Himley 2012

Regularizing Extraction in Andean
Peru: Mining and Social

Mobilization in an Age of
Corporate Social Responsibility
Matthew Himley
Department of Geography-Geology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA;
matthimley@ilstu.edu
Abstract: This paper examines the new forms of regulation and resistance
accompanying the expanding extractive frontier in Andean Peru. It does so through an
analysis of a process of community mobilization at the Pierina gold mine in the region
of Ancash that was aimed at transforming the conditions under which area residents
labored at the mine. The article documents the complex ways in which the emergence
of neoliberalized forms of resource governance has affected the terrain of mining-
related sociopolitical struggle at Pierina, both allowing the mining firm to consolidate
authority in the arena of mine–community relations, while also establishing certain
conditions for residents to pursue their interests collectively. An analysis of the Pierina
case suggests that efforts to forge more just and equitable political economies of mineral
development must not only challenge the neoliberalization of resource governance, but
also confront the underlying socio-ecological contradictions of contemporary capitalist
resource development.
Keywords: mining, Peru, social movements, resource governance, regulation approach,

neoliberalism
Introduction
In the hours before midnight on 3 May 2006, men and women from 17 communities
located in the immediate vicinity of the Pierina mine set out from their homes.
Through cropland and pasture, along the paths that crisscross this mountainous
area in north-central Peru, they proceeded toward the mine’s two access roads. As
had been planned, residents from 12 of the communities gathered along Pierina’s
main access road, which winds up to the mine from the district capital of Jangas in
the valley below. Those from the other five communities met at a point along a lesser-
used road that leads to Pierina from the south. The protest began at midnight, when
residents blockaded the two roads. In doing so, they cut off the flow of materials
and personnel into and out of the “mega” gold-mining operation owned by Minera
Barrick Misquichilca SA, a Peruvian subsidiary of the Toronto-based mining giant
Barrick Gold Corporation.1
This toma de vı́as (seizing of the roads) was one of a multiplicity of social conflicts
that have accompanied the recent surge in mining activities in Andean Peru, conflicts
in which rural communities affected by mineral development often have been
key protagonists (Bebbington 2007; Bebbington et al 2008; Bury and Kolff 2002;
Antipode Vol. 00 No. 00 2012 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1–23 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01001.x

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De Echave 2005; Scurrah 2008). These struggles have revolved around various
issues, including the impacts of mining on land and water resources, the rights
of affected groups to participate in mining-related decisions, and the sociospatial
distribution of extraction’s development benefits. For the protestors at Pierina in
May 2006, meanwhile, labor concerns were critical. Though few area residents
number among the 450–700 permanent workers at the mine,2 men from nearby
communities are regularly subcontracted on a short-term and rotational basis,
primarily to perform manual labor jobs in areas such as canal construction and
reforestation. This hiring occurs through a local employment initiative administered
by Barrick’s Office of Community Relations at Pierina. The firm considers the
initiative to be part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda—as such,
it is illustrative of a broader emphasis on corporate-centered modes of regulation
in the mining and hydrocarbon sectors, both in Peru and throughout much of
the world (Frynas 2005; Hilson 2007; Kapelus 2002; Szablowski 2002; Yakovleva
2005; Zalik 2004). Participants in the program, however, had grown increasingly
discontented with their treatment under it, complaining of wage stagnation and
accusing Barrick of reneging on a pledge to hire unskilled laborers strictly from
nearby communities. To collectively hold the firm to account, residents formed a
pan-community organization in 2005 called the Central Committee of Campesino
Communties, Villages and Towns in the Area of Influence of Pierina (Comité Central
de Comunidades Campesinas, Caserı́os y Pueblos de la Zona de Influencia de Pierina;
hereafter Comité Central), which presented a series of documents to Barrick detailing
residents’ demands. When the firm failed to provide a satisfactory formal response,
the Comité Central organized the toma de vı́as. This measure of force was, according
to a Comité Central leader, “the last resource that we had; or in reality, the only
resource that we, the poor, have” (interview, 20 July 2008). On the second day of the
toma de vı́as, a violent confrontation occurred between protestors at the southern
access route and a special-operations police unit. One protestor was killed; at least
10 were seriously wounded. Nine police officers also sustained injuries. In the wake
of the violence a negotiation ensued in which the firm made several concessions,
including a wage increase for participants in the local employment initiative. The
roadblocks were cleared. Investors were likely reassured when a firm representative
reported to the Financial Post on 11 May that while Pierina had been operating at
reduced capacity during the conflict, “they will manage to pick up that bit of slack
quickly” (Financial Post 2006).
In this paper I use the events of May 2006 at Pierina as an entry point for
exploring the new forms of regulation and resistance that have accompanied the
recent dramatic expansion of large-scale mining in Peru. My analysis of the Pierina
case begins with an interpretive move: drawing on regulationist scholarship in
nature–society geography (eg Bakker 2000; Bridge 2000; Prudham 2005), I advance
an understanding of Barrick’s temporary and rotational work program—which
institutionalizes certain forms of local participation in the mining economy—as a
neoliberalized regulatory experiment designed to address the potential for social
opposition created by the increasing economic exclusivity of large-scale mining.
The local employment initiative can be viewed, in other words, as an effort to (at
least temporarily) regularize large-scale mining and ensure continued accumulation.

