Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Spring 5-15-2020 Subjectivities of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the “Cuerpo Territorio” of Peru’s Defensoras Natalia Guzmán Solano Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Latin American Studies Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Guzmán Solano, Natalia, "Subjectivities of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the “Cuerpo Territorio” of Peru’s Defensoras" (2020). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2193. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/2193 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Anthropology Dissertation Examination Committee: Bret Gustafson, Chair John Bowen Javier García Liendo Rebecca Lester Shanti Parikh Mirtha Villanueva Cotrina Subjectivities of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the “Cuerpo Territorio” of Peru’s Defensoras by Natalia Guzmán Solano In collaboration with the defensoras of Cajamarca A dissertation presented to The Graduate School of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2020 St. Louis, Missouri © 2020, Natalia Guzmán Solano Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... v Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... viii Prologue .......................................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: The Extractive Security State: Chronicles of the Present, Common Histories and “Continuums of Violence” ............................................................................................................ 44 Chapter 3: Criminalizing Dissent.................................................................................................. 80 Chapter 4: The Politics of Everyday Life ................................................................................... 113 Chapter 5: Vivencias: Stories of Women Defending the Territory in Peru’s Northern Andes .. 163 Conclusion: “ ¿Cómo Vamos a Vivir sin Agua?” (How Will We Live Without Water?) ......... 201 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 207 ii List of Figures Figure 1: Minera Yanacocha ………………………….…………………………….……………4 Figure 2: Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America……………………………...…28 iii List of Abbreviations APRA Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women DINOES Dirección de Operaciones Especiales FENMUCARINAP Federación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas, Indígenas, Nativas y Asalariadas de Perú FOSPA Foro Social Panamazonico IACHR Inter-American Commission on Human Rights IDL Instituto de Defensa Legal IIDS/IILS Instituto Internacional de Democracia y Sociedad / International Institute for Law and Society INEI Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática JOC Jóvenes Organizados de Celendín MAS Movimiento de Afirmación Social OMUDEF PC Organización de Mujeres Defensoras de la Pachamama de Celendín PDTG Programa Democracia y Transformación Global PIC Plataforma Interinstitucional de Celendín SUTEP Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Educación del Perú iv Acknowledgments Firstly, an expression of gratitude to the ancestors: I fly on your wings. A deep thanks to the groundskeepers and housekeeping staff at Washington University in St. Louis, whose labor permitted me to think, write, and create in safe and clean spaces. I am especially thankful to Zena Mitchell and Sylvester Warmack who worked in McMillan Hall. I am grateful for the PhD program at Washington University for many reasons. Among them, and not the least, was for allowing me the time to grow an awareness about the gendered demands on academic cis-women in heterosexual partnerships who become mothers. The colleagues who chose to become mothers in their graduate trajectories, and those who will as academics, hold my heartfelt admiration. I wish to thank my committee and all the faculty that I engaged with across the university. A Bret, mi profundo agradecimiento for the gentle guidance that allowed me to do whatever I wanted these past seven years. My ancestors blessed with unfailing, supportive kin. I would not be here without you, mami, papi, Lizy, y Carlitos. And to the kin that we choose, thank you for being by my side. I am grateful for the friends near and far who have put up with me through this process. My heart hugs you, Carolyn, and Ashley—for keeping me sane with our long nights bringing down the patriarchy from our kitchen. I am grateful for the kindness, generosity of spirit, and courage that the luchadoras of Cajamarca showed me. I hope everything I have done and will continue working toward is deserving of the love they shared with me. I return my love and appreciation. v A special thanks to the Olin Fellowship and the Graduate Fellowship at the Center for the Humanities. Natalia Guzmán Solano Washington University in St. Louis May 2020 vi Dedicated to mama, And to luchadorxs far and wide around the globe. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Subjectivities of Struggle: Charting Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the “Cuerpo Territorio” of Peru’s Defensoras by Natalia Guzmán Solano In collaboration with the defensoras of Cajamarca Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology Washington University in St. Louis, 2020 Professor Bret Gustafson, Chair “Subjectivities of Struggle: Inscriptions of Violence and Refusal on the ‘Cuerpo Territorio’ of Peru’s Defensoras” calls into question the colonial assumptions underpinning contemporary understandings of extractivism. The sixteen months of ethnographic research I conducted with the defensoras (women ecoterritorial defenders) of Cajamarca is situated at the fraught extractive frontier where social conflict paralyzed the expansion of a large-scale mining project and generated a coalitional struggle against extractive-led economic development. This dissertation conceptualizes extractivism as a modern/colonial product of power and knowledge that has feminized the land and inhabitants from the time of the European invasion of the Americas. While recent research on mining and extractivism focuses on corporate-state-community relations and the materiality of “natural resources,” in this project I investigate how extractivism becomes inscribed on the cuerpo territorio (body-territory), a notion derived from Indigenous and Latin American feminisms which posits that the corporeal (human) body and geospatial territory are acted upon and subjugated by the same heteropatriarchal capitalist regimes of power. By treating the modalities of gendered state violence at the extractive frontier as viii indicative of an “extractive security state,” this research reveals the operation of state techniques that intensify the reterritorialization of women’s bodies and the land. Within this context, defensoras nonetheless exercise agentive power within the sociopolitical conditions that have given shape to a masculine terrain of ecoterritorial politics in northern highland Peru. This dissertation argues that defensoras’ political praxis, including practices of autonomy and public leadership, enacts important critiques of capitalist patriarchy. ix Prologue A life history Let me begin by telling you how I got here. In the Academy, this “who I am” and “where I’m coming from” means something in the production of this dissertation. My positionality inflected the ethnographic project I undertook in Peru, my relation to defensoras in Cajamarca, my entanglement in the politics of testimonio, and the broader politics of knowledge production in the discipline. First, I am existentially indebted to testimonios of The Latina Feminist Group. This group of scholars arose in the early 1990s with the goal of collaborating on Latina issues using feminist approaches. Through a series of meetings and working groups held during the 1990s, their purpose shifted to theorizing “latinidades feministas” (feminist Latin beingness) using testimonio as a primary method (The Latina Feminist Group 2001, 2). The group’s members were able to forge a methodological framework,