local and/or na- how mining oft en has negative impact on peo- tional community (Lund 2011: 73). Based on ple’s livelihoods. What should have been a pro- her historical analysis on how both perception vider of jobs and a generator of economic ac- and performance of citizenship have changed in tivity locally comes to function as an economic the highland town of Tarma in the central Pe- and social enclave instead (cf. Gil 2009) that all ruvian Andes, Wilson (2013) suggests two im- too oft en fails to fulfi ll the expectations of devel- portant characteristics of citizenship formation opment, modernity, and progress. Don Lucas is in Peru. First, citizenship evokes claims, rights, one of those who have heard that the country is and feelings of belonging to town, province, and doing well, but he has yet to see any signifi cant nation. To this I will add the peasant communi- improvements in his own life. ties, which played a signifi cant role in the block- In a much-debated newspaper article in El ade. Second, citizenship may instigate political Comercio, a -based newspaper with strong action, especially in relation to state negligence adherence to the business elites, former presi- or repression (Wilson 2013: 191). Furthermore, dent Alan García (1985–1990; 2006–2011) writes as Lund has explored, there is a tight relation- about the Peruvian version of Aesop’s dog in the ship between what you have (property) and what manger (el perro del hortelano) (García 2007). you are (citizenship). In understanding what Th e idea expressed in this article is that the peo- Don Lucas was alluding to in our conversation, I ple of the so-called interior of the country are therefore follow Lund (2011) in the basic linkage guarding the riches of the earth without putting that is created between property and citizenship, them to use. Th ey are “like the dog that neither Reclaiming the lake | 17 eats nor lets others eat” (que no come ni deja the governance of natural resources and the comer). In this conception, those who live off governance of people that is of interest in this the land in both highland and jungle are ob- article. stacles to national (economic) development. In While the state has historically arrogated to García’s musings on the dog in the manger, the itself the right to permit mining, the current rural populations of highland and jungle are neoliberal climate fosters an extremely close re- represented not only as backward and lazy but lationship between capitalist mining companies also as deliberately obstructing national devel- and the state, to the extent that people are no opment. García thereby draws on popular im- longer able to distinguish between them. In the ages of the peoples of Peru’s rural hinterlands. Peruvian case, market-oriented reforms and re- In addition to framing them as inadequate cit- structuring of the state apparatus have become izens, this perspective puts the state in control entangled with an authoritarian political tra- of the physical environment, resources, and, ulti- dition that is highly centralized geographically mately, property. Property rights and citizenship as well as racially. Th e penetration of business rights are therefore tightly connected to con- into the state apparatus changes the way in fl icts over natural resources. which, for example, mining is conceived, and Examining the rhetoric and population pol- hence the presence and/or absence of the state itics of the García government, Drinot (2011: in sites of government intervention. Here cap- 187) wryly comments, “Th ere is, for the most ital takes over the task of governance from the part, no attempt here to rule through extending state (Crabtree and Condor-Crabtree 2012: 50). freedom to these populations [referred to by While the Peruvian economy continues to rely García]; in fact it is their freedom that is per- to a large extent on extraction, the relationship ceived to be the problem.” Certain parts of the between state, market, and citizens has been populations—those noted in the aforementioned challenged. Th us Arellano-Yanguas (2012: 95) newspaper article, such as those who were tak- highlights the transference of state capacities to ing to the streets, bridges, and roads of Ancash— the mines such as infrastructural enhancement are therefore not perceived as proper citizens, and planning of local development. It is import- incommensurable as they are with the market- ant to note that while the current policies may driven construction of the Peruvian nation. In a be termed neoliberal, the practices with regard clear instance of a political and social program to mining do not represent a radical break with that has been translated directly into policies, as the past. Commenting on the Bagua incident Bebbington and Humphreys Bebbington (2011) and other recent events in which protesters observe, a series of legal decrees followed the have been met with state repression, Bebbing- El Comercio comment, aiming at easing the ex- ton and Humphreys Bebbington (2011: 142) ploitation of Peru’s natural resources. Working note that it is “a pattern that translates into re- with the idea that development and poverty plays of long histories of colonialism, of violent eradication are driven primarily by “modern incorporations of peripheries, and of resource technology, private property, large-scale capital, dependence.” and a combination of both foreign direct and Th is “clear