The New Politics of Mineral Extraction in Latin America

The 2000s were marked by an impressive global commodity boom – a boom that survived the major financial and economic crisis of the last years of the decade and now appears to be a structural phenomenon. Few observers saw the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels and metals coming, and previous investments in exploration and extraction have been insufficient to satisfy the expanding needs. In effect, the world market prices for key minerals like oil, gas, iron, and copper have doubled or tripled. Yet this is only half the story for Latin America, where the commodity boom has been paralleled by what we could call a political boom. There has been a new region-wide trend in which presidential elections are won by candidates of the Left and Center Left. And a stronger state management of national mineral wealth has been high on the agenda of these politicians. Although the increasing importance of the extractive sector has influenced politics in other parts of the world, Latin America is unique because of the region-wide and far-reaching implications of the renewed politicization of minerals – the massive anti-neoliberal mobilizations, the Leftist shift of political regimes, and various policy reforms.

What are the new politics of mineral extraction in Latin America and what are the impacts? There is no single and short answer. First of all, despite the above mentioned general trends in the region, each Latin American country has seen particular national changes that require close attention. In addition to the regional overview provided in the first article, this special issue contains articles on recent developments in Guatemala, Bolivia, and Ecuador, a comparative analysis of the changes in Brazil and Chile, and a comparison of Ecuador with Cameroon. This selection includes an interesting variety of countries: large and small, poor and mid-income, with moderate and more radical Leftist governments, and with large reserves of gold, oil, copper, gas, iron, and/or other metals. In different ways, there are in each of these countries civil society actors who have demanded alternative, post-neoliberal mining policies and practices.

The case studies in this special issue also focus on the interactions between new mineral politics, social movements, and changing state– society relations, which are critically analyzed from several valuable angles. The articles on Bolivia and Guatemala examine the links between new extractivist policies and participatory processes. Elisabet Dueholm Rasch shows that the broad and multi-level resistance movement against large-scale mining projects in the west of Guatemala has been beneficial for the local development of more inclusive forms of citizenship. Lorenzo Pellegrini points at an intriguing paradox in Bolivia: The national development plan of the Morales government was developed in a formally far less participatory fashion than the poverty reduction strategy of the previous government, but the Morales government’s plan has turned out to include more of the concerns that the citizens have than those covered by the previous government’s strategy, especially concerning natural resource use. Murat Arsel and Natalia Avila Angel examine the current role of the state in Ecuador with regard to oil, and they argue that the recent policies on nonrenewable resources and especially the attention to environmental conservation by the state have failed to result in improved participation. In his article on Chile and Brazil, Jewellord T. Nem Singh examines the renewed debates on the role of the state and of organized labor in the extractive sectors in the two countries where many neoliberal policies and political relations are still in place. Finally, Kelly Swing, Veronica Davidov, and Brendan Schwartz compare the experiences of two indigenous peoples with oil operations in their territories: the Waorani in Western Amazonia (Ecuador) and the Bagyeli in Eastern Africa (Cameroon). In both cases, the experience was largely negative and people were highly disappointed by the oil companies as well as by their governments.

Despite studying mineral politics in different countries and from different angles, these case studies reveal the centrality of the contrasts and tensions in the contemporary extractivist politics and reforms in Latin America – between national and local interests, between ecological and economic concerns, between the state and market, and between living well and making profits. While this is partly inherent in the extractive sector’s nature, the global configuration also shapes the local and national ways in which mineral extraction is explored, financed, and performed, and how minerals are subsequently traded, refined, manufactured, used, and discarded. It is important to note in this context that contrary to some national experiments in Latin America that involve shifting away from neoliberalism, most of the neoliberal foundations seem to still stand at the international level after the ‘earthquake’ of the economic crisis in the United States and Europe and its ongoing aftershocks. While this crisis seemed to affect Latin America only temporarily, it is continuing to derail the world’s core economies, particularly the United States and Europe. In the meantime, arguably some of the emerging economies can now be called “emerged economies” and this will continue to affect mineral extraction and the overall development trajectories of the Latin America countries. As Alex E. Fernández Jilberto and I argued in Latin America Facing China (Berghahn Books, 2010), the new ties between Latin America and China indicate that South–South relations have been changing profoundly since the end of the twentieth century.

Shortly before the release of our book on Latin America’s relations with China, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto passed away. This has brought an unfortunate end to his valuable and original scholarly contributions. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Developing Societies (JDS) and had contributed several special issues and critical articles to this journal on contemporary politics, international relations, and international political economy in Chile, Latin America, and the Global South. I am very grateful for the 20 years of fruitful academic discussion, cowriting, and companionship that we shared. Out of admiration for his critical intellectual contribution and courage, we dedicate this Special Issue of JDS to the memory of our dear friend and contributing editor, Alex E. Fernández Jilberto.