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Regularizing Extraction in Andean Peru 3
Then, seeking to contribute to efforts to critically assess the implications of

neoliberalized regulatory arrangements—especially those associated with CSR—for
social struggles in extractive regions (eg Bebbington 2010; Himley 2010; Welker
2009; Zalik 2004), I consider the ramifications of Barrick’s local employment initiative
for the efforts of area residents to collectively articulate demands regarding their
engagement (or lack thereof) with the mining economy. My findings, in this respect,
are complex. On the one hand, the roll out of the program has put in place certain
conditions for area residents to act collectively in pursuit of their interests. Overall,
however, the privatized and informal character of the regulatory experiment has
allowed the firm to consolidate authority in the arena of mine–community relations
and to delineate the terms of mining-related struggle. Conceptually, this study
points to the need to consider resource governance arrangements in a dual manner:
both as the products of sociopolitical struggle (generated by the socio-ecological
contradictions of large-scale capitalist mineral production), as well as instruments
of power that have effects on the character and trajectory of that struggle. This
conceptualization allows us to understand the local employment initiative at Pierina
as a proactive effort on the part of Barrick to establish the terms of debate regarding
mining’s development contributions, to limit the scope of residents’ demands, and
to foreclose the possibility of more radical or systemic change.
This investigation into how social mobilization at Pierina has been “figured by
and within, rather than being external to, the regimes of power it contests” (Larner
2000:17) holds lessons for efforts to challenge the injustices of contemporary large-
scale mining. In particular, the Pierina case underscores the importance of designing
strategies that take into account how corporate-centered regulatory arrangements
may enable certain forms of mobilization, while at the same time recognizing the
extent to which these arrangements allow firms the authority to establish the
parameters of struggle, including by defining what is “possible” regarding the
social, economic, and environmental implications of resource development. In this
context, contesting the neoliberalization of resource governance would doubtless
facilitate the important task of redefining the possible and forging more just and
equitable political economies of mineral extraction. At the same time, however, my
analysis of the Pierina case suggests that a radical transformation of contemporary
mining economies will require not only a reconfiguring of the regulatory frameworks
governing mining, but also a more direct confrontation with the underlying socio-
ecological contradictions of capitalist resource extraction. In the case at hand, this
includes the growing economic exclusivity of large-scale mining and the highly
uneven forms of socioeconomic development generated by this tendency.
In the next section I review regulationist work in nature–society geography,
arguing for a conceptualization of regulatory forms as both the products of
sociopolitical struggle as well as instruments for delineating the terms of that
struggle. I then examine the historical dynamic that underlay the May 2006
protest at Pierina: the growing disarticulation between large-scale mining and
rural livelihoods in Peru. The following section advances an understanding of
Barrick’s local employment initiative as a neoliberalized regulatory mechanism
designed to address the potential for conflict generated by the increasing economic
exclusivity of mega mining. The penultimate section examines labor-related

