Mining presence: extraction and embodiment in Valles Centrales, Oaxaca

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a critical reflection on the ways extractive industries manifest within and across place. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Mexico over 8 months in 2019–2020, this paper focuses on the experiences of residents living in a town adjacent to an underground silver mine in Valles Centrales, Oaxaca, Mexico. I argue that a focus on lived, sensory and long-term engagement between people and mining opens new avenues for geographers to consider ‘what mining does’. Looking beyond the language of ‘impacts’, I build upon work on cultural geographies of presence and absence to put forward the notion of ‘mining presence’: mining’s present and absent affects and materialities that interweave with residents’ everyday lives, homes, bodies, and landscapes. In other words, I explore the qualities of mining that bring the San José mine into a neighbouring town and mediate spaces of daily life. In doing so, this paper contributes to the geographies of the extractive industries by showing that attention to life with mining requires a re-thinking of the spatiotemporal relations of extraction itself.

RESUMEN

Este documento ofrece una reflexión crítica sobre las formas en que las industrias extractivas se manifiestan dentro y a través del lugar. Con base en una investigación etnográfica realizada en México durante ocho meses en 2019-2020, este documento se centra en las experiencias de los residentes que viven en un pueblo adyacente a una mina de plata subterránea en Valles Centrales, Oaxaca, México. Argumento que un enfoque en el compromiso vivido, sensorial y a largo plazo entre las personas y la minería abre nuevas vías para que los geógrafos consideren ‘lo que hace la minería’. Mirando más allá del lenguaje de los ‘impactos’, me baso en el trabajo sobre geografías culturales de presencia y ausencia para proponer la noción de ‘presencia minera’: los afectos y materialidades presentes y ausentes de la minería que se entrelazan con las vidas cotidianas de los residentes, sus hogares, sus cuerpos y los paisajes En otras palabras, exploro las cualidades de la minería que acercan a la mina de San José a un pueblo vecino y median los espacios de la vida cotidiana. Al hacerlo, este documento contribuye a las geografías de las industrias extractivas al mostrar que la atención a la vida minera requiere un replanteamiento de las relaciones espaciotemporales de la extracción misma.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexico
• embodiment
• extractive industries
• presence
• absence

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• México
• encarnación
• industrias extractivas
• presencia
• ausencia

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the residents of Magdalena Ocotlán, for their participation, generosity, and openness in this research. I thank Jonas Olvera and Itzel Cruz for their companionship in the field. I am grateful to my supervisors, Anthony Bebbington and Vanessa Lamb for their feedback on earlier drafts and on-going guidance. My sincere thanks to Sharlene Mollett and the two anonymous reviewers for their encouraging and insightful comments. Special thanks to Chandra Jayasuriya for creating the maps. This paper was written on Wurundjeri Country.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The mine appears to be covered; however, the ‘cap’ is comprised of dried and compacted mine tailings called dry stack tailings. This is a method of mine tailings management, where tailings are dried and compacted, then stacked in a mound.

2. A pueblo or pueblos (plural) refers to a town or village in Spanish but can also be used to connote ‘people’ and ‘community’.

3. Three kilometres is roughly the distance between the mine and the urban area of Magdalena. The San José mine property area (Figure 1) overlaps the cultivated fields of Magdalena but the infrastructure of the mine is not located within the municipal boundary.

4. There were 405 mining concessions in Oaxaca in 2020 (SEMARNAT, 2020). Available at: https://apps1.semarnat.gob.mx:8443/dgeia/compendio_2020/dgeiawf.semarnat.gob.mx_8080/ibi_apps/WFServlet21b5.html.

5. All names are pseudonyms.

6. A method of mining where broken ore remains in the mine as a foundation from which miners work.

7. The San José deposit is now mined using a mechanized overhand cut-and-fill method, similar to stoping. The mine has expanded twice since it’s purchase, including the addition of the dry stack tailings facility (Fortuna Silver, 2019).