The persistent threat of mining extractivism. Actors and scenes of resistance in current Argentina

Abstract

The following article analyzes the implications of the extractive economic model and its materialization in the implantation of large-scale mining, or mega-mining, as a State policy in Argentina. It proposes a retrospective and situated approach to the way in which the activity conceptualized as "new mining" has been installed in the country, as well as the multiple actions of resistance that it has generated. The latter is located in the center of the reflection, considering the relevance that social organizations, assemblies and communities that are formed to counteract the predatory impulse that this economic paradigm entails in the territorial dispute. In this way, we try to characterize the national scene and some cases of the provincial scene, where multiplicity of social actors –State at its different levels, corporations, local elites, on the one hand; socio-environmental assemblies, indigenous peoples, peasants, communities, on the other hand– are fighting to hegemonize their own territoriality. Territories of death vs. territories of life, the dilemma presented here.