Extractivism and Indigenous Communities in Milei’s Argentina

Join the livestream here:
https://ubc.ca.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=924aafb8-d0fb-4806-8cf7-b266014fb784

• Lorena Cañuqueo, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro; Ana Vivaldi, Latin American Studies; and Gastón Gordillo, Anthropology; moderated by Juanita Sundberg, Geography
  Coach House, Green College, UBC and livestreamed
  Thursday, February 13, 5-6:30 pm

  in the series
  Green College Special Event
•  

• The expansion of neo-extractivism in Latin America led by multinational corporations has relied on and been accompanied by substantial political reforms that negatively affect environmental, Indigenous and human rights. In the Argentine province of Río Negro in northern Patagonia, these projects involve open-pit mining, green hydrogen, fracking, wind farms, and hydroelectric dams. The government of Río Negro did not consult with Indigenous communities before granting mining exploration permits in their territories. Meanwhile, soy production, in northern Argentina, has equally advanced over peasant and Indigenous lands with no consultation or compensation. In both locations, Indigenous communities have demanded, through administrative and legal channels, that their constitutional right to consultation and consent be respected. Similar stories play out all over the Americas. In this round table we analyze how Indigenous territories in Argentina are stressed by a model of resource extraction that reformulates how people and the state use and perceive space. We examine how these (re)territorializing processes modify, guide and make tense the lives of Indigenous groups that live in these regions. This new wave of advance over territories is paired with the emergence of extreme right-wing governments, which view Indigenous struggle as one of the core challenges to territorial dispossession exacerbated in the right-wing present.

  NB: Some of this event will be in Spanish (text in English will be circulated for non-Spanish speakers).

  ---

  Chair: Juanita Sundberg is an Associate Professor in Geography. She is currently working on a collaborative project about how growing deposits of seaweed transform landscapes on the Riviera Maya, Mexico’s premier Caribbean tourist destination.

  ---

  Lorena Cañuqueo is a researcher, activist, and member of the Mapuche Nation (the Mariano Epulef Mapuche community). She holds a degree in Social Communication and a PhD in Anthropology and is currently a professor at the National University of Río Negro in Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Her research examines the ongoing effects of the genocide against Indigenous peoples during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as reflected in the present. Specifically, her work explores how these effects manifest in local, provincial, and national policies related to land access and, more recently, in the implementation of extractive projects.
  
   

  ---

  Ana Vivaldi’s research brings the politics of indigeneity and race into inquiries into space, the city, and mobilities. Through collaborative ethnography, she investigates artistic challenges to racism and changing forms of racial inequality in Argentina.Her scholarship emerges from long-term relationships with Indigenous people and movements in Argentina, now including Marrón and Afro Latin-American organizations as well. She teaches in the UBC Latin American Studies program and the Department of Sociology.
   

   

  ---

  Gastón Gordillo is a professor of Anthropology at UBC. He has published extensively on the production, disruption, and reconstitution of landscapes in various areas of northern Argentina, as well as on the ways in which landscapes are racialized and redefined by processes of ruination. His current SSHRC-funded project examines the landscape transformations created by deforestation in northern Argentina and their connection to globalized supply chains.

  
•  
• See Lectures in this Series See Our Other Series Support Green College
•  

• Unless otherwise noted, all of our lectures are free to attend and do not require registration.