The struggle against pollution and pillaging: From the Mendoza mobilizations to the unity of socio-environmental claims in Latin America

Abstract

In recent years, different organizations have emerged in the province of Mendoza, Argentina, to fight large-scale mining and to protect the water, giving birth to the Mendoza Assembly for Pure Water (AMPAP). AMPAP is also part of the Union of Citizen Assemblies against Pollution and Pillaging (UAC). This union arose from the awareness that behind each specific problem – clearing, monocropping, displacement of native and peasant peoples, location of potentially polluting projects, among others – there is a common struggle that pervades all these claims: resistance to a model that threatens the diversity of forms of life, plunders the common goods and prevents the self-determination of peoples. Thus, on the basis of the connection between the groups organized in Mendoza and the other organizations in Argentina and in other Latin American countries, this article analyzes the common demands in the different Latin American social-environmental struggles. Native peoples, peasant movements and socio-environmental organizations of different origins have found a common front of struggle and resistance: the defense of their common goods and the resistance to the subjugation of their peoples. Nowadays this pillaging, which goes back to the conquest of the continent in the 15th century, has new actors, other discourses and different modes of domination. But it also faces new forms of resistance, whose organization and networking is discussed in this article.

Key words: socio-environmental movement, large-scale mining, pillaging.