"If they win, we disappear": An interview study of local mining opposition in northwestern Ecuador

Abstract: In the contemporary globalised era, social and economic development is being increasingly associated with extractivism. Opening up resource markets to multinational extractive industries is a common strategy used by Latin American states for promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. This thesis is a case study of the current establishment of large scale mining in the Tropical Andes of Ecuador, aiming to explore its local impacts and implications. With data from six ethnographic interviews, the thesis explores how conservationists and activists in the mining opposition from campesino communities in the areas of Los Cedros and the Chocó Andino understand large scale mining in their territories. Analysing the mining opposition as a mobilisation of cultural politics, the thesis identifies that the opposition find mining damaging to the social fabric and natural environments of the communities, and as incompatible with local livelihoods and cultural practices. Further, the dominant development model on which the mining establishment rests is exposed by the opposition, whose alternative articulations of development challenge modern capitalist meaning systems.