TERRITORIAL TRANSFORMATION IN EL PANGUI ECUADOR - Page 1 - Documento Nº59 del programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales de Rimisp. "Territorial Transformation In El Pangui, Ecuador" de Warnaars, X. 2010. www.rimisp.org/dtr/documentos Territorial Transformation In El Pangui, Ecuador Ximena S. Warnaars Documento de Trabajo N° 59 Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Rimisp – Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural Página |2 Este documento es el resultado del Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales, que Rimisp lleva a cabo en varios países de América Latina en colaboración con numerosos socios. El programa cuenta con el auspicio del Centro Internacional de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo (IDRC, Canadá). Se autoriza la reproducción parcial o total y la difusión del documento sin fines de lucro y sujeta a que se cite la fuente. This document is the result of the Rural Territorial Dynamics Program, implemented by Rimisp in several Latin American countries in collaboration with numerous partners. The program has been supported by the International Development Research Center (IDRC, Canada). We authorize the non-for-profit partial or full reproduction and dissemination of this document, subject to the source being properly acknowledged. Cita / Citation: Warnaars, X. 2010. “Territorial Transformation in El Pangui, Ecuador”. Documento de Trabajo N° 60. Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales. Rimisp, Santiago, Chile. © Rimisp-Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Casilla 228-22 Santiago, Chile Tel + (56-2) 236 45 57 dtr@rimisp.org www.rimisp.org/dtr Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Table of Contents 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 1 2. Why Ecuador? ...................................................................................................................................... 3 3. Locating Literature .............................................................................................................................. 5 4. Territorial Dynamics in the Cordillera del Cóndor ............................................................................ 9 4.1. Settlement in the Amazon .........................................................................................................................11 4.2. Economy and Use of Natural Resources .................................................................................................14 4.3. Indigenous Economy and Ecology ...........................................................................................................16 4.4. War, Parks for Peace and a Mountain of Gold ......................................................................................18 4.5. Post-war Pangui ........................................................................................................................................20 4.6. The Mining Projects ..................................................................................................................................21 5. Disputing Territory: Mining and Movements ................................................................................... 24 6. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 28 7. Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. 29 8. Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 30 Página |1 Territorial Transformation in El Pangui, Ecuador Understanding how mining conflict affects territorial dynamics, social mobilisation and daily life The lush green mountain range of the Cordillera del Cóndor lies in the very south-east of Ecuador. Its valleys and steep cliffs, which are covered by dense cloud forest air, are a popular location for mines. In the 1990‟s, they were landmines positioned by the military during the war against Peru. Today, transnational mining companies develop this land in order to extract gold and copper o n both sides of the border. The arrival of large-scale mining projects owned by the Canadian companies Corriente Resources and Kinross– Aurelian less than ten years ago has met with resistance from local populations. Social and armed political conflict have once again become part of everyday life for people living along the Cordillera. This paper examines how these mining projects affect pre-existing territorial dynamics and how they in turn affect the ways in which the projects are contested. I suggest that there is a link between territorial dynamics, mining conflicts and current forms of social organising. I am not so much interested in how the mining projects induce social conflict as much as how they transform territorial dynamics. In addition, I consider the various views, understandings and meanings of both nature and the nature-society relationships that lie at the heart of territorial dynamics and, in one way or another, have contributed to a layering of conflicts in the Cordillera del Cóndor. 