ABSTRACT
Mining and the extraction of oil and gas are central to the historical and contemporary political economy of much of Latin America: the Chilean ‘miracle’ would not have occurred without its copper industry; the experiments with post-neoliberal government in contemporary Bolivia and Ecuador are only possible because of oil and gas; Venezuela’s geo-political role in the region hinges around oil; the cumulative environmental ‘debt’ in much of the Andes is one bequeathed by mining; by far the majority of the ever-escalating social conflicts in Peru are related to mining. Contemporary landscapes in regions as socially and ecologically significant as Madre de Dios, Pasco and Cajamarca in Peru, as Potosí and the Gran Chaco in Bolivia, or as the northern Amazon of Ecuador and the Magdalena Medio in Colombia have all been produced by political economic processes that hinge around extraction of natural resources.