asymmetry of power,” Arellano- domestic investment” (Bebbington and Hum- Yanguas further contends, in which the power phreys Bebbington 2011: 135), the relationship to decide is openly connected to the power to between state, market, and citizens is articulated invest, means that “in the eyes of most commu- in a very particular way. Later, in the aft ermath nity members, the government has no credi- of the Bagua uprising in 2009, García stated that bility as the arbitrator of confl icts” (2012: 100). “enough is enough. Th ese [the indigenous] are In this concrete case, this means that the griev- not fi rst-class citizens” (cited in Bebbington ances held locally toward local and central gov- 2012: 9). It is exactly this convergence between ernments became central to the confl ict, thus 18 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen

Figure . Map of the drilling project at Lake Conococha. From the Constancia de Aprobación Automática No. 068-2010-MEM-AAM, Ministry of Energy and Mines moving beyond the structural arguments of the rightful and sole owner of all subsoil resources. resource curse and into the fi eld of very subjec- It means that while new and old forms of re- tive reason to participate in such mobilizations. gimes of territorial rights exist on the surface, the Th e question therefore is, how does this form of state possesses the authority to grant permissions market-oriented resource governance infi ltrate of exploitation (Arellano-Yanguas 2012). Th e the governance of people? How can we under- Chancadora Centauro SAC had set its eyes on stand the relationship between state and citizen 800 hectares of land belonging to the Huambo through the lens of extractive industries? peasant community, upon which they wished to perform initial drillings. While I did not myself take part in the negotiations between the enter- Mining and territorial management prise and the peasant community and therefore lack precise knowledge of the process, the com- Th e week of insurgency was preceded by more ments and thoughts regarding the negotiation than a year of frustrated communications be- process among people in Cátac and Recuay are tween peasant organizations, the mine, and the instructive for understanding how the territo- ministry. Th e actions were coordinated by the riality and politics of the peasant communities Conococha Defense Front, formed in Septem- may infl uence the process. ber 2010 to protect the lake, and encompassed From the point of view of the peasants of diff erent actors with stakes in water and terri- Cátac and elsewhere, the landscape looks diff er- tory: irrigation committees, peasant communi- ent from the legal version of the territory con- ties, peasant unions, urban water users, and so structed in Lima. Th ey perceive themselves as on. According to Peruvian law, the state is the the rightful stewards of the land, with rights Reclaiming the lake | 19 going far back in history. Much of the Peruvian When a mine wishes to enter new ground, it highlands is controlled by a particular socio- undertakes negotiations with a variety of insti- political form of organization known as comuni- tutions, among them local and regional govern- dades campesinas—literally, peasant communi- ments, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the ties. Th ese are territorially based polities based National Water Authority and, central to our on collective control of land and resources. Th e concerns, occasionally the local peasant commu- peasant communities are granted the legal titles nities upon whose territories the industrial com- to the land by the state, but in practice the re- plex wishes to operate. In the above-mentioned lationship between state and peasant commu- letter, the authorities representing local govern- nities has been laden with tensions, especially ment and the peasant confederation to which since the 1990s. While legislation has eased the the individual peasant communities—including dissolution of the communities and removed Huambo, upon whose premises the explorations the institutional support of these, local munici- were to take place, and Cátac, leading the pro- palities have simultaneously been strengthened tests—addressed the lack of transparency in the (Cameron 2009). Th e municipality is based on process and the mandatory offi cial hearings. the administration of private property within its During and aft er the protest, rumors of delib- boundaries. In the process and subsequent eval- erate fraud circulated in both local media and uation of negotiation, these diff erences in how everyday conversation. Th is undermined the one engages with state authorities—one indi- legitimacy of the concession in itself but was vidually, the other collectively—were nurtured also used to critique local leadership, which has by the understandings of political engagement all too oft en been guided by personal self-inter- embedded in the peasant communities. Notions est. Th us the outcome of the negotiations was of citizenship are informed by experiences with seen as the result of the unclear entanglements collective practices and property ownership. of peoples and their interests, and of state insti- Whenever a mining operation wishes to initi- tutions with the mine (this is a familiar story, ate a project that aff ects partially or fully the ter- see Arellano-Yanguas 2011, 2012; Gil 2009). On ritory of a peasant community, it must