Paper short abstract:

This paper will analyse different histories mobilized by actors opposing mining expansion in the northern Peruvian Andes, in order to make sense of the social relations which contemporary mining activities are embedded in.

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of open-pit mining activities since the early 1990s has extended Peru's geography of extraction to the Northern part of the country. The Cajamarca region, theatre of the 1532 encounter between the Inca emperor Atahualpa and the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, hosts today one of the largest gold mines in Latin America.

While memories of the thirst for gold that drove the Spanish conquest have become the leitmotif of national and international activism against mining, locally another, more recent history is mobilised. Peasant communities and leaders make sense of current events and relations through memories of the hacienda, a semi-feudal estate system unchallenged in the region until mid-twentieth century. A third historical period, preceding both the Spanish and Inca conquest of the North, is also mobilised by organizations seeking to denounce mining expansion as a violation of indigenous rights.

Though all three are histoires of power and dispossession, each history point to different culprits and solutions. Based on fieldwork carried out in the region from 2011 to 2013, this paper will focus on overlapping and conflicting historical interpretations of contemporary mining activities and the social relations they are embedded in.