Moving Glaciers: Remaking Nature and Mineral Extraction in Chile

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17713757
• Author: Fabiana Li
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 102–119

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17713757

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

102

Moving Glaciers

Remaking Nature and Mineral Extraction in Chile

by

Fabiana Li

The controversial Pascua-Lama mining project, straddling the border between Chile

and Argentina and operated by Canada’s Barrick Gold, gained international notoriety

when the company proposed to “move” three glaciers located at the mine site. The glaciers

variously appeared, changed form, and disappeared as the project was developed, presented

to the public, subjected to various modifications, and ultimately put on hold. The environ-

mental impact assessment process created an inventory of the landscape that turned

nature into an object of environmental management. At the same time, the element of

public participation embedded in Chile’s environmental impact legislation helped to mobi-

lize local and international activism.

El polémico proyecto minero de Pascua-Lama que maneja la empresa canadiense

Barrick Gold en la frontera entre Chile y Argentina quedó sometido al escrutinio interna-

cional cuando la empresa propuso “mover” tres glaciares situados en la mina. Los glaci-

ares aparecieron, cambiaron de forma y desaparecieron conforme el proyecto se desarrollaba,

presentaba ante el público y era sometido a diversas modificaciones; en última instancia,

fue suspendido. El proceso de evaluación de impacto ambiental dio lugar a un inventario

del paisaje que convirtió a la naturaleza en un objeto de gestión ambiental. Al mismo

tiempo, la participación ciudadana fundamentada en la legislación chilena de impacto

ambiental ayudó a movilizar activistas locales e internacionales.

Keywords: Mining, Glaciers, Water, Environmental impact assessment, Activism

In 2005, the controversial Pascua-Lama gold mining project became the focus of

international attention when the Canadian company Barrick Gold proposed to

“move” three glaciers to gain access to mineral deposits straddling the border of

Chile and Argentina. Public outrage obligated the company to eventually modify

the project and mount an aggressive public relations campaign to build support

and counter opposition. As the project was modified, the glaciers—their material

and symbolic forms—also changed. In activist campaigns, scientific studies, and

corporate public relations materials, the glaciers were a valuable store of water,

symbols of pristine nature, national patrimony to be protected, and “ice features”

to be managed in order to make way for mining activity. The Pascua-Lama project

presented numerous challenges to the company, but the glaciers played a signifi-

cant role in the mine’s postponement and contributed to an unlikely victory for

social movements opposing the largest gold mining company in the world.

Fabiana Li is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.

713757LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17713757latin american perspectivesLi / MOVING GLACIERS

research-article2017

Li / MOVING GLACIERS 103

Focusing on the Pascua-Lama project, this paper explores how transnational

corporate capital and grassroots activism are remaking territories of extraction

and forms of political action. I examine how the glaciers at Pascua-Lama vari-

ously appeared, changed form, and disappeared as the project was developed,

presented to the public, subjected to various modifications, and ultimately put

on hold in 2013. My treatment of the glaciers builds on a body of literature that

examines how entities that make up “the environment” are constituted through

culturally and historically specific practices (see, e.g., Braun, 2002; Fairhead

and Leach, 1996; Mol, 2003; Raffles, 2002). I also draw inspiration from science-

studies scholars for whom these practices do not engage a preexisting reality

“out there” but produce different realities (Law, 2004). Scholars have also

explored the constitutive force of things in social and political life and the socio-

natural assemblages that bring worlds into being (e.g., Bakker and Bridge,

2006; Braun and Whatmore, 2010). In my own work, Pascua-Lama’s glaciers are

not fixed or stable elements of the landscape but materialize and are imbued

with meaning through various practices and forms of enactment, including

international activism, environmental management plans, corporate practices,

and legal resolutions.

I take as a starting point the assertion that resource extraction is not only

determined by the location of mineral deposits. Resources are not simply

natural and preexisting, ready for discovery and use; rather, they are always

in flux and open-ended, coming into being through different forms of labor,

scientific analysis, naming, and circulation (Richardson and Weszkalnys,

2014). Conflicts over mining could be seen as struggles over resources, but

they also challenge assumptions about what is (and is not) a resource. Barrick

engineers sometimes treated the glaciers as resources to be managed even as

they questioned whether they were in fact glaciers. Meanwhile, protesters

sometimes argued that the glaciers were sources of water to be protected,

while at other times they suggested that glaciers were something more than

resources and that their value extended beyond their utilitarian use. My aim

is to shed light on how gold, water, and glaciers are constituted and acquire

value in the context of accelerated mining expansion. The making of resources

mobilizes competing forms of knowledge; it can sustain or reconfigure exist-

ing power dynamics and open up or foreclose opportunities for political

struggle. In this paper I seek to examine how new territories of extraction are

imagined and materially produced as sites of unlimited potential for mining

and investment and how this vision of extractive frontiers is challenged by

local and international activism.

My analysis focuses on the Chilean response to the Pascua-Lama project,

drawing on a review of the documents pertaining to the case and two periods

of fieldwork in the capital city of Santiago and communities affected by the

project (November 2009–January 2010 and June 2011). This work is also

informed by a long-term engagement with mining issues and the emergence

of conflicts in the broader Latin American context (see Li, 2015). During field-

work periods in Chile, I interviewed people residing in the Huasco Valley

(downstream from the mine), staff of Barrick’s local community relations

office in Alto del Carmen, and activists involved with the Pascua-Lama cam-

paigns. My first contacts in the valley were made through the Observatorio