![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
In July 2013, a consulta popular (referendum) was organised by municipal authorities in Tolima, Colombia, to judge public opinion on the establishment of activities by an international mining conglomerate ie the Colosa (the Giant) gold mine. In this article study is made of the referendum, and emphasis given to its linkages with wider regional, national and Latin American efforts to anticipate damage and derail projects for resource extraction. Recognising the techniques and networks, and similar expressions of identity and territoriality, expressed in other campaigns against extraction, resource sovereignty is suggested as an approach to interpret the motivations for and dynamics of recent popular consultations.
Notes
1. Colombia is now South America's largest coal producer, and the region's third-largest oil producer after Venezuela and Brazil.
2. McNeish, “Extracting Justice? Colombia’s Commitment to Mining and Energy as a Foundation for Peace.”
3. This includes many years of financed research experience on the politics of energy and resource extraction in Latin America including work financed by the Extracting Justice project.
4. Bebbington and Bury, Subterranean Struggles; Petras and Veltamayer, New Extractivism; Li, Unearthing Conflict; McNeish, Borchgrevink, and Logan (eds), Contested Powers.
5. See the maps of socio-environmental conflict produced by the Environmental Social Justice Atlas: http://www.ejolt.org/maps/
6. Sawyer, “Crude Contamination”; Okamoto and Leifsen, “Oil Spills, Contamination.”
7. For example, recent violence and confrontations over the Yanacocha and Conga mines in Peru, the 2013/2014 Belo Monte dam protests in Brazil, and the 2011 Territorio Indigena y Parque Nacional de Isobore Secure (TIPNIS) protest.
8. Schilling-Vacaflor, ‘If the Company Belongs to You”; Schilling-Vacaflor, “Prior Consultations in Plurinational Bolivia”; Schilling-Vacaflor, Democratizing Resource Governance; Schilling-Vacaflor and Flemming, “Conflict Transformation through Prior Consultation”; Rasch. “Transformations in Citizenship”; Fulmer, “La consulta a los pueblos indígenas.”
9. The question of indigenous identity is difficult to pin down in many Andean contexts given different political and legal definitions resulting from different histories of state–community relations. Indigenous people often take part in seasonal labour outside of traditional territories, encouraging hybrid identities or pragmatism in self-ascription.
10. McNeish and Logan, Flammable Societies.
11. Escobar, Territories of Difference.
12. AGA is the third-largest gold-mining multinational in the world, with a presence in various countries including South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, Congo and Colombia.
13. In the company’s Annual Review for 2010 the project was highlighted as ‘the gold industry’s most significant virgin discovery of recent time’.
15. Author interview with resident of Piedras, 23 September 2014.
16. https://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/attachments/article/610/LA COLOSA_Una Muerte Anunciada.pdf
17. Rodríguez-Franco, “Voting Against Extraction.”
18. In 2005, Human Rights Watch revealed that the company had financed paramilitary groups in the Congo, a fact that the company itself has acknowledged (see http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/06/01/curse-gold). In 2011, AGA was awarded the prize of Most Irresponsible Company in the World by Greenpeace due to contamination of drinking water in its Ghanaian operations that affected local people (see http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/News/news/South-African-Corp-Wins-Public-Eye-Award/).
19. In October of 2011, it was revealed that the company had 41,849 ha in concessions that overlap with the páramos in the Tolima and Valle del Cauca (see http://lasillavacia.com/historia-invitado/27599/alejop/estas-son-las-empresas-mineras-en-los-paramos).
20. local farmers and producer associations, indigenous organisations representing the district’s Pijao population – as well as the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), and municipal technicians.
21. See https://www.comiteambiental.com
22. eg El Salmón Urbano: http://www.elsalmonurbano.blogspot.com
24. Asociación de Usuarios del Distrito de Adecuación de Tierras de los ríos Coello y Cucuana.
26. http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/urgent-actions/609-urgent-action-community-leader-killed-others-at-risk; see also https://nacla.org/blog/2013/11/12/leader-opposed-colombian-mining-project-murdered
27. The text of the ballot read: Do you agree, as a resident of Piedras, Tolima that in our jurisdiction, the following activities are carried out: exploration, exploitation, treatment, transformation, transportation, washing of materials that originate from large scale gold mining; or that materials that are harmful to health and the environment are stored or used, specifically cyanide and/or any other substances or hazardous materials associated with these activities; furthermore, that surface and ground water is used from our town in such operations or any other similar operations that may affect and/or limit the supply of potable water for human consumption, and for agriculture, the traditional productive vocation of our municipality?
28. The results were overwhelming: From the total number of 5105 registered voters, 2971 voted against and only 24 in favour, showing a clear rejection of the population towards AGA’s operations.
