Unit 4

Violence, Extractive Economies,

and resistance in Latin America
Credit: Pedro Valtierra

Part 1 –
The Violence
that shapes
a region

Prof. William Payne

Geography 1000 – 2021-2022
Violence, land, and resistance
in Latin America

“Miss Alberta Canada” -

Chilpancingo, Mexico
 Unit 4: Violence, Extractive Economies,
and resistance in Latin America

Outline
1. The violence that shapes a region
2. The drug trade in LA and its
impact on land issues
3. Case studies – Places affected by
violence in Latin America

4. Mining in LA – history and concepts

5. Canadian mining in LA - Conflicts,
criminalization
“Miss Alberta Canada” - 6. Case studies – Places affected by mining
Chilpancingo, Mexico
 Violence as “produced”

Thesis: To understand the violence impacting Latin America, we need to

look at inequality, and we also need to look at the region’s relationship
with other parts of the world, especially Canada and the United States.

The Economist, 2018

 Ayotzinapa

Ø September 26, 2014

Ø 43 students disappeared
Ø From Raul Burgos Teachers College in
Guerrero, Mexico
Ø School’s roots in Mexican Revolution,
land reform, indigenous rights
Ø Attacked by police in collaboration
with organized crime

2017
 “It was the State.”

“They were taken alive; we want them back alive.”

 Ø Mexican government
under previous president
lied and covered up the
truth
Ø Result: impossible to find
the students, alive or
dead

Enrique Peña Nieto

President of the United Mexican States
Gibler, 2017 2012-2018
Protests around the world

Ø Role of Inter-American
Commission on Human
Rights
Ø Established the International
Group of Independent
Experts

IGIE Report:

1. All levels of police involved

2. State destroyed key evidence
3. Fifth bus; to Chicago?
4. False explanation
 AMLO and Ayotzinapa

Ø AMLO elected with a mandate for

progressive change
Ø New gov’t launched new
investigation in late 2018, shortly
after taking office
Ø In July 2020, new warrants and
arrests
Ø September 2021 – Mexican gov’t
commits to ongoing support of President of Mexico, 2018-present
IGIE until case is solved Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
 2017

Bigthink.com, with data from Seguridad, Justicia y Paz

https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/insight-crime-2018-homicide-roundup/
Contributing Factors to Violence in LA

Homicide correlates with:

Ø Poverty
Ø Drug trafficking
Urbanization and the Rural

BBVA Research
Credit: W. Payne

What is violence?
 What is violence?
Tyner, J. (2015) Ch.10 - Violence

Ø Violence as something that is “produced”

Ø Not some universal and transhistorical quality
Ø Direct versus structural violence (Galtung)
Ø Structures of violence, such as racism, patriarchy (Graeber)
Ø Violence sits in places (Springer), so always geographical and political
 Geographies of Violence
(Springer and Le Billon, 2016)

ØTheory of violence
ØSpatiality of violence – no
containers
ØMove beyond dichotomies –
direct and structural violence are
mutually constitutive; a dialectic
ØReject idea of “violent places”
ØFeminist geopolitics (Hyndman)
 Unit 4 - Violence, Extractive Economies, and resistance in Latin America

Part 2: The drug trade in Latin America

and its impact on land issues

Toronto Star, January 25, 2019

 January 4, 2018
Nearly 50 kg of cocaine was seized at
Queenston-Lewiston bridge.

niagarathisweek.com
CBSA photo. Source:
Niagaraatlarge.com
 September 2015
24.3 kg in transport truck at
Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge
August 2014
37.5 kg concealed in
baking machine shipped
from Panama..
Street value: $4 million.
July 2014
12 kg on flight from Dominican
Republic to Pearson

Source: National Post

Source: CBC
Source: Toronto Star
April 2015
25 kg in a suitcase arriving January 2016
from Cancun December 2017 18 kg in luggage from
9 kg seized in airplane arriving from Antigua
Dominican Republic

Source: Global News

Source: Toronto Sun
 Coca bush - Antioquia, Colombia

Credit: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Colombia

 Opioid crisis to heroin surge
“My estimate is that between 90-94% of all heroin
consumed in the United States comes from Mexico.”
William Brownfield, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, 2017.

