Mining and the living materiality of mountains in Andean societies

Abstract

This article explores indigenous Andean perspectives on the relationship between mining and mountains. It briefly elaborates on how, in Andean worlds, mountains are intentional agents that are crucial members of society. Paying central attention to the materiality of these beings, the article compares the different social logics at play in, on the one hand, contexts of underground mining and, on the other, those of the recent open-pit mines. Using ethnographic data from Cuzco and Ancash (Peru) as well as previous ethnographies of mining practices in Bolivia and Peru, the article analyses how underground mining involved indigenous workers and practices that engaged the mined earth-beings. In contrast, in recent open-pit mines, there are very few workers from the surrounding communities, and indigenous practices engaging earth-beings became invisible. Underground mining is assumed to damage and threaten the fertility of the mined earth-beings but it is not seen as endangering their existence. In contrast, recent open-pit mines are only made possible by destroying earth-beings and extracting metal from their corpses.

Montología: una perspectiva de montaña hacia la investigación transdisciplinaria y el desarrollo sustentable

“…Las montañas han sido temidas, como originadoras de avalanchas, así como adoradas por el agua que baja de los picos nevados para dar vida a la agricultura de los valles durante las estaciones secas. Incluso hoy en día, los habitantes de los Andes tienen una relación estrecha, también de parentesco, con sus montañas o apus (por ejemplo, Bastien, 1985;Fernández Juárez y Albó, 2008;Gil García y Fernández Juárez, 2008;Gil García, 2012;Sánchez Garrafa, 2014;de la Cadena, 2015;Salas Carreño, 2017; figura 1); e incluso en algunas partes de los Alpes europeos, las santas misas y las festividades espirituales de origen precristiano, como la celebración del solsticio de verano, tienen lugar en los picos de las montañas (Haller et al, 2020). Además de las relaciones espirituales con las montañas, estos atributos geomorfológicos también se escalan con alegría, por ejemplo, para disfrutar de la vista, como hizo Petrarca en el Renacimiento, cuando subió al Mont Ventoux.…”

Mine waste

“…Relict mining landscapes can be viewed as cemeteries of a dead industrial past – of toil, burden and sacrifice. Reshaping of the land surface by the process and by-products of mining gives rise to a ‘non-natural’ landscape, one that has a complex relationship with individual and collective cultural identity (Storm and Olsson, 2013; Summerby-Murray, 2007), degree of landscape change and ‘landscape memory’ (Skaloš and Kašparová, 2012; Wheeler, 2014), and metal-containing rocks as an emblem of the ‘more-than-human’ world of elemental Earth forces (Gibbs, 2009; King and Nic Eoin, 2014; Salas Carreño, 2017). As such, mining landscapes have similar physical and non-physical properties to formal cemeteries and grave sites.…”

Gold Mining and Political Struggles for Access in Banyuwangi, East Java

“…This situation illustrates the politicoeconomic capacity of gold and its extraction (Dougherty, 2013), which simultaneously stimulates competition while consolidating capital, labour, and political agency into a gold governable space (Castree, 2003;Watts, 2003Watts, , 2004. At the same time, however, some local residents have seen Tumpang Pitu as a living material (Carreño, 2016), translating their different ontology into a struggle for access.…”