4 Antipode
community mobilization at Pierina and the impacts of this mobilization on the

institutional structure of the employment initiative. In the conclusion, I reflect on
the contributions of the study and its relevance for transformative extractive-sector
politics. My analysis is based on 13 months of qualitative research undertaken in
Peru between 2006 and 2011. This included more than 100 interviews with officials
from civil society and social movement organizations, government and industry
representatives, and community leaders and residents from three communities in
the vicinity of Pierina. The paper also draws on documentary evidence related to
the creation of the Comité Central and the 2006 toma de vı́as.3
Regularizing Extraction
In recent years, nature–society geographers have profitably employed the regulation
approach to explore the role of sociopolitical institutions and practices in shaping
the capitalist exploitation and management of nature (eg Bakker 2000; Bridge
2000; Bridge and Jonas 2002; Bridge and McManus 2000; Krueger 2002; Prudham
2005; Robertson 2004). Pioneered in France in the 1970s, the regulation approach
constitutes a branch of Marxist political economy that, in broad terms, seeks
to explain the persistence of capitalism despite its inherent contradictions and
tendencies toward crisis (Aglietta 1987; Dunford 1990; Jessop 1995; Tickell and Peck
1992, 1995). In their explanations of capitalist reproduction, regulationists stress the
sociopolitical embeddedness of economic processes. In particular, the regulation
approach focuses on the relations between crisis-prone accumulation dynamics and
the constellation of institutional forms and social practices that function to guide
and stabilize—or regularize (see Jessop 1995:309)—accumulation for more or less
extended periods. Importantly, the makeup of these institutions and practices—
which include laws, rules, norms, customs, etc—is considered neither predetermined
nor inevitable. Rather, regulatory regimes emerge out of contingent processes of
struggle, may vary over time and space, and are conditioned by existing power
relations.
The regulation approach has been a valuable tool for scholars seeking to
understand the political-economic and ecological dynamics of resource production
activities like mining and forestry. This work takes as a starting point the deeply
contested character of these activities and roots this tendency toward conflict in a
series of contradictions emerging out of the metabolism of capitalist commodity
production (Bridge 2000; Bridge and McManus 2000). For the mining industry,
for instance, given the non-renewable character of mineral resources, production
necessarily depletes existing reserves, which makes continued accumulation
predicated on the acquisition of new deposits, or expansion into “new ground”.
This ongoing hunt to replace depleted reserves, however, holds the potential to
generate opposition from non-mining interests (eg affected populations), which
could threaten industry expansion and profits (Bridge 2000). Recent decades indeed
have seen an explosion of conflicts generated by the expansion of mining activities
into “greenfields”—or areas with little or no history of extraction—in various parts of
the world, including Peru (Ballard and Banks 2003; Bury and Kolff 2002; Muradian,
Martı́nez-Alier and Correa 2003). Despite underlying tendencies toward conflict

within resource extraction economies, however, regulationist accounts point to

the relative overall stability of many such economies over time. This is because,
as Bridge and Jonas (2002:759) contend, “potential conflicts are often negotiated
through historically and geographically specific sociopolitical struggles that become
codified as the institutions and social practices within which resource extraction
activities are embedded”. These regulatory ensembles, then, function to facilitate
and stabilize growth in extractive economies, rendering them “coherent” for more
or less significant periods.
In traditional regulationist scholarship, the focus was on the development
of regulatory regimes at the scale of the nation-state. Twentieth century
efforts to “environmentalize” the state (ie through the construction of state-
based environmental law) can indeed be interpreted as regulatory responses
to the ecological crisis tendencies of capitalism (Frank, Hironaka and Schofer
2000; O’Connor 1998). Scholars of environmental governance, however, rightly
emphasize the need to move beyond state-centric conceptualizations of resource
and environmental regulation in order to account for the wider variety of actors
and institutions that now impinge on processes of resource mobilization (Bakker
and Bridge 2007; Bridge and Perreault 2009; Bulkeley 2005; Perreault 2008).
In many cases, the political and economic reforms associated with neoliberalism
have played a central role in this shift from government to governance (Castree
2008a, 2008b; Heynen et al 2007). While neoliberalization as a project of
environmental governance has entailed a variety of processes (see Bakker 2010),
a significant aspect has been the prioritization of corporate-centered regulatory
arrangements, including industry codes of conduct, ethical trading schemes,
and social responsibility programs (McCarthy and Prudham 2004). The global
mining industry offers an especially important arena in which to investigate this
decentering/neoliberalization of resource regulation. While the state, as owner
of the subsoil in most cases, maintains significant authority in governing the
trajectory of mineral development, a raft of additional actors—activist networks,
social movements, civil society organizations, international financial institutions
such as the World Bank—are now active in shaping decision-making regarding
when, where, how, and under what conditions extraction is carried out (Ballard and
Banks 2003; Bridge 2004a). Especially pertinent for this paper: the global mining
industry itself has become an active institution builder, in particular through the
development—often in conjunction with other state- and non-state-based actors—
of CSR programs and other forms of so-called industry “self-regulation” (Kapelus
2002; Szablowski 2002; Yakovleva 2005).
These developments suggest that attempts to understand processes of expansion,
conflict, and regulation in the extractive sectors through the lens of the regulation
approach must not be limited to an analysis of the role of state-based institutions.
Rather, such efforts must consider resource regulation as enacted by various social,
political, and economic actors operating at multiple scales (Bakker and Bridge
2007). This paper adopts this perspective by focusing on Barrick’s temporary
and rotational work initiative at Pierina, one of the myriad firm-led regulatory
experiments emerging in recent years in the global mining industry. My analysis also
seeks to extend the regulationist approach by explicitly considering the implications