Business Insider The Oregonian

 “Drug money saved banks in global
crisis, claims UN advisor.”
Ø 2008 Financial crisis would
have been far worse without
drug trafficking;
Ø $352 Billion USD in criminal
proceeds laundered by The Guardian, December 13, 2009
financial institutions that year;
Ø Antonio Maria Costa, head of
the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime, said proceeds of
organized crime were only
liquid investment available to
some banks on the brink of
collapse;

Credit: The Guardian

Business Insider
 Four periods of LA drugs industry
(Steven Hyland 2011)

Late 19th C – 1945: The Narco-system is created

Mexico-US link

1946-1960s: The Narco-system takes root,

together with US hegemony

1960s-1984: The Rise of Colombia

"War on Drugs”

1984-present: A Return to Mexico

 Theory of Violence (Tyner)
Direct (physical) Violence Structural Violence
• Inequality in the system;
• Examples: hit, stabbed, unequal power; leads to
shot, raped, war, genocide unequal life chances
• Types: self-inflicted, • Example: premature death
interpersonal, collective due to lack of health care
Structures of Violence:
Dialectic in which direct violence is understood in
context of broader political, social and economic
structures.
Other ways of discussing violence:
Geographies of violence; criminal violence; political
violence; terrorism; state violence; gender violence,
etc.
Unit 4 - Violence, Extractive Economies, and resistance in Latin America

Part 3 -
Places affected by violence
in Latin America (Case Studies)
 Paramilitarism

Paramilitaries (Grajales):

Ø groups of armed civilians who

use extreme violence
Ø for political and economic
goals
Ø Serve at behest of powerful
interests: Gov’t, large
landowners, TNCs;
Ø Do the dirty work
 ACCION SOCIAL CODHES

ND 128.689
1985-1994 741.000
1995 89.000
1996 181.000
1997 173.970 257.000

Colombia:
1998 70.002 308.000
1999 95.526 288.000
2000 268.194 317.375
2001 388.894 341.925
2002 442.380 412.553

Forced internal
2003 250.196 207.607
2004 232.547 287.581
2005 268.839 310.387
2006
2007
286.394
331.238
221.638
305.966
displacement
2008
2009
306.313
137.263
380.863
286.389
1985-2009
Total general 3.380.445 4.936.284

Source: Gorka Urrutia, University of Deusto, Bilbao, using data

from Acción Social (March 31 2010) and CODHES
Ongoing violent displacement in Colombia
despite the “peace process”

https://colombiareports.com/forced-displacement-statistics/
Peasants’ Association of the
Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC)

ØAicardo Ortiz was a member of the ACVC.

ØIn 1996, ACVC’s proposal of a Peasant Farmer Land
Reserve (ZRC) was accepted by the government (now one
of six)
ØThe land reserve was established in 2002, but in 2003 the
government changed its mind
ØDue to local and international pressure, in 2010 the
government announced a limited land reform program
ØIn 2011, the ZRC won legal recognition (184,000 ha; 9000
families)
Aims of the Campesin@ 1. Contain expansion of
(Peasant Farmer) agricultural frontier
2. Correct inequitable
Reserve Zones concentration of land
ownership
3. Sustainability for small-
scale farmers
4. Regulate land, with
preference for poor farmers
5. Protect the campesin@
economy and its food
security
Peace Brigades International (Colombia Project)
December 2018
 Colt’s
“Emiliano
Zapata
1911”
Guerrero, Mexico
 Acapulco, Guerrero (Mexico)

Elvis Presley - Fun in Acapulco,

Circa 1700-1725
with Ursula Andress (1963)
Artist: Pierre van der Aa

Mexico Daily News - January 3, 2015 NPR - September 26, 2018

Time Magazine, January 11, 2018
 à
Acapulco

Marston, Figure 7.31a

 Guerrero, Mexico

Credit: Sipaz
 Poppy Production in Mexico

March 11, 2021

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/project-maps-opium-poppy-cultivation-production-centered-in-59-municipalities/
 Vigilantes or self-defense forces?

Guerrero, Mexico

Credit: W. Payne
January 24, 2020 – BBC News
Felbab-Brown
(2020)

Ø Since the 1940s, Mexico supplies opioids for US market

Ø Since 2011, increase in demand for Mexican heroin
Ø Employs tens of thousands of poor, marginalized Mexicans
Ø Market controlled by drug trafficking organizations
Ø Eradication and interdiction haven’t worked
Ø AMLO open to “alternative livelihoods”
Ø US market has shifted to synthetics (fentanyl)
Ø Good local security is required for licensing opium poppies
Ø Licensing reduces need labour
Ø May not be a demand for legal product
Ø Requires functioning rule of law
Resistance
 Amelio
Robles
Hero of the
Mexican
Revolution
Amelio Robles
Hero of the Mexican Revolution
Amelio Robles
Hero of the Mexican Revolution
 Resistance
ØDef’n: challenges to domination or oppression
ØExamples: individuals; communities
ØSince the Conquest (16th Century)
ØUse of violence in resistance
ØVigilantism versus self-defence
ØInternational solidarity
ØLand occupation
 Things to Know
ØTheory of violence
ØCase studies on violence: ACVC; Guerrero
ØMilitarism; paramilitarism;
ØResistance; self-defense/vigilantism