Social Environmental Mining Conflicts in Mexico

• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Darcy Tetreault
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0022429415585112
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 204, Vol. 42 No. 5, September 2015, 48–66

DOI: 10.1177/0022429415585112

© 2015 Latin American Perspectives

48

Social Environmental Mining Conflicts in Mexico

by

Darcy Tetreault

Examination of social environmental conflicts around mining in Mexico indicates that

neoliberal reforms have facilitated “accumulation by dispossession,” first by transferring

public resources in the form of mineral rights and state-run mining companies to the

private sector and second by dispossessing smallholder farmers and indigenous communi-

ties of their land, water, and cultural landscapes in order to allow mining companies to

carry out their activities. The resistance movements that have emerged to confront this

dispossession are led on the local level by people whose livelihoods, health, and cultures are

threatened by large-scale mining projects. They reflect “the environmentalism of the poor”

in that they seek to keep natural resources outside of the sphere of the capitalist mode of

production.

El examen de los conflictos socioambientales en torno a la minería en México indica

que las reformas neoliberales han facilitado la “acumulación por desposesión”: primero,

transferiendo recursos públicos en forma de concesiones mineras y compañías paraestat-

ales al sector privado y, segundo, despojando a los pequeños agricultures y a las comuni-

dades indígenas de sus tierras, agua y paisajes culturales con el fin de permitirle a las

compañías mineras llevar a cabo sus actividades. Los movimientos de resistencia que han

surgido para afrontar este despojo están dirigidos en el plano local por personas cuyos

medios de subsistencia, su salud y su cultura se ven amenazadas por los proyectos de

minería en gran escala. Ellos reflejan “el ecologismo de los pobres” ya que buscan man-

tener los recursos naturales fuera de la esfera del modo de producción capitalista.

Keywords: Mining, Mexico, Social environmental conflicts, Accumulation by dispos-

session, Environmentalism of the poor

Mexico is the world’s leading silver producer, tenth in gold and copper, and

among the top ten in lead, fluorite, bismuth, and several other minerals. In 2011

the Mexican mining sector generated US$22.526 billon, making it the country’s

fourth-largest foreign currency earner, after the automotive industry, petroleum,

and remittances (CAMIMEX, 2012). Growth in the sector has been spectacular

over the past 15 years in the context of free-market reforms oriented toward

attracting foreign direct investment and buoyed by rising mineral prices. During

this time, the Mexican government has doled out hundreds of mining conces-

sions to foreign companies, mostly Canadian. With state-of-the-art technolog ies

Darcy Tetreault is a professor and researcher of development studies at the Universidad Autónoma

de Zacatecas and an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. He received the

2008 Arturo Warman Prize for his doctoral thesis, which was published the next year by the

University of Guadalajara under the title Pobreza y degradación ambiental. Las luchas de abajo en dos

comunidades del occidente de Jalisco: Ayotitlán y La Ciénega.

585112LAPXXX10.1177/0022429415585112LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESTetreault / SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL MINING CONFLICTS

research-article2015

Tetreault / SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL MINING CONFLICTS 49

that are highly efficient in economic terms and utterly destructive in ecological

ones, these companies have been able to extract about twice as much gold and

half as much silver from the country since 2000 as was extracted in the entire

300-year period of conquest and colonialism (Fernández, 2011). Other minerals

are also being extracted at an accelerated rhythm.

This situation has given rise to a number of high-profile conflicts that pit

groups of local inhabitants and their allies against transnational companies

backed by the federal government. In this article I sketch out the structural

causes of these conflicts and the emergence and coordination of resistance

movements. I argue that conditions on the international level, characterized by

financial instability and a growing demand for metals, are only part of the

story. Distributional issues are at the heart of the matter. Neoliberal reforms

have facilitated what David Harvey (2003a; 2003b) calls “accumulation by dis-

possession” on two levels: first by transferring public resources in the form of

mineral rights and state-run mining companies to the private sector and second

by dispossessing smallholder farmers and indigenous communities of land,

water, and cultural landscapes in order to allow mining companies to carry out

their activities. The resistance movements that have emerged to confront this

dispossession hinge on these ecological distributional issues. They can there-

fore be seen as part of the environmental justice movement, conforming to a

large extent to a prototype dubbed “the environmentalism of the poor” by Joan

Martínez Alier (1997). From this perspective, marginalized groups negatively

affected by mining activities seek to keep natural resources outside of the realm

of the capitalist system in order to protect their livelihoods, health, sacred sites,

and cultural identity. At the end of this paper, I briefly reflect on the theoretical

implications of resistance to mining in Mexico.

Contextualizing Mining in MexiCo

Over the past few years, mining conflicts have been analyzed within a

broader discussion of recent trends in the extractive industries in Latin America.

Since the turn of the millennium, the region has seen an upsurge in primary

commodity production, what Veltmeyer (2012) calls “the reprimarization of

Latin America’s economies” with implicit reference to the role these economies

played in the international economy before the rapid industrialization of the

second half of the twentieth century. From this perspective, structural adjust-

ments during the 1980s and 1990s set the stage for foreign domination in

resource extraction throughout the region, with many exceptions and nuances,

for example, where governments have maintained or regained control of stra-

tegic sectors through state-run companies (Petrobras in the Brazil, Codelco in

Chile, PDVSA in Venezuela, Pemex in Mexico, etc.). Moreover, where progres-

sive governments have come to power, the state has imposed greater regula-

tory controls, taxes, and royalties on foreign-owned companies. A case in point

is Bolivia’s mining sector. This is the essence of the so-called new extractivism

(Gudynas, 2010). As Veltmeyer (2012) suggests, it boils down to the state’s strik-

ing a better deal with capital under the pretense that public revenues derived

from natural resource exploitation will be used for social development. As we