6 Antipode
of this neoliberalization of resource governance for justice movements in areas

impacted by mineral development. While researchers widely recognize that the
recent worldwide expansion of extractive activities has prompted a series of conflicts
and resistance movements, less work has sought to analyze in detail the role of CSR
and other forms of corporate-centered regulation in shaping the character and
trajectory of social struggle related to this expansion (but see Bebbington 2010;
Himley 2010; Welker 2009; Zalik 2004). This paper seeks to contribute to this
endeavor. Conceptually, this entails an understanding of governance mechanisms
as not only the products of sociopolitical struggle (generated by the contradictions
of capitalist commodity production), but also as instruments of power that may
serve to delimit the terrain of that struggle, including by shaping the behavior of
those who might seek to contest or make claims on the extractive economy. Said
another way, the same institutional arrangements that—based on a regulationist
analysis—serve to stabilize accumulation in the extractive economy, should also be
viewed as having a governing effect on a variety of populations and environments
implicated in struggles over that economy, including, as we shall see in the case of
Pierina, community residents in the areas of extractive operations.
Before detailing the effects of resource governance neoliberalization on mine–
community struggles at Pierina, however, it is important to situate Barrick’s local
employment initiative in the context of a set of historical transformations to how
minerals are produced in Peru. As I now explore, techno-organizational changes
in large-scale mining—namely the trend toward capital-intensive mega mining—
have facilitated industry expansion while also generating conflicts with Andean
populations increasingly excluded from participation in the mining economy.
Tending Toward Exclusivity

Recent studies undertaken in areas “hosting” mega mines in Peru have revealed high
levels of frustration among area residents regarding the limited opportunities they
are afforded to benefit from what is often stunningly profitable mineral development
in their territories (Gil 2009; Salas Carreño 2008). While social mobilization in
such regions has revolved around various concerns (and some Andean groups
have strongly rejected the expansion of the mining frontier), a relatively common
demand is for a more equitable distribution of mining’s material benefits and for
more opportunities to participate in the mining economy, including as workers
(Bebbington et al 2008; Bury and Kolff 2002). For instance, Bebbington et al
(2008:2896) contend in their study of rural social movements consolidating around
the Yanacocha gold mine in northern Peru that the goal of this mobilization was to
forge a “clearer and more synergistic articulation of the mining economy and local
livelihoods”. These frustrations and demands should be understood, on the one
hand, in the context of long histories of underdevelopment, marginalization, and
poverty in the rural Andes (Eguren and Cancino 1999). Indeed, areas targeted
for mineral development in Peru are often among the poorest in the country.
At the same time, calls by Andean groups for greater engagement with the
mining economy reflect a tendency for mega mines like Pierina to operate with
relatively few productive linkages to the surrounding area. This “neoenclave”

