ABSTRACT
The 1990s saw the beginning of a new cycle of mining expansion in Peru, which from 2001 onward encountered new and renewed resistance, initially led by medium-sized farmers in Piura and peasants in Cajamarca. Disputes over territory and struggles in defense of livelihoods spread throughout the country in the following years. About ten mining projects were stopped, while in other cases, conflicts emerged responding to problems of contamination and environmental health affectation, or due to populations claiming participation in benefits of extractive activities. This chapter analyzes to what extent and in what ways social conflicts, mobilization and resistance in defense of territories and ways of living have opened the way for institutional innovation within the State, or the strengthening of self-determination through prefigurative politics outside of it. The revision of the cases shows the disputed character of the enhancement of democratic control over extractivism through mobilization and conflict. Although new laws and political practices emerged, they are under constant pressure of being repressed and criminalized, or watered down and encapsulated in the status quo. The chapter also shows that movements combine strategies to both influence existing institutions and policies, and resist the disempowering logics of formal “democratic institutions” through autonomous and social-movement-driven spaces for self-determination.