29. Walter and Urkidi, “Community Metal Mining Consultations in Latin America (2002–2012).”
30. Another three popular consultations are planned (in Cajamarca, Espinal and Ibague, respectively).
36. Decision C-123/201, Constitutional Court. Auto 11001032600020130009100 (47693), feb. 26/14, C. P. Jaime Orlando Santofimio, Council of State.
37. According to the Constitution (1991), Colombia is a democratic, participatory and pluralistic state (article 1), which is based on the principle of participation of all (article 2) and in the principle of popular sovereignty (article 3).
38. For the popular consultation to be legal, the ballot with which the citizen exercises the vote must be merely a yes or no question. The national senate must also carry out a supporting vote in the days following approval of the consultation. Finally, to ensure a concrete outcome, the authorities entitled to execute the query have three months to start its application. If this does not happen, the senate is required to take steps so that the popular decision becomes binding. However, in the event that this does not take place, the president, regional governor or mayor must impose it using the force of law within a period not exceeding three months.
39. El Tiempo, “Concejo de Cajamarca dice no a la consulta popular minera,” http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/otras-ciudades/consulta-popular-minera-en-cajamarca/15247615
40. Cepeda Castro is well known in Colombia as a representative for the Movement of Victims of the Crimes of the State (MOVICE) and for his public accusation of the existence of clear connections between ex-President Uribe and the human rights abuses of paramilitary organisations.
41. Cepeda Castro made his stance against the mine part of his campaign for the senate in 2014. As a result his campaign banners placed around the department of Tolima carried the slogan ‘No a la Colosa’.
44. Private communication with members of the Comite en Defensa del Medio Ambiente, Tolima, October 2016.
45. This decision responds to a tutela action filed by a citizen form Pijao, a municipality in a nearby state that is also threatened by mining activities by the same company as in Ibagué. Pijao had attempted to hold a popular consultation over this topic, but the administrative tribunal from this state blocked the process. The Constitutional Court revised this decision as a request of the citizen’s tutela, and recognises the right of municipalities to hold popular consultations and restrict mining, but found the question to be biased and thus unconstitutional.
48. Author interview with member of the Comite en Defensa del Medio Ambiente, Tolima, 22 September 2014.
49. McNeish and Logan (eds), Flammable Societies.
50. Blom Hansen and Stepputat, “Sovereignty Revisited,” 297.
51. Ibid.
52. Rasmussen, Andean Waterways, 93.
53. Scott, Seeing Like a State.
54. Scott. States of Imagination.
55. Colleredo-Mansfield, Power of Ecuador’s Indigenous Communities.
56. Lund, Twilight Institutions.
57. Elden, Terror and Territory.
58. Gledhill, People’s Oil.
59. Coronil, Magical State.
60. Escobar, Territories of Difference; de la Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes.”
61. McNeish and Logan (eds), Flammable Societies; Rosser, Political Economy of the Resource Curse; Omeje, Extractive Economies and Conflicts; Stevens and Dietche, Resource Curse: An Analysis.
62. Elden, Terror and Territory; Sack, Human territoriality.
63. Erazo, Governing Indigenous Territories.
64. Borras and Franco, Land Sovereignty Alternative?; Martinez-Torres and Rosset, “La Vía Campesina.”
65. Author interview with Director de Democracia Participativa Cuidadania y Accion Communal, Gobernancia de Tolima, 22 September 2014.
66. https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/PND/PND2010-2014 Tomo I CD.pdf
68. Including the paro agrario in 2016. See http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/al-paro-agrario-se-sumaria-partir-del-lunes-el-de-los-t-articulo-636142
69. McNeish, “Extracting Justice? Colombia’s Commitment to Mining and Energy as a Foundation for Peace.”
71. Chantre and Quintin, Los pensamientos del indio.
72. According to national census data, Tolima’s local indigenous population, the Pijao, make up only 4% of the population. However, it is important to recognise that a history of colonisation, economic interacion and mestizaje (racial mixing) has resulted in hybrid identities and indigenous claims amongst a larger population.
74. Peet and Watts, Liberation Ecologies.
75. Ibid,
76. McNeish, “Resisting Colonisation.”
77. Fortun, Advocacy after Bhopal.
78. Li, Unearthing Conflict, 6.
79. Martinez-Alier, Social Metabolism and Conflicts over Extractivism.
80. Author interview with Leader of the Comite en Defensa del Medio Ambiente, Tolima, 22 September 2014.
81. Kirsch, Mining Capitalism; Walter and Urkidi, “Community Metal Mining consultas”; Bebbington, Social Conflict, Economic Development; Rasch, “Transformations in Citizenship.”
82. Frazer, Scales of Justice.
83. Representing a mechanism for ‘bringing the question back to the people’ that dates back to the Roman plebiscite and that has a long history of usage in Latin American liberal political and constitutional legal process.
84. Walter and Urkidi, “Community Metal Mining consultas.”
85. Haarstad, New Political Spaces.
86. North and Young, “Generating Rights for Communities.”
87. Kirsch, Mining Capitalism, 189.