Get started
Work

Book review of Teresa A. Velásquez. 2022. Pachamama politics: Campesino water defenders and the anti-mining movement in Andean Ecuador

Year: 2023
Type: book-review
Abstract: Pachamama Politics follows the rise of the anti-mining protests during Rafael Correa's government in Ecuador (2008Ecuador ( -2010) ) and examines changing state discourses under neo-extractive policies.It centers on the political role of campesino/a water defenders and the ways in which they relate to and bring forth Andean cosmovisions in their defense of water and life.Water has historically been a point of contention in the parishes of Tarqui and Victoria del Portete, because unequal land distribution limited small-scale farmers' access to water for agriculture and led to the creation of a community irrigation water system.Water access was again threatened with the arrival of a foreign mining company after the discovery of metal in the area.Teresa A. Velásquez argues that, as part of the anti-mining movement, "water emerges as a catalyst for political action… and a vernacular right to local autonomy rooted in arduous histories of the construction of community water systems" (p. 7).As water defenders come together in their political fight against the state and mining operations, they set forth and redefine their connections with the Pachamama-or 'Mother Earth.' Velásquez engages in critical discussions about neo-extractivism, non-human entities, social movements, multicultural governance, and Indigeneity to illustrate how water is more than just a material substance and serves as the foundation of the anti-mining movement in Ecuador, "a new brand of Indigenous cosmopolitics that brings together activists across lines of race, class, gender, and political ideologies" (p. 7).Chapter one lays the foundation of the anti-mining movement in Victoria del Portete and Tarqui, two parishes located in Ecuador's Azuay Province home to campesino/as of Kañari and Kichwa descent.Water became a central element in mining disputes and brought together farmers from different social classes following the arrival of a foreign mining company in 2005.Issues arose because of the company's water quality tests of the Irquis River.Based on these tests, the mining company publicly framed dairy farming-the area's main economic activity-as a central cause of water pollution and "posited farmers as…a population in need of an improved water supply" in order to validate the company's presence in the area (p.38).At the same time, community members grew suspicious of the company's exploratory operations and their impact on the watershed.This started a series of disputes with the newly established leftist government, who failed to validate farmers' concerns and conceded to mining operations.Velásquez explains that "contradictions of neoliberal 'green' governmentality-resolving environmental problems through water quality studies that do not address the political dimensions of watershed management-reconfigured local water conflicts" (p.28).This is an important example of how neoliberal states, even those that claim to be more progressive, fail to recognize local realities and employ tools that do not address local knowledges and the historical relations of communities with their environment.By siding with the mining company based on the water quality tests, Correa's government disregarded the greater significance of water in the community.Chapter two focuses on the criminalization of female campesina water defenders as the Mining Mandate and the Mining Law were passed from 2008 to 2009.Campesinas, excluded from most leadership roles in the anti-mining movement, were particularly targeted by the government and by male farmers as they came together to form a Pachamama women's defense group.In their anti-mining discourse, they centered the Pachamama "as a life-generating entity to be defended with everything one can muster in collective struggle"-a discourse that would later be adopted as part of a nationwide movement to defend water (p.57).Paradoxically, while the new Mining Law integrated Andean cosmovisions-Indigenous concepts and beliefs-acknowledging the Pachamama as an entity with rights, it also diminished local autonomy and directly criminalized water defenders.Thus, "the Rights of Nature became compatible with state and multinational-led mineral extraction" (p.83).This chapter provides insight into women's specific experiences within environmental movements and shows how neoliberalism adopts local values only to benefit larger economic interests limiting local autonomy.Chapters three and four follow the formation of a national movement for the defense of life amidst Correa's Water Law proposal from 2009 to 2010, which centralized state power over water resources and threatened the central role of local communities in managing water systems.Different groups, including farmers, environmental defenders, and Indigenous organizations, with the support of the Catholic church, came together to demand the protection of local water autonomy by implementing a Pachamama discourse.For
DOI: 10.2458/jpe.5694
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4383461060
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: 10