(Gil 2009) character of large-scale mining is perhaps most clearly seen in the
realm of labor relations: while throughout much of Peru’s history, rural Andean
populations—or campesinos—provided the labor power to extract, process, and
transport minerals (Contreras 1988; Deustua 1994; DeWind 1987; Dore 2000),
campesino involvement in mining labor markets has waned considerably in the
context of techno-organizational changes that have made large-scale extraction
reliant on a relatively smaller and more highly trained labor force.
In surveying these changes, it is essential to first underscore that historically
much of the labor that Andean populations performed for the mining economy
was involuntary. Indeed, during much of Peru’s colonial and post-colonial history,
the challenge for mine owners was not to negotiate local demands for access to
the mining labor market; rather, it was to recruit workers for what was typically
treacherous and highly exploitative work. In this context, mechanisms of direct or
indirect coercion were often relied upon. During the colonial period, these included
both the mita, a state labor draft that drew exclusively from the Andean region,
and the monetization of the tribute that the colonial state levied on indigenous
communities, which drove residents to seek out money wages, including at the
mines (Deustua 1994; Dore 2000). In both cases, these mechanisms fostered
temporary labor migrations rather than the creation of a mining proletariat, and
mineworkers often maintained tight linkages with their communities of origin.
The mita and the Indian tribute were abolished in the first half of the nineteenth
century in the context of independence and liberal reforms. Mine owners then
turned to alternative coercive techniques to secure a labor force, the most prominent
being a form of debt peonage known as el enganche (the hook), through which a
cash advance to campesinos had to be repaid through mine work. As Deustua
(1994) contends in his study of late nineteenth century mining markets in the Cerro
de Pasco region, a free mining labor market did not exist during this period due to
the forms of coercion employed. Yet, workers were also not free laborers in Marx’s
(1967 [1867]) more ironic sense of the term—that is, they were not free of their
means of production, as they often maintained farms in their home communities to
which they could return once their enganche obligations were fulfilled. In practice,
then, campesinos continued to circulate into and out of the mining labor market,
and into and out of the social category of “mineworker”.
In analyzing the relative stability of this labor provisioning system, scholars
have pointed to how mine owners profited from it. The temporary nature of
labor migrations, it has been argued, allowed campesino production to subsidize
the mining economy: mine wages could be kept low because workers and their
families provided part of their subsistence needs (Contreras 1988; DeWind 1987).
Authors, however, have also pointed to the ways that campesino social reproduction
benefitted from selective integration into the mining labor market. Wages from
mine work, for example, could be invested in agricultural improvements or used
for campesino ceremonies and other social practices (Contreras 1988; Deustua
1994; Long and Roberts 1984). This situation has led Contreras (1988) to argue
that the campesino economy was not subordinated to the mining economy
during the nineteenth century; rather, there existed an articulation between the
two. Overall, the salient point is that traditionally there existed linkages—even

8 Antipode
interdependencies—between Andean communities and Peru’s mining centers.

While these linkages were heavily based on campesinos providing a temporary labor
force for mining, rural communities also often provided goods and services for the
mining economy (Deustua 1994).
These relations were altered significantly with the industrialization of mining
in the twentieth century. While silver mining had proceeded throughout the
nineteenth century with little techno-organizational development, the shift to
copper production around the turn of the century required more advanced
technologies and greater capital investment (Deustua 1994; DeWind 1987). These
were provided by the Cerro de Pasco Corporation (CPC), a US-based firm that, as
DeWind (1987) documents, monopolized ownership of mining operations in Peru’s
central highlands and integrated production into one centralized industrial system.
Though for decades the CPC continued to recruit temporary workers from Andean
communities through coercive methods like el enganche, the firm’s increasingly
complex and mechanized production system came to require a permanent and more
highly skilled labor force (DeWind 1987; Dore 2000). A result of the dual processes
of mechanization and labor specialization was that productivity at the CPC surged
(DeWind 1987). Importantly, the industrialization of mineral production led to the
gradual creation of a mining proletariat, despite the fact that many workers retained
socioeconomic ties to their home communities (Becker 1983; DeWind 1987).
The development of huge open-pit mines in the deserts of southern Peru—namely
the Toquepala, Cuajone, and Cerro Verde copper mines and the Marcona iron
mine—in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s marked another stage in the evolution of
Peru’s mining labor market (Dore 2000). The production technologies utilized at
these operations intensified a tendency set in motion by the CPC for large-scale
mining: the increasing need for a relatively smaller and more highly trained labor
force (Becker 1983; Dore 2000). While employment at these open-pit operations
became less hazardous and wages were higher than they had ever been, relatively
few jobs were generated. Regarding the relations of these new mines to the rural
communities of southern Peru, Becker (1983:292) states that firms “never had to
dragoon unwilling peasants into the mines” as had been common historically.
Rather, with mine work increasingly viewed as a form of upward social mobility,
the challenge for companies shifted to managing the complaints of prospective
workers that were not hired. In short, the increasing exclusivity of the labor market
in large-scale mining was generating contestation from those being left out.
Neoliberal reforms undertaken by the Fujimori administration in the early 1990s
carried further implications for mining labor markets. Following a period of greater
state involvement in the mining industry, these reforms reopened the sector to
foreign direct investment and offered generous incentives to private investors
(Bebbington 2007; Bury 2005; De Echave 2008). A renewed flurry of interest in the
country’s mineral deposits soon materialized: between 1990 and 2001 Peru received
US$5.8 billion in mining investment, more than any other country in Latin American
except Chile (Bridge 2004b). This boom period has been marked by the construction
of numerous new capital-intensive mega mines like Pierina. The sophisticated
technologies employed by these operations—eg cyanide heap leaching for gold
extraction—have increased labor productivity and made previously uneconomical

