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ABSTRACT
A recurring question within literature on resource conflicts is how to explain the origins of local opposition. Many studies begin with the arrival of mining interests. In this paper, however, I situate a conflict over proposed copper mining in northwestern Ecuador in relation to histories of agrarian settlement. Though the prospect of mining first emerged in the early 1990s, I trace the origins of this conflict to sugar cane in the 1940s. Drawing attention to processes of agrarian change, I demonstrate how local actors have generated the literal and metaphorical fields upon which this conflict has played out.
Acknowledgements
This article has benefitted from careful feedback received over many years. I thank especially Karen Hébert, Michael Dove, K. Sivaramakrishan, Douglas Rogers, Daniel Tubb, Eric Hirsch, Jessica Barnes, and my fellow members of the Critical Ecologies Lab at the University of South Carolina. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers who helped cultivate the central ideas presented here. The research that forms this article would not have been possible without the ongoing support of those in Ecuador's Intag region. I also thank the staff at the following archives and offices in Ecuador: The Banco Central Archive (Quito and Ibarra), The Archive of the Ministry of Government (Quito), The Ecclesiastical Archive (Ibarra), The Property Registry Office (Cotacachi), and The Municipality of Cotacachi.
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Notes
1 On this broader point also see T. Li (Citation1999). Recent work in Intag has likewise emphasized the underlying territorial aspects of the dispute (Avci Citation2017; Avci and Fernández-Salvadora Citation2016).
2 Ecuadorian officials resumed the project of mineral exploration in Intag in 2014, spearheaded by a national mining company called Enami and supported by the arrest of local leaders and by the effective militarization of the concession area (Billo Citation2017). The material outlines and economic viability of the copper mineralization are still unknown, however (Kneas Citation2016, Citation2018a). Enami, even by its own forecast, is still years away from completing studies of economic feasibility.
3 Although I reference some of the wider political and economic processes of Ecuador during this period, my focus on the agrarian relations that animated opposition to mining is such that I sacrifice a more complete history of agrarian change of northwestern Ecuador over the twentieth century. This reflects, in part, the dominant ways my key informants situated their own origin stories, which center on how they came to settle the landscape of the Chalguayacu Valley and community of Junín. It also represents how dominant national histories play out in different ways across space (Roseberry Citation1993).
4 Another temporality seldom discussed is that of aftermath, particularly as it arises in contexts not defined by the ends of extraction, which I analyze in Kneas (Citation2018b) in relation to the departure of Ascendant Copper in 2009 and the social relations that emerged between mineros and ecologistas.
5 ‘Padron General de la Parroquia de Intag.’ Padrones Provincia de Imbabura, 1836. DMG, Archivos del Ministerio de Gobierno, Quito.
6 In 1890, for example, the Ministry of Education closed the only school in the region because ‘the enormous distance and horrible camino put [Intag] outside the reach of authorities, and because the awful climate does not allow the constant presence of an instructor.’ Gobernacion de la Provincia de Imbabura. Registro Oficial. October 10, 1890, 275, p. 207.
7 A priest from the population center of Ecuador's Andean highlands wrote in 1923 that the population of his town was about half of what it should have been due to ‘the dense and constant emigration of families towards Intag, beginning, more or less, from 1890 [where] in the distant montañas they could live immune from political fevers.’ Jose Robalino. 1923. Monografia de San Jose de Minas. Draft Manuscript. Archivo Historico. Banco Central, Quito Ecuador.
8 ‘Juicio de Expropriacion de la Hacienda San Jose de Intag Situada en la Provincia de Imababura.’ 10 November 1944. Archive of the Ministerio de Prevision Social.
9 Cotacachi Municipal Records. Libro de Actas, 1940–1941. October, 1940.
10 To protect confidentiality, I use pseudonyms for my ethnographic informants.
11 For insight into how these sugar cane frontiers of western Ecuador factored into highland indigenous cultural practices, see Weismantel (Citation1988).
12 Memories of a regional Bishop's visit to Llurimagua in 1937, for example, describe a population of 30–40 inhabitants that the Bishop only reached after an ‘exhausting trek, part by foot, part by horse, part by known footpaths, and part by way of short cuts that one creates in the bowels of virgin forest.’ Libro de Actas y Autos de las Visitas Pastorales, 1937–1939. Ecclesiastical Archive, Ibarra, Ecuador.
13 Game of Thrones, Season Three, Episode Ten, ‘Mhysa.’ HBO, 9 June 2013.
14 In the context of decreased oil revenue in the 1980s, Ecuadorian officials began promoting exploration for mineral resources as an economic alternative. The arrival of Bishimetals was part of a program of neoliberal re-structuring ushered in by the World Bank in the early 1990s, a legal code that governed the mining sector until the election of Rafael Correa in 2008 and the reformation of mining laws along more nationalist lines.
15 These figures come from data compiled by the World Health Organization in 2004 and 2018. See country profiles for Ecuador: https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/
16 Avci (Citation2017) also notes the divide between how pro- and anti-mining groups in Intag imagined a post-mining world.
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David Kneas
David Kneas is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina, with a joint appointment in the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. Apart from long-term research on the historical ethnography of resource extraction in Ecuador, David is also researching practices of speculation associated with the junior mining industry. Aspects of this work can be found in: “Placing Resources: Junior Mining Companies and the Locus of Mineral Potential,” forthcoming in Geoforum. Email: [email protected]