deal with one level, the display of patronage, corruption, a complicated political institution led by a pres- and uneven means of negotiation was seen as an idency but whose highest authority is the gen- expression not only of the dirty tricks of “buy- eral assembly. Every decision must be approved ing out” the peasants of Huambo with a number by consensus or vote. And in questions of ter- of trucks and the promise of salaried labor in ritory, two-thirds of all members must approve. return for permission to perform the explora- In this case, that community is called Huambo. tion. However, this was challenged by evoking a In the days during the confl ict, I would listen diff erent vocabulary to describe the relationship to radio broadcasts reporting from the diff er- between the peasants and those in power: that ent frontlines of the confl ict. One of these was of citizenship and rights. Here local demands the question of the role of the presidency of this are given universal values. Th us the peasants community upon whose territory the explora- show how this type of mining is conceived by tions were to take place. Th e compliancy was a those aff ected to be eroding livelihoods at large contested issue, but offi cially necessary for the and benefi ting only a few privileged people. operations to become a reality. However, “[it] is As noted by Humberto Campodónico (2010) not true that the Huambo Peasant Community, in a comment in the newspaper La República, it as the owner of the terrain, has negotiated the is indeed curious that permission to carry out use of its surface,” wrote the mayor of Pampas the twenty drillings was granted automatically Chico and the president of the Regional Agrar- by the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Without ian Federation in a letter to the general director a complete Environmental Impact Assessment of mining aff airs in Lima. (EIA) report—only a promise of one—and with 20 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen the allegedly fraudulent negotiations with the the intentions of relevant authorities become Huambo peasant community upon whose prem- opaque when these institutions fail to secure ises the drillings were to take place, the Chanca- the property rights of their citizens. And mutual dora Centauro SAC was granted automatic per- recognition and citizenship as social belonging mission to initiate its work. Fabiana Li (2011) are unsettled. has shown in the case of Chile that EIAs may Th ere is an obvious tension here between depoliticize matters by rendering them subject individual and collective rights, or what consti- to technological and problem-solving solutions. tutes “the rights subject.” But more important, I Th e automatic permission seems to be an ex- wish to highlight the friction between two dif- pression of the attempts to depoliticize the pro- ferent notions of collective property. First, the cess by which mines are allowed to operate. Gil state and the mining company rely upon an (2009), in his study of the Antamina Mine in understanding of resources as being collectively the neighboring valley of Conchucos, similarly owned by the Peruvian people and administered highlights how company engineers and lawyers by the state. In practice this means that the gov- sought recourse to technological, “scientifi c” rea- ernment is the subject of rights. In administering soning in their justifi cation for the mine. Cast- the resources to which it maintains ownership, ing the protest in terms of citizenship, as Don however, it may infringe on a diff erent notion Lucas did, is an eff ective way of repoliticizing of collective property where the rights-bearing what has been represented as a process of tech- subjects are the comunidades campesinas, which nicalities. By craft ing the fi ght against the mine can then, in turn, transfer more or less tempo- as a defense of rights, Don Lucas eff ectively ques- rary rights to its members under certain condi- tioned the natural order of extractive activities. tions. Th e transfer of use rights from the state Peasants depend on land as a source of live- to the mining companies is eff ectively experi- lihood. People in this area live in mixed econo- enced as a privatization of collective property, mies, with produce from the fi elds and animals which undermines the property regimes, and providing a subsistence basis for the oft en er- hence the rights and authority, of the comuni- ratic income opportunities on the labor market. dades campesinas. In addition to this, as hinted As the outcome of centuries of social struggles, at above, the way in which the negotiations with land is connected to dynamics of identity politics the peasant communities dealt more with indi- and resource control, organized as corporate, as- viduals (promising high salaries and other ben- sociative enterprises that operate as partial sov- efi ts; forging signatures) than the collectivity (an ereigns with diff erent degrees of enforcement of open and transparent process of prior consent) law and order. When mining enters such a so- further serves as a way of eff ectively dismantling cial landscape backed by the concession policies the political community. I am unable to docu- of the state, it introduces a diff erent notion of ment this further in the case of Huambo because property—inalienable landscapes that become I was not present during these exchanges. Th is plots to be