1. Introduction El Pangui is a hot jungle town located in the foothills of Cordillera del Cóndor between the Corriente and Kinross mining projects. It forms part of the canton bearing the same name in the province of Zamora Chinchipe. Barely 30 years old, El Pangui is characterised by spurts of five story cement buildings with the latest mirror glazed windows, uneven sidewalks and new taxi-trucks that seem to always be parked along the perimeter of the main plaza waiting for customers. The landscape that surrounds the town is dominated by large deforested areas that are used for animal husbandry, square ponds created for fisheries and still, “wild” forests in the distance that continue onward Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |2 towards Peru. The view of the Cordillera is ever-present in El Pangui, and the mountain range holds many meanings and memories for the people who live in this canton. Immigrant farmers from the highlands (known as colonos) and retired small-scale miners have established themselves in El Pangui. They have come to seek a better life, and their dream is to own their own piece of land in what once was Shuar territory. Although this indigenous group has a long history of warding off outsiders, including the Incans, they have resigned themselves to sharing this space and living alongside their mestizo neighbours. To a certain degree, the mining conflict is transforming the still-tense relationships between the Shuar and mestizos, as occurred during the armed conflict with Peru. New alliances are being built as part of the social movement in resistance to the mining projects, and narratives of Shuar-mestizo relationships are being considered in new ways. While many of the inhabitants that I spoke to during my field work described life in El Pangui as tranquilo, they also said that the arrival of the transnational mining companies has disturbed this sense of peace. They stated that social relationships have been notably tense since the commencement of the mining projects, and observed that divisions and confrontations are common even within families. Furthermore, my informants suggested that those living within the mining concessions experience constant uncertainty. They are not claiming that life was always free of conflict or tension prior to the mining projects. Indeed, this is not the first time that there has been territorial conflict in El Pangui or that the “tranquillity of life has been disturbed.” Nevertheless, the launch of the mining activities seems to mark the end of a certain quality of life. Efforts to resist (or support) these extractive projects have lead to the establishment of social organisations, political mobilisations, street protests and armed confrontations. The local government has responded to the contradictory interests of its inhabitants by swaying back and forth between the companies and national government and the citizens in resistance. Panguenses have described the central government‟s role as one of abandonment and disappointment. On the one hand, it has abandoned the people to sort out land disputes on their own and fight off invading Peruvians. On the other, it is a disappointment because some claim they were never consulted or informed of the central government‟s interest in developing large-scale mining in the area. Patriotic discourses that were developed and used during the war have been taken up by the resistance, which is tapping into a memory and feeling of sovereignty over “our” natural resources. Furthermore, members of various groups (indigenous people, small-scale miners, Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |3 farmers, cattle raisers, loggers) are constructing new ecological and environmental discourses in order to resist large-scale mining. These discourses sustain the argument of people‟s right to choose a model of development, and collective identity is fostered to further strengthen group formation and mobilisation. However, the argument that people have the right to choose a model of development and the process of collective identity construction are just as apparent among those who mobilise in favour of large-scale mining, and they have become the subject of social debate. 2. Why Ecuador? The international large-scale mining industry is on the verge of having a presence in Ecuador for the first time. Though the country has a long history of artisanal and smallscale mining (ASM) it has not received a great deal of attention from the global mining industry. As a few companies have begun to invest in projects in Ecuador, the national government has opened the door to investors and begun to promote large-scale mining as a means of diversifying and growing the national economy, albeit through a new Mining Law that distances itself somewhat from the previous neo-liberal model. However, the Ecuadorian economy is suffering from what former Minister of Energy and Mining and former President of the Constituent Assembly Alberto Acosta describes as boom and bust cycles of capitalism based solely on the extraction of natural resources. The economy has gone through stages of dependency on the extraction of banana, cacao and oil. There is now a possibility that said dependency will shift to copper and gold. The potential growth of the mining economy has unfolded against the backdrop of over 20 years of indigenous uprisings and movements. These processes have been significant enough to spark the attention of the government as well as foreign and national academics, activists, NGO‟s and industry (Bebbington et al. 1992; Perreault 2002; Andolina 2003; VanCott 2005; Yashar 2005). While Ecuador‟s new mining conflicts affect diverse (not only indigenous) groups of people and have catalysed mobilisations across ethnic divides with various “identities,” ethnic backgrounds, histories and economic and political interests at play, this mobilisation intersects with the history of indigenous organisation. The case study presented in this article describes the process through which a social movement manages alliances and networks and strategically constructs identities and discourses on the stage of a particular set of territorial dynamics. Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |4 As has occurred in other Latin American countries, many disputes over land and resources have evolved around the Amazon in Ecuador. However, the current mining struggle is new to the country, and it is growing on an unprecedented scale and with impressive intensity and speed. The passion of the actions taken since around 2006, the sheer numbers of people involved and the diversity of their backgrounds all seem to suggest that a new kind of struggle is unfolding. While many had not heard of large-scale mining projects prior to 2005, towards the end of 2006 the mining conflict in El Pangui and other towns running north along Ecuador‟s south-eastern border saw armed confrontations, burning of camp sites, kidnapping, physical abuse and progressive militarisation. Civil society responded by organising relatively quickly, mobilising thousands of people from a wide variety of social groups, not all of which were directly affected by mining. The struggle did not mirror the important indigenous mobilisations that developed around oil-related struggles. Ecologists, small-scale miners, indigenous people, farmers, cattle growers, men and women of all ages, the Catholic Church and universities all seemed to be speaking with the same „voice‟ in this new mining struggle. In the beginning, the mobilisation enjoyed political successes. In early 2008, the passage of a Mining Mandate that halted mining activities, reverted concessions back to the State and, according to the industry, scared off investors was achieved in the context of a new Leftist government and new Constituent Assembly. The mining issue became visible and was debated publicly, and the Constituent Assembly even considered declaring Ecuador a country free of large-scale mining. The new Constitution made specific mention of the mining industry and discussed other sectors Ecuadorian economy and society such as environmental laws, labour rights, water rights and import and export taxes in ways that related them to mining. Yet, contrary to expectations and to the dismay of the many people that mobilised around mining issues, the central government later distanced itself from civil society organisations and became the primary promoter of large-scale mining. Given the intensity and cross-ethnic nature of these mobilisations around mining and in a context in which academic interest has focused on indigenous movements while the State has attempted to discredit anti-mining movements, this research seeks to understand what has been happening in south-east Ecuador since the arrival of mining. My first goal in my fieldwork was to identify what was happening locally in the wake of the entry of mining projects and development of the conflict. I was interested in examining how mining projects might affect pre-existing territorial dynamics in a context in which the new actor (the company) comes to an area that already has a tense and complex history in relation to land, natural resources and conflict. Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |5 Secondly, I wanted to understand the relationships between territorial dynamics and social mobilisation around mining. How are pre-existing territorial dynamics shaping the ways in which people mobilise, build or break alliances and construct discourses? For example, in the canton of El Pangui, key strategic social and political relationships have been forged in relation to land (acquisition, colonisation, titling and uses) as a result of territorialisation and settlement processes. This is reflected in such developments as the important role of the Salesian missionaries in the management of indigenous land in the absence of the State, civil society mobilisation (mainly by colonos) through cooperatives and ecological initiatives in an effort to gain land, ecological organisations interested in teaming up with indigenous communities to establish conservation parks, and illicit land trafficking. Since the arrival of the mining projects, social mobilisation has strengthened some of these alliances, tested others and generated new networks and relationships. Furthermore, identity construction and anti-mining discourses play a key role in these new alliances and mobilisation potential. 3. Locating Literature Studies of struggles over natural resources have drawn attention to the causes of these social conflicts and the socio-environmental impacts of extractive industry (Geddicks 1993; Ballard and Banks 2003, p.19; Bury 2004); the ways people seek environmental justice (Tsing 2000; Perreault 2006; Bebbington 2007b); the relationships among extractive industry, environment, livelihoods and institutional change (Bebbington and Bury 2009); and the bearing of indigeneity and identity politics (Ali 2003; Sawyer 2004; Kirsch 2006). The goal of my research is to consider the mining conflict, social movements and territorial change in Ecuador in much the same set of traditions. Political ecologists believe that conflicts involving the environment are as much about meaning as they are about land and resources (Peet and Watts 2004). Values and beliefs can shape people‟s identities and mobilise actions such that cultural meanings are constitutive forces rather than merely a reflection of the material. Donald Moore argues that “struggles over land and environmental resources are simultaneously struggles over cultural meaning” (Moore 1996, p.127). The various and often contradictory views of “nature” and natural resource use held by people in El Pangui have played an important Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |6 