Julián's Choice: Of Jaguar-Shamans and the Sacrifices Made for Progreso in Peru's Extractive Frontier

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Peruvian Amazon ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Personal Sacrifice

Abstract In May 2010, Julián Miranda, an Indigenous Asháninka shaman, died hours after killing a jaguar-shaman. Despite knowing that it could kill him, he killed a jaguar-shaman to protect his cows, an investment to support the much-desired progreso (‘progress’) of his children and grandchildren through education. Julián's choice was one of personal sacrifice driven by the hardships he experienced in the degraded forests of the Bajo Urubamba valley in the Peruvian Amazon. My examination of his decision to kill the jaguar-shaman engages with the multi-disciplinary literature on how local peoples engage with the expanding extractive frontier in Latin America. The emphasis most literature places on social movements and – to a lesser extent – on the ontological characteristics of these conflicts needs to be counterbalanced by individual experiences like Julián's for a deeper understanding of the multiple local experiences of large-scale resource extraction and the different strategies through which people pursue their desired futures.

Consultations and Competing Claims: Implementing Participatory Institutions in Colombia’s Extractives Industries

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Shenk
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Private Firms ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Participatory Institutions ◽  
Natural Resource Development

Conflicts between local communities and their governments over natural resource development are not new in Latin America. When mining and oil companies move in, communities have blocked roads, staged protests, and undertaken other forms of direct action. More recently, however, communities have expanded their tactics, turning toward the state and its participatory institutions to contest claims over their land. This article investigates this trend and the conditions that facilitate it by analyzing an original database of 102 attempts by communities in Colombia to implement one participatory institution—the popular consultation—to challenge large scale extractive projects. I argue that communities’ ability to contest extractive projects by leveraging participatory institutions depends on the balance of power between two external players—private firms and expert allies.

scholarly journals MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES E INTEGRACIÓN REGIONAL: EL CASO DE LA ARTICULACIÓN DE MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES HACIA EL ALBA

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (16) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karla Díaz Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Free Trade Area ◽  
Trade Area ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
The Us ◽  
America Latina ◽  
Movimientos Sociales

El ALBA es un espacio de integración regional, alternativo al alca propuesto por EEUU, que inaugura una etapa denominada regionalismo posneoliberal. El ALBA desde sus orígenes ha contado con el acompañamiento de movimientos sociales de carácter antiimperialista y antineoliberal. La propia organización generó una instancia social: el Consejo de Movimientos Sociales; sin embargo, los movimientos sociales han generado de forma paralela y autónoma la Articulación de Movimientos Sociales hacia el ALBA. Este trabajo da cuenta de las características de este espacio de articulación social, a partir de propuestas teóricas pensadas en América Latina, y presenta un balance de las potencialidades y los desafíos de los movimientos sociales en el escenario latinoamericano y su influencia en la integración regional.   SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION: THE ARTICULATION OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS TOWARD ALBAABSTRACTALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas) is a regional integration entity created as an alternative to the US-proposed FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas, ALCA in Spanish). ALBA inaugurates a period that has been referred to as post-neoliberal regionalism. Since its origin, ALBA has been accompanied by social movements with an anti-imperialistic and anti-neoliberal stance. ALBA, itself, generated a social entity: the Social Movements Council. However, in a parallel and autonomous way, the social movements created the Articulation of Social Movements toward ALBA. This article describes the characteristics of this entity for social articulation based on theoretical proposals developed in Latin America, and presents a balance of the potentialities and challenges of social movements in Latin America and their incidence in regional integration.

scholarly journals América Latina: cidades, memórias e esquecimentos sob o olhar da literatura

REVISTA PLURI ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Yvone Dias Avelino
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
The Real ◽  
American Novels ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
America Latina ◽  
American Authors

Este artigo formula algumas reflexões sobre a associação da história com a literatura. Estabelecemos alguns nexos com trabalhos literários de autores latino-americanos do século XX. Nas páginas desses romances latino-americanos desfilam os expoentes de toda uma estrutura de dominação: políticos, velhos aristocratas, oportunistas recém-chegados, fazendeiros truculentos, funcionários públicos subservientes, advogados venais, representantes do capitalismo local, dominados e dominantes. Mostram-nos os vários escritores latino-americanos as ditaduras na sua insanidade grotesca, as repressões cruentas que fazem emergir os movimentos sociais populares. Estão presentes as turbulências do real e imaginário, utilitário e mágico, da dúvida e perplexidade, memória e esperança, do esquecimento e da desesperança, do espelho e labirinto.Palavras-chave: História, Literatura, Espelho, Labirinto, América Latina.AbstractThis article proposes some reflections about the association between history and literature. We have established some links with literary works written by Latin American authors of the twentieth century. In the pages of these Latin American novels the exponents of a whole structure of domination are paraded: politicians, old aristocrats, opportunist newcomers, truculent farmers, subservient civil servants, venal lawyers, representatives of local capitalism, dominated and dominant ones. The various Latin American writers show us dictatorships in their grotesque insanity, the bloody repressions that allow popular social movements to emerge. They outline the turbulences of the real and imaginary, utilitarian and magical, doubt and perplexity, memory and hope, forgetfulness and hopelessness, mirror and labyrinth.Keywords: History, Literature, Mirror, Labyrinth, Latin America.

From proposal to policy: Social movements and teachers’ unions in Latin America

Prospects ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Finger ◽  
Julián Gindin
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Teachers Unions

Landowner Groups and the Codification of Custom in Papua New Guinea

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria C. Stead
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
Relations Of Power

Although it diverges markedly from the vision of the Melanesian Way elaborated in the 1975 constitution, large-scale resource extraction has in recent decades been championed as the key mechanism for development in Papua New Guinea. In this context, forms of “middle-way” land reform are advocated as means of rendering customary land tenure commensurable with the requirements of modern, capitalist practices of production and economic activity. Principal amongst these are Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) and lease-lease-back arrangements. Ethnographic exploration of communities affected by the tuna industry in Madang Province shows how these land reforms transform structures and cartographies of power, privileging the agents of the state and global capital at the same time that they transform relations of power within communities. At the same time, however, forms of codification and the assertion of landowner identities allow communities to make claims against outside agents involved in resource extractive activity on their lands.

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