purchased—which is, nonetheless, process in which diff erent collectivities, diff erent negotiable and sanctioned by law. Th is is the rights, and therefore diff erent notions of author- transformation of an environment that signifi es ity and the legitimacy of claims points back to identity, livelihood, and history into a commod- contradictory ideas of what constitutes citizen- ifi ed property (Castree 2003). Th e uncertainties ship. Th ere is a great friction between the link- with regard to the legitimacy of the mine and age of individual rights and national growth, on the challenges to the property regimes of terri- the one hand, and the entanglement of individ- tory as commodifi cation intensifi es point toward ual, collectivity, territory, and environment on a link between authority and property (Lund the other. Th is dynamic was further exacerbated 2011; Sikor and Lund 2009). To the governed, by a diff erent claim to property: water. Reclaiming the lake | 21

Owning water rose at the shores of the Santa River. Fish dis- appeared, and now people even fear the winds A very diff erent materiality and property re- coming in from the south. Th ey speak of high gime proved to be as important as territory. And levels of cancer and attribute this to the tailings that is water, high on the political agenda due to pond. To their thinking, a new mine—this time climate change, and a prime site of neoliberaliza- located in the very source of the river—would tion because of the commercialization of what further threaten their existence, bringing harm used to be perceived as common property among to people and animals. Andean peasants (see Ostrom et al 1999). While Uncertainty as to the precise impact of the water has not been privatized as in Chile, there mining activities at Lake Conococha was great. is a growing sense among the peasants, refl ected Surely it would aff ect rural livelihoods, but in by articles in the 2009 Law of Hydrological Re- an area of mines this could mean opportunities sources, that water is increasingly seen as a site both gained and lost. Th at it would aff ect wa- for production and economic growth. Th us the ter quality seemed beyond doubt, but concerns call for the blockade by the Conococha Defense for the very destruction of the lake loomed Front starts like this: “Brothers and Sisters: in large. A persistent image of an empty, destroyed a time ahead of now, in our entire Peruvian si- lake proved important. Th at had transpired in erra the fresh water will be disappearing from nearby Antamina but aff ected livelihoods on a the sources that previously existed, generously much smaller scale (see Gil 2009). Emptying giving life to us, our animals, plants, and all liv- Lake Conococha, the source of the largest west- ing beings.” ward river of the country, would entail loss of Water connects scales. In water, climate change livelihood on a very diff erent scale. Concerns meets local pollution. Its distribution is aff ected over the availability of water in the valley there- by the global political economy of mining as fore connected trends of climate change to min- well as local forms of governance. According to ing activities. Worries about the future of water the 2009 water law, water is the patrimony of in the area further exacerbated the assessment the state. It cannot be private property. It is the of the negative impacts of the Conococha explo- state that grants use rights to both peasants and rations. And the actions of the authorities in the mines, and it is the state that is the legal owner negotiations showed that the Lima government of Lake Conococha or any other lake. By grant- had already taken sides in favor of capital, put- ing the rights to water use to the mine, the state ting little value on the lives of the rural residents. is asserting its right to control water against the In a recent study on corporate social respon- claim of the communities. sibility practices in a Chilean mining project, Halfway to the regional capital of Huaraz Fabiana Li (2011) highlights how matters of com- and within sight of Cátac is the site of the old mensuration and equivalence are central to the mining town Ticapampa, one of the most dra- relationship between the mine and the people. matic relics of past mining activities. Th e Anglo- Commensuration means that it is possible to French corporation left not only a substantial translate—to compare and reconcile—diff erent surplus to local mine owners and international forms of value: for example, water pollution and stockholders but also a gigantic tailings pond economic compensation. Equivalence highlights known as the Relave de Ticapampa. Immediately that what may seem commensurable has limits, downstream, people in nearby Recuay tell of the that the value of water availability may not stand changes the river went through as the toxic mix- in direct relation to the value of economic com- ture of minerals, dirt, water, and stones, along pensation. Th e legal terms for water contrast with with the high concentration of chemicals used to the moral economy of water (Trawick 2001). As liberate the precious metals from earthly bonds, part of a social, cultural, and productive land- 22 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen scape, water cannot be reduced to a “resource” wrote the Agrarian League of Recuay in an of- commensurable with a specifi c market value. fi cial statement on