role in the processes of territorialisation and settlement as well as their impact on the environment. My goal was to explore whether and how these ideas of nature have historically motivated social conflict along the Cordillera del Cóndor, the material changes in the environment that they have generated and the ways in which they have repeatedly reconfigured territorial dynamics. Land disputes are historical and highly politicised in the canton El Pangui. Prior to the arrival of the mining companies, the town and various communities in the canton had witnessed many struggles and conflicts over land ownership, rights, demarcation and natural resource use. All of this is a product of a long history of the coming and going of different actors as well as the boom and bust cycles of capitalism and its interest in natural resources. These disputes over land and resources also have affected how social actors relate to each other and their environment. A point of departure in my research is the idea that human-nature relationships lie at the heart of territorial dynamics. Ideas about nature motivate the ways in which territorialisation occurs through settlement, nation building, or local and global economic development. Nature also has a certain level of agency and exerts influence over humans and society (Morse and Stocking 1995). If we consider that nature has agency and that not all agency is necessarily human (Mitchell 2002; Raffles 2002; Kosek 2006), the role of nature in territorialisation processes must be taken seriously (Rubenstein 2004). The concept of territorial dynamics used here rests upon definitions of human territoriality that I borrow from Paul Little (2001), who presents a political ecology of Amazonian territorial disputes. Little defines human territoriality as “the collective effort of a social group to identify with, occupy, use, and establish control over the specific parcel of their biophysical environment that serves as their homeland or territory” (Little 2001, p.4). He builds his definition on Robert Sack‟s description of human territoriality as „„the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area.‟‟ (Sack 1986, p.19). Both of these authors see territories as both process and product. Brogden and Greenberg (2003) describe territorialisation as the “historical product of contestation and negotiation for access and control over natural resources among competing groups, interest and classes.”(Brogden and Greenberg 2003 p. 291) They argue that conflicts develop the ground and in political arenas, where people with different interests seek to influence or gain control over agencies, laws or regulations Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales Página |7 that govern natural resources. This theme is also present in the work of Little, where he describes contestation over territory as the result of a clash of different „cosmographies,‟ which he defines as “collective, historically contingent identities, ideologies, and environmental knowledge systems developed by a social group to establish and maintain a human territory.”(Little 2001, p.5) The superimposition of cosmographies brings about direct conflict in which different interest groups exert power and push for the hegemony of their cosmography and then make territorial claims. These territorial claims are inherently political and involve social behaviours, such as social organising, direct action or legal appeals, which play out in a specific Bourdieuan “field of power.” As such, each new actor with its distinct cosmography tries to establish a new territory in areas in which people have established territories. As this process repeats itself, a layering of conflicts or territorial disputes develops over time. I infer that „cosmographies‟ of different social actors implicitly contain the ways we understand and engage with nature, which in turn influence the processes of human territorialisation. Little suggests that Amazonia has been impacted by a history of colonisation, development and environmental cosmographies leading to different patterns of human territorialisation. I hold that the cosmographies and historical territorial dynamics that produced present-day relationships – including the construction of a collective identity- are the setting within which social mobilisations function. The social movement in south-east Ecuador may be trying to (re)gain control over territory, to maintain or assert a certain cosmography or respond to real or perceived threats to livelihoods. Here is where I would like to make the link between social movements and territorial dynamics. Bebbington et al. argue that social mobilization in the mining context can be understood as “a response to the threats that particular forms of economic development present, or are perceived as presenting, to the security and integrity of livelihoods and to the ability of a population in a given territory to control what it views as its own resources.” (2008b, p.6) In addition, social movements are deemed relevant because they have the ability to challenge dominant powers by accentuating other sets of values in pursuit of alternative forms or models of development (Bebbington 2007a). During one of the first waves of migration by colonos to El Pangui, people sought to acquire land to farm and raise cattle. Due to the absence or negligence of State institutions, they negotiated territorial demarcations amongst themselves and with each Ximena S. Warnaars Programa Dinámicas Territoriales Rurales
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