Presentation short abstract

U.S. security aid in Peru is a geopolitical obstacle to post-capitalist transition. This environmentality uses militarization to secure extractive capital, criminalizing Indigenous resistance (like Bagua 2009). The paper aims to show how this security architecture suppresses post-extractivism.

Presentation long abstract

The high rate of violence against environmental activists in the Amazon poses a critical geopolitical obstacle to advancing post-extractivism and other post-capitalist eco-social transitions.

This paper analyzes the crucial role of U.S. security assistance in Peru, arguing that it functions as a contemporary expression of environmentality (Marzec). This security architecture transforms environmental resistance into a policing action, ensuring the continuation of extractive capitalism by suppressing mass-based movements. The process is rooted in historical enclosure, re-manifested today through the securitization of the land, which targets the Indigenous environmental activist as the new "subject to be controlled."

Utilizing the case of Peru—a critical site due to its history of U.S. military aid and flashpoints like the 2009 Bagua massacre—this analysis explains how the U.S.-established security architecture secures the frontier of capital accumulation. The paper moves beyond mere description by systematically tracking the outcomes of this assistance (capital accumulation and repression) over the post-Cold War period using primary data, including ACLED data on conflict.

Ultimately, we demonstrate how this imperial security logic, maintained by the U.S. as the hemispheric hegemon, actively hinders the transition to a non-aligned, post-growth international sphere, thereby shedding light on the geopolitical conditions necessary to institute alternative socio-ecological relations.