In Defense of Water: Modern Mining, Grassroots Movements, and Corporate Strategies in Peru

This article explores why water is at the center of recent mining controversies in Peru. It explores a conflict between the Yanacocha Mining Company and the community of Combayo in the Northern Highlands. In protests in 2006, campesinos stated that their struggle was over the protection of water resources from mining expansion; the company sought to discredit their claims, suggesting that the protests began as a demand for employment contracts and development projects. The superficial distinction between jobs and water obscures the ways in which modern mining technologies transform the landscape, thus changing both corporate practices and forms of political action in response to mining activity. This article examines the role of water in mobilizing protestors, in reconfiguring existing political alliances, and in facilitating an agreement that reduced the scope of the conflict to technical arguments about water quality and quantity, the promise of employment, and a hydrological study.