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Abstract
Postdevelopment theorists often try to read “alternatives to development” in the actions of local social movements or non-governmental organizations. More recent studies of development, however, emphasize the imbrication of state agendas with those of civil society. In the context of a major regional integration initiative in South America, this essay argues for the need to move beyond postdevelopment. Launched in 2000, IIRSA, the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America, calls for a massive expansion of the continent's transport, energy and telecommunications networks and as such has the potential to redefine both the ecological and political-economic landscapes of South America. In particular, IIRSA's Amazonian mega-projects have prompted outcries from environmentalists and indigenous peoples. In examining some of the salient methods activists are using to challenge IIRSA, this paper takes issue with postdevelopment and argues that activists are not rejecting elite projects, but instead are engaging them. Activists generate this space of engagement by invoking and problematizing the idea of active citizenship. The essay ends by exploring the implications of such a strategy, emphasizing an awareness of the entanglements between civil society and dominant institutions through a consideration of development, environment and citizenship.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editors, the article reviewers, and the individuals who kindly agreed to be interviewed for this study. Additional thanks to the Bates College Imaging Center for its assistance developing the IIRSA map.
Notes
1. Indigenous groups sometimes have a different platform than their NGO allies, and this is to some extent the case with IIRSA. Similarly, the struggle around regional integration involves many additional stakeholders such as workers, traditional peoples, or rubber tappers. This essay focuses on environmental and social justice NGOs only. Understanding the positions of other stakeholders on IIRSA is part of necessary future research.
2. The Amazon basin stretches across nine different South American countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
3. IIRSA was signed in 2000, that is, before a number of leftist-populist administrations came to power in South America (e.g., Lula in Brazil, Correa in Ecuador, and Morales in Bolivia). When I spoke with officials in the Inter-American Development Bank, I was told that despite the ideological shift, all governments continue to be actively engaged in pushing IIRSA forward, while attempting to negotiate the most favorable parameters for themselves. One of the reasons for this is that IIRSA is focused exclusively on the technical aspect of infrastructure, rather than political institution-building or legal changes.
4. The three-year grant was approved in March 2005. The Moore Foundation's description of the purpose of this grant states: “This grant supports the development of an information infrastructure and the exchange of information about the Bank Information Center's economic integration initiative in South America.…Outcomes include design and implementation of a user friendly technology platform for information storage and dissemination, five to seven case studies detailing the impact of international financial institutions in the Andes-Amazon region, creation of an information network to communicate about IIRSA, alignment of civil society actors, creation of a collective vision for conservation development, and proposed mitigations to policymakers” (Moore Foundation Citation2009).
5. A complete list of signatory organizations is available here: http://www.bicusa.org/en/Region.KeyIssues.100.aspx [accessed 17 February 2009].
6. In June 2009, indigenous people in Peru's Bagua province took to the streets to protest a new land reform law favoring foreign investors. The Peruvian government responded by sending troops to Bagua and shooting into the crowd from helicopters. The clash killed 11 police officers and a still unknown number of indigenous civilians.