December 6, 2010. Although Among irrigators and other water users, the the contamination of water and the destruction distribution of water is embedded in complex of the environment served as an engine of pro- systems of reciprocity and mutual labor obliga- test, it would not be accurate to describe this as tions. Th at free access to water, and the increas- an account of peasant environmentalism. Aft er ing feeling of state encroachment, is a concern all, many do participate in mining activities became clear to me when I attended a meeting elsewhere, and the salaries of those working as with irrigators concerning the consequences of topographers, drivers, or manual laborers in the new water law. One man stood up and asked the mines constitute an important part of many the engineer in charge of the workshop: “What household economies. Th e very same people comes next? Are you also going to charge us for fi ghting the Conococha project simultaneously the air that we breathe?” endorsed a new mining operation in a small wa- While the land is increasingly leased out to tershed above Recuay. Th e main problem is the concession, from the perspective of the peasants order of disorder, where the interests of big cap- the movement of water management seems to be ital and the individual pockets of decision mak- going the other way, with the state increasingly ers come to decide the proper use of resources. I controlling the sources and monitoring the fl ows. did not fi nd any contesting claims for the poten- Water has shift ed jurisdictional domain and is it- tial mining deposits in Huambo, meaning that self subject to the control of a state that claims no other actors apparently intended to work the ownership of all water. In the confl ict we saw two underground resources. Instead, I argue that divergent, perhaps incommensurable systems of the claims to repossess the lake were claims to spatial control overlapping. Th e legislation cov- be taken into account. Th ese are claims that the ers the direct use of the land surface and includes state and government take seriously the social compensation, but impacts on water are excluded. contract entailed by the mutual recognition of It is the state that is the owner of all water, and it authority, rights, and property and secure the has the capacity to grant permission for use. Th e land and water that are the foundation of rural EIA—which had not been carried out in Cono- livelihoods. cocha—is meant to assess the negative impacts of Since the early 1990s, Peru has experienced the mines. As both Gil (2009) and Li (2009) have an expansion in mining activities, which further shown, the execution of these studies is oft en accelerated during the fi rst decade of the new tied to the mine in question. And in the eyes of millennium. Simultaneously, according to the peasants, the mine is tied to the state. While the Peruvian ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo mine is forced to negotiate directly with the local 2006, 2012), the number of social confl icts is population aff ected by its operations, the steps on the rise: from 75 across the country in Jan- with regard to hydrological impacts seem much uary 2006 to 243 in August 2012, of which 61 more muddled, and ultimately it is the Ministry percent were due to socio-environmental issues. of Energy and Mines, and not the Ministry of In Ancash, the number rose from one confl ict Environment, that has the capacity to judge to thirty-three. While the protest in defense of whether a mining project is environmentally— the waters of Conococha may not be the most and socially—sustainable. prominent on the national level, the ongoing social confl ict is part of a nationwide tendency toward discontent with the current forms of eco- Th e order of disorder nomic expansion. In a country of rapid economic growth, and where former President García could “Enough with this order of disorder. We demand compare a vast proportion of the rural popula- national dignity, honesty, and transparency,” tion to the dog in the manger that “neither eats Reclaiming the lake | 23 nor lets others eat,” tensions are mounting be- killing of Muñante was the ultimate manifesta- tween those—oft entimes—urban dwellers who tion of the indiff erence of those in power and gain from mining and those who have only little of the little value the powerful seem to ascribe and seem to be left with even less. to the lives of the peasants. To the protesters, Th e struggle for rights is accentuated when it came to stand as a tangible expression of the put into the context of the García government disregard for Andean lives that pervades state and its attempt to construct a particular ver- policies in relation to mines, natural resources, sion of development. As highlighted by Drinot, and human bodies. the discursive strategy was to construe parts of Th e mining company misread the social as the population as obstacles to progress and de- well as the physical terrain. Th ey did not take velopment (2011: 191). In the case of Conoco- into account the fl uid nature of water and the cha, one can observe how themes of property symbolic importance of Lake Conococha, which relations and authority become entangled with in this case instigated a regional mobilization. So particular forms of population control. On the a number of issues emerged in the course of the roads and bridges of Ancash, mining politics protests: environmental degradation, state-led of leasing territory and water to transnationals capitalist expansion, contested territorial sover- intersect with the ways in which the Peruvian eignty, dissolution of the commons, and outright law enforcement deals with unruly subjects. As repression. In Cátac, I spoke to the head of the with the case of the contaminated waters of the local defense committee. “It was a just blockade,” Santa River below the Ticapampa tailings pond, he contended. Th ey were not fi ghting against environment, politics, and the human body are the government, but, seeing that the “patrimo- entangled. Th e following excerpt from my con- nies” were being sold out, they defended their versation with Paulina shows how she also saw country’s “sovereignty.” Th erefore, “as national- other nonmining factors infl uencing the deci- ists, as fi rst-class citizens, we cannot just give it sion to protest: away.” Toward the end of our conversation, and aft er having laid out his own empirical knowl- And then, when they killed Muñante, edge of the pollution that the mines bring with people turned bitter. It came on top of them, he returned to the theme of sovereignty: all the other stuff that comes to us, now they even kill us [lo que es encima, nues- Regarding sovereignty, I think that Alan tras cosas que vienen, todavía, encima nos García is selling away our motherland matan]. Th ey kill our comrades, so we [patria]. He is giving it away. Who are the rose. benefi ciaries? Th em. Here they have no concerns for agriculture. If we talk about Th e statement “now they even kill us” points to sovereignty, there is no sovereignty when an accumulation of injustices perceived by Pau- you sell that which is the nation. Here we lina: the abandonment, the capriciousness of are defending our lives … Defending the an unreliable state, the promises not kept, and lake we were defending our sovereignty. now, the killing. Th at was reason enough for the people in her village to rise up and join in the Th e question of sovereignty here pinpoints the protests. In conversations and in the interviews connection between property and citizenship: I conducted in the weeks and months follow- when the president and his government make ing the protest, I could still feel the resentment concessions (to their own benefi t at the expense of injustice: in their opinion, the killing of the of the rural residents), they sell (or give) away young Muñante was certainly no coincidence that (land and water) which should not be sold. or accident but rather a symptom of the forms Th at which is the nation is the environment as of governance to which they are subjected. Th e a kind of common property. In that way, in his 24 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen analysis of the situation, both local sovereignties imation of authority, and a continuous struggle and national sovereignties are threatened by the for recognition. mining policies, as de jure and de facto property Th ere is a paradox in this narrative: fram- regimes are overruled by economic (self-)inter- ing the struggle as one of rights affi rms the au- est. Th e techniques of spatial control employed thority of the state, against which the highland by peasant communities and unions as well as dwellers are allegedly struggling. Th e ambiguity local, regional, and national governments under of state and government has been subject to a the infl uence of the mining companies com- long-standing debate, highlighted by Abrams’s pete over how to defi ne territories. In the above (1988) piece on the diffi culties of studying the statement, the legitimacy of the national gov- state. Empirically, this case shows how people in ernment is undermined as it sells out what is the Andes are well aware of the diff erences be- perceived to be integral to local and national tween diff erent state institutions and, more im- sovereignties; hence their authority to bestow portant, make crucial distinctions between the and dissolve property rights is not recognized. state as the guarantor of rights and recognition It is the peasants as citizens who must challenge and those in government representing and ad- the current order of disorder. Th e systematized ministering that state function. In the eyes of plunder must be dismantled by the citizens who the people, it is now the mining companies who are suff ering the consequences of government’s decide and the government that has lost legiti- arrangements and its alignments with transna- macy as a responsible administrator of collective tional interests. Peruvian property. Th e relationship between As mining infringes on diff erent and over- property, rights, and citizenship highlights this lapping regimes of spatial control, it becomes ambiguity by pinpointing the tensions that arise part of the government of human bodies, being when diff erent ways of conceptualizing rights increasingly entangled with the state apparatus. collide in livelihood struggles. Th is is an expres- Th e social organization of resources in the An- sion of an emergent understanding of citizen- des, in which they are common rather than pri- ship where diff erent notions of rights are at play vate, is hardly compatible with the new forms of and being mobilized simultaneously. Because market-based state building. Th e negotiations rights do not exist in and of themselves but only between the mining company and the peasant