Amalgamated Histories: Tracing Quicksilver's Legacy Through Environmental and Political Bodies in Andean and Amazonian Gold Mining

Gendering Toxic Contamination: Toxic Risks, Bodies, and Pregnancies in Gold Mining and Coca Farming Communities in the Bajo Cauca Region

“…The analysis of the gender‐environment nexus proposed by these scholars can be taken further by engaging with feminist science and technology studies and, in particular, their development in Latin America (Navas 2023; Olarte‐Sierra 2013, 2022; Pinto‐García 2019; Rubiano‐Galvis et al. 2023). Work by María Fernanda Olarte‐Sierra (2022) suggests that no such thing as a neutral scientific gaze exists in isolation from the risk‐issue framings that describe such materiality.…”

“…Focusing specifically on the technoscientific framing of mercury contamination, Rubiano‐Galvis et al. (2023) argue that it is inherently linked with the co‐production of marginalised social actors in the Colombian mining landscape as lacking technical knowledge and performing criminal practices. The object (mercury contamination) and subject (criminalised informal miners) of this risk‐issue framing (Rubiano‐Galvis et al.…”

“…The object (mercury contamination) and subject (criminalised informal miners) of this risk‐issue framing (Rubiano‐Galvis et al. 2023) emerge as interrelated and co‐determined (Olarte‐Sierra 2022). Importantly, the labels of “contaminating” and “contaminated” actors emerge as new social categories of identity that intersect with gendered and racialised categories.…”

“…Rubiano‐Galvis et al. (2023) trace the history of mercury in Latin America as directly correlated to the colonial establishment of European extractivist practices, later employed by local informal miners. In the Bajo Cauca region, this technique was firstly implemented in the 1970s by the legal company Mineros SA (formerly Pato Gold Mines).…”

“…Mercury, on the other hand, is framed as extremely harmful in institutional narratives, and its usage among informal miners is criminalised and restricted by the Colombian state (Rubiano‐Galvis et al. 2023). Paradoxically, both sources of contamination overlap in the bodies of marginalised social actors inhabiting the Bajo Cauca region, where coca farming and gold mining represent complementary livelihood strategies according to the oscillations in the international prices for gold and coca paste.…”