Film Review: Two Stories about Extractivism

Ernesto Cabellos Damián Hija de la laguna (Daughter of the Lake). Peru, 2015.

In Ernesto Cabellos Damián’s documentary Hija de la laguna we see an iteration of the dynamics inherent to capitalist accumulation: the struggle between the owners of the product and the people. In the penultimate scene the camera records dozens of community members walking through a valley singing “The water belongs to the people and not the miners.” They arrive at a place on the shore of Cajamarca’s Blue Lagoon whose ownership is in dispute. The protesters stand on a hilltop declaring their communal right to the property, and the director gives us a panoramic view in which we can see, as they can, the Yanacocha mine’s private security forces and the federal riot police awaiting them in the valley. Next comes a distance shot in which the community members are distributing food and talking. In contrast, the security forces and the police are shot from several meters away, generating a distance and thus locating them in the eyes of the protesters and increasing the dramatic tension between the oppressed and their oppressors. Attention is then directed to the arrival of the representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, who are trying to end the mobilization although they profess to be neutral. Next the director, in silence, foregrounds the faces of some community members to illustrate the tension, showing their anguish and determination. A medium shot shows the protagonist, Nélida Ayay, informing a local radio station of a possible police attack on the protesters. Finally, and without explanation, the police and the security forces go away. This is a story of a momentary victory against capital. The filmmaker is telling the story of a social struggle in Cajamarca, Peru, against gold extraction in the Conga lagoons by the Yanacocha mine (which is controlled by a joint venture involving the World Bank, the Peruvian company Buenaventura, and the U.S. Newmont Mining Corporation). He tells it from the experience of the activist Nélida Ayay. If Yanacocha wins, Ayay and her people will run out of water and may be displaced, with the area ending up contaminated. Tangentially, the documentary shows another mining conflict in Bolivia, where the town has already run out of water because of mining pollution (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Nélida Ayay.

The documentary does a good job in giving pride of place to a woman’s story without overlooking those of the others involved. It shows how Ayay, who is studying to be a lawyer, listens to locals and explains their rights to them while connecting us to a symbolic dimension embodied in the vision of the lagoon as a “humanized” living being. In the first scene there is a distance shot of the landscape to position Ayay as a part of it. There she prays to Mama Yaku (Mother Water), whom she considers the blood of the earth. This helps us reflect on the idea of development, on whether coproduction of knowledge with different communities is possible, and on the prevailing economic model and its connection with patriarchy. ¹

During a later scene we watch a turbulent demonstration in Lima in which the police of the Emergency Division employ direct violence as a tool of repression. The villagers shout, “Water belongs to the people!” Here the documentary identifies the two sides in this conflict: the townspeople rising against the invasion and the state, allied with capital, “feverish with a gold rush” (Galeano, 1971). It goes on to contrast this struggle with a viewpoint that seems to emphasize fair trade, the privileged reflections of the Dutch goldsmith Bibi van der Velden on indiscriminate mining practices that affect the lives of neighboring populations and destroy the surrounding environment. This story culminates with a kind of epiphany in which the artist calls for new gold mining commercial practices—a “more human” or “green” capitalism. The documentary fails to develop this story—to explain why this would be a solution to the conflict portrayed. It is understood that the two stories are connected, but the documentary does not show an explicit link, and this weakens its argument to the point that it appears to have none. The filmmaker’s intention may have been for the audience to accept fair trade as capable of counteracting harmful extractivist capitalism, but if extractivism is aimed at accumulation how would it allow for fair and sustainable trade?

As does the critical literature, we argue that the idea of fair trade mystifies the exploitative relationship and cannot produce anything that could be described as sustainable mining (Besky, 2013; Fridell, 2006; Raynolds, Murray, and Wilkinson, 2007). It emphasizes “green” capitalism but does not show the contradictions of this approach. It is clear that van der Velden has the privilege of choosing whether she wants to participate in fair trade—“to achieve a balance between luxury and sustainability in a way that chimes with the mood of the modern consumer” (van der Velden, 2016)—while the people of Cajamarca have to fight for their lives (Bryant and Goodman, 2004). This difference, however, is absent from the themes developed in the film.

Extractivism, understood as the exploitation of natural resources, has been key in the development model in the Americas since the colonies, part of the material and socio-historical foundation of the continent’s nations (Farthing and Fabricant, 2018). It constitutes a focus of reproduction for the capitalist system and therefore of relations of inequality. Capitalist institutions, companies, and governments exploit natural resources to feed the accumulation necessary for their own functioning. An important part of this process involves gaining access to raw materials through the dispossession of local populations. It is this pattern of capital and violence, nourished by blood and sweat, that produces people like van der Velden.

The documentary would have benefited from more context, clearer links between the stories, and a discussion of what development means for the participants—the institutions and the mine’s representatives, for example. It fails to question underdevelopment as a condition of development in the Netherlands and the United States, countries that partly control the mining company. The film ends with the villagers’ demonstration, affirming the importance of the struggle, and returns to the water of the Conga lagoon with a scene full of symbolic value (Figure 2). However, the struggle and repression continue. Three water defenders were arrested in 2018, an act characterized by Amnesty International as an attempt to silence the activism (OCMAL, 2018a; 2018b), and their fight is part of a struggle involving hundreds of thousands of peasants seeking to protect Peruvian lands (Zibechi, 2014).

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Figure 2.

The Conga lagoon.

This documentary has powerful cinematography. The shots of the Cajamarca landscapes illustrate the sacredness of nature and therefore seem to support the people who are trying to have a more harmonious relationship with it. As the story of a victory, it is a cultural artifact of liberation. However, in including the responses to the accumulation cycle, it does not clearly show the differences between the strategies. One answer, instead of an elusive sustainable extraction, could be to control what minerals are extracted, in what quantity, and for what purpose. The film does not contribute to an understanding of these dynamics. Perhaps some future documentary could address this issue by incorporating alternative visions, even some that might already be functioning.