in a relationship of mutual recognition, to frame community as well as the nondialogue between the struggle for Conococha in terms of rights the mine and the peasants and urban dwellers violations serves as an eff ective means of claim- possibly aff ected by its water use show a diff er- ing both moral and actual high grounds. ent kind of interface between citizens and state authorities from that which the state would like to present in its programs of good governance, Reclaiming the lake political representation, and citizen participa- tion (McNulty 2011). In this regard, the local Returning to Don Lucas in the cobbler’s store: dynamics of territorial management and its would I not have defended my rights had they intersections with the management of water been violated? Th e analytical conundrum has raise questions about the spaces for participa- been to understand how the environment tion available to marginalized populations. As stretches into the politics of belonging, how le- sites of encounters between regimes of property gal rights converge and collide with the social and uneven economic and political capabili- production of resources, landscapes, and hu- ties, mining therefore highlights how environ- man bodies. ment-as-common-(or private)-property is not As David Harvey (2005: 145–146) has fa- just a matter of access to resources but also mously pointed out, dispossession in itself is not about the very constitution of citizenship, legit- new. Mining is a case in point for understand- Reclaiming the lake | 25 ing how old forms of accumulation attain new voice was won, but the social struggles for citi- shapes with neoliberal governance. Th e histor- zenship on equal terms continue. At the heart ical continuity in the forms of extraction in its of the struggle therefore lie confl icting notions classic and neoliberal forms was highlighted in of what constitutes rights and citizenship, and the course of the protest as it moved beyond what it means to be a “proper” citizen. concerns just for water. As it encapsulated a his- tory of exploitation of the local environment by outsiders, rooted in legacies of mining contam- Acknowledgments ination and in asymmetrical relations of power and infl uence over political processes, we see I am grateful to the people of Cátac and Rec- how new political subjects emerge as the dis- uay, who shared their ideas and struggles with possession of people is tied to new forms of re- me. Funding for fi eldwork was provided by source governance. the European Research Council as part of the Th e story of the battle for Conococha shows Waterworlds Project. I thank Oscar Salemink, how the people of highland Peru try to live Astrid Andersen, Birgitte Bruun, and Katrine with neoliberal governance while rejecting cer- Gotfredsen for their enthusiasm and ideas. I tain aspects of it. Th e current dispossession of wrote this article as a postdoctoral fellow at the resources is connected to a neoliberal logic of Department of Food and Resource Economics, governance, showing a shift ing relationship be- funded by the Danish Research Council, and I tween state, capital, and rural dwellers of the am particularly thankful for the useful ideas and highlands. Th is same logic of governance also critical feedback provided by Jens Friis Lund, provides the peasants with a particular vocab- Martin Skrydstrup, and Christian Lund. Finally, ulary—a new repertoire in Tilly and Tarrow’s I wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers (2007) sense—to confront these new confi gura- for their very constructive feedback. tions of dispossession. But while the Peruvian state has extended rights and decision-making capacity also to the more impoverished parts of Mattias Borg Rasmussen is assistant professor at the population in the form of participatory bud- the Department of Food and Resource Econom- geting, institutions of transparency, and tools ics, University of Copenhagen. He holds a PhD of good governance, it is increasingly acting in anthropology from the University of Copen- with brute symbolic and actual force to imple- hagen. He has been working on environmental ment the economic expansion of the extractive governance, water, climate change, local-level industries. politics, common property, and citizenship in Political cultures die hard in the Andes as Peru’s . Rasmussen is the au- neoliberal policies merge with historically con- thor of Andean Waterways: Resource Politics in stituted forms of governance. In this rhetorical Highland Peru (University of Washington Press, landscape poor peasants are represented as ob- 2015). stacles to development, as not-quite-perfect cit- Email: [email protected] izens. Th e peasants, who took to the streets in December 2010 as well as in many other times and places in Peru in recent years, insist on the References plurality of the Peruvian nation. To claim rights, to attempt to seize a citizenship on equal terms, Abrams, Philip. [1977] 1988. Notes on the diffi culty is to (re-)create a link between human bodies of studying the state. Journal of Historical Sociol- and their environment. Reclaiming the lake, the ogy 1(1): 58–89. peasants of Ancash sought to redefi ne what it Arellano-Yanguas, Javier. 2011. Aggravating the means to be Peruvian. Th is particular battle for resource curse: Decentralisation, mining, and 26 | Mattias Borg Rasmussen

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