Women anti-mining activists’ narratives of everyday resistance in the Andes: staying put and carrying on in Peru and Ecuador

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which activism and resistance are incorporated into the everyday lives and practices of rural women in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes, theorising the nature of women's everyday resistance in long running social conflicts. Drawing on research with women antimining activists in Peru and Ecuador, the article emphasises that their resistance is rarely concerned with large-scale protests, transnational activism, and the spectacular, but rather depends on daily resistance and resilience in, often fractured, local communities. I explore how rural women make extraordinary circumstances, including facing lawsuits and accusations of terrorism, part of their everyday lives, and how they articulate their resistance and situate it in place through narratives of staying put and carrying on, drawing on emblematic notions of rural livelihoods to challenge largescale mining developments in their communities.

Persistent Courage of the Local Women Resistance Toward Undemocratic Policies

“…For instance, the social For instance, the movement from Latin America which was tempered throughout the world and studied in many countries was a rubber tapping farmer movement from Brasilia led by Chico Mendes (trans., 1994). Moreover, several journal articles about social movements against mining corporations from Latin America are interesting to review to strengthen the analysis of this study (Jenkins, 2017;Taylor, 2011).…”

“…At another time, there was a problem with agricultural land, and it also clashed with mining exploitation activities in the village. Again, local women face mining company workers (Jenkins, 2017;Taylor, 2011) .…”

“…An important study of local women's resistance to mining corporations is done by (Jenkins, 2017). Local women's resistance in rural Ecuador and Peru against mining corporations is daily resistance, not large and transnational movements.…”

“…In addition, studies on women's and mining issues also began to emerge, for example (Hendrastiti, 2014), (Apriando, 2015), (Asriani, 2015), (Badawi, 2015), (Jenkins, 2017). All studies of women and mining always contain sad stories of physical and social damages to the local inhabitants, where the mineral extraction business takes place.…”

Women’s resistance against the extractive industry: embodied and water dimensions

“…Across the globe, extractive industries—through mining, oil drilling, logging, and hydraulic fracking—are responsible for the disruption of rural communities’ lives and livelihood. Women and men are impacted differently by natural resources’ extraction, creating at times intrahousehold tensions (Jenkins, 2017). On one hand, mining has particular consequences on the livelihoods and lives of campesinas and indigenous women in the Andes, given their contentious role as cultural guardians and reproductive figures (Ulloa, 2016).…”