Title Pachamama politics : campesino water defenders and the anti-mining movement in Andean Ecuador / Teresa A. Velásquez

Published Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2022 Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE ©2022

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Description 1 online resource (xx, 264 pages) : illustrations, color map Series Book collections on Project MUSE Contents Introduction -- 1. Testing the waters : the rise of anti-mining activism -- 2. Criminalizing the defensoras : building the neoextractive state -- 3. "Water is life" : from Quimsacocha to the Pachamama -- 4. Indigenous and campesino struggles for a plurinational state -- 5. Decolonizing identities : reconsidering race, gender, and Mestizaje -- 6. Defending lo nuestro : fighting for water autonomy -- Conclusion Summary "Ecuador became the first country in the world to grant the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, constitutional rights in 2008. This landmark achievement represented a shift to incorporate Indigenous philosophies of Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir (to live well) as a framework for social and political change. The extraordinary move coincided with the rise of neoextractivism, where the self-described socialist President Rafael Correa contended that Buen Vivir could be achieved through controversial mining projects on Indigenous and campesino territories, including their watersheds. Pachamama Politics provides a rich ethnographic account of the tensions that follow from neoextractivism in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, where campesinos mobilized to defend their community-managed watershed from a proposed gold mine. Positioned as an activist-scholar, Teresa A. Velásquez takes the reader inside the movement--alongside marches, road blockades, and river and high-altitude wetlands--to expose the rifts between social movements and the 'pink tide' government. When the promise of social change turns to state criminalization of water defenders, Velásquez argues that the contradictions of neoextractivism created the political conditions for campesinos to reconsider their relationship to indigeneity. The book takes an intersectional approach to the study of anti-mining struggles and explains how campesino communities and their allies identified with and redeployed Indigenous cosmologies to defend their water as a life-sustaining entity. Pachamama Politics shows why progressive change requires a shift away from the extractive model of national development to a plurinational defense of community water systems and Indigenous peoples and their autonomy."-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Teresa A. Velásquez is an associate professor of anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino Print version record Subject Indians of South America -- Ecuador -- Government relations Indians of South America -- Ecuador -- Politics and government Mines and mineral resources -- Environmental aspects -- Ecuador Water rights -- Ecuador Droits sur les eaux -- Équateur Indiens d'Amerique -- Équateur -- Relations avec l'État SOCIAL SCIENCE / General Water rights Mines and mineral resources -- Environmental aspects Indians of South America -- Politics and government Indians of South America -- Government relations Ecuador Form Electronic book Author Project Muse. distributor. LC no. 2021053045 ISBN 9780816545315 0816545316

Other Titles Campesino water defenders and the anti-mining movement in Andean Ecuador

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