deposits profitable to exploit, thus both promoting the expansion of the mining
frontier and leading to staggering production gains.4 These technological advances
have also fostered the further professionalization of mine labor: as De Echave and
Ospina (2002) note, mineworkers are now on average among the more highly skilled
and educated in Peru. The rate of full-time job creation, however, has not kept pace
with the overall expansion of the mining economy, especially in the large-scale
mining sector (Torres 2007). Contributing to this dynamic are changes to labor-
market regulations that have promoted the flexibilization of mine labor through
the use of temporary workers and labor intermediary companies (De Echave and
Ospina 2002; Smith and Helfgott 2010; Torres 2007). What this discussion suggests,
in sum, is that the rapid expansion of the mining industry in recent years has not
entailed a concomitant growth of quality employment (Torres 2007).5
The evolution toward a relatively smaller and more highly trained labor force
holds crucial implications for Andean communities in areas targeted for mining
investment. While the entrance of a mega mining endeavor may give rise to heady
expectations among area residents that steady employment will soon be on offer,
job opportunities are in reality often quite limited, given the quantity of positions
generated and the skills required (Glave and Kuramoto 2002). It may be misguided,
as Smith and Helfgott (2010) contend, to portray mining operations as wholly
external forces that confront Andean communities, without recognizing the ways in
which community residents at least partially constitute such operations as workers.
Nevertheless, it is also important to recognize both the tendency for large-scale
mines to function as neoenclaves, as well as the potential for social conflict that this
tendency generates. This disarticulation between mining and social reproduction
becomes even more problematic for communities in the immediate vicinity of large-
scale mines, as these operations typically have significant negative impacts on land
and water resources (Bury 2005). Given that social reproduction strategies across
the Andean countryside are often rooted in agriculture and ranching (Crabtree
2002), reduced access to land and water can have dramatic consequences for area
livelihoods.
It is in this context that I situate the temporary and rotational work initiative
at Pierina. By institutionalizing certain forms of local participation in the mining
economy, the initiative can be interpreted as a response to the historical tendency
detailed above and, in particular, the social tensions it generates. I now examine the
initiative in more detail, pointing to how its privatized and informal character has
allowed the firm to consolidate authority in the arena of mine–community relations
and to structure the program in ways that advance corporate objectives.
A Neoliberal Moral Economy?

The Pierina deposit was discovered in the mid 1990s by a Vancouver-based
exploration company, which Barrick Gold Corporation then purchased in 1996.
Barrick’s relations with area communities date to the project’s planning stages, when
the firm initiated a land acquisition program aimed at buying the roughly 2300 ha
of surface land required to construct the mine’s main components, including the
pit, heap leaching pad, and waste rock disposal area. The majority of this was

10 Antipode
Figure 1: Pierina and area-of-influence communities
high-altitude grassland, situated in the headwaters of three valleys. The owners

included several small-scale farming communities, which had used their grasslands
primarily as commons for sheep and cattle ranching. Research in two of these
communities revealed a mix of motivations behind residents’ decisions to sell their
properties. In both cases, however, two reasons stood out: the pledges of social
development support that firm officials made during land-transfer negotiations,
and residents’ expectations that jobs would be available at the new mine (Himley
2011). In the years since, permanent employment at Pierina has been unavailable for
most area residents: though many of my 46 interviewees in these two communities
expressed interest in steady work at Pierina, none had been hired full time.
The majority of the working-aged male residents I interviewed, however, had
participated in Barrick’s temporary and rotational work program, which the firm
runs for the 18 communities considered to be in its “area of influence” (see Figure
1).6 Many aspects of Barrick’s CSR agenda at Pierina revolve around livelihood
concerns not directly related to the mining economy, such as education, health, and
agricultural production (Himley 2010). The temporary and rotational work initiative,
however, is one aspect of this agenda that is clearly designed to forge economic
linkages between mining and rural households. (Another is a program through

which Barrick promotes the establishment of community-based businesses, which

then provide goods and services to Pierina.) The local employment program can
thus be seen as an institutional experiment emerging in response to the economic
exclusivity of mega mining.
Barrick officials’ depictions of the initiative support this interpretation. According
to Pierina’s head of community relations in 2008, about 2500 community residents
were registered to participate in the program at the time, with each individual
generally working for about 3 months per year. This hiring occurs strictly through
third-party intermediary companies, the principal one being the Peru branch of
the Switzerland-based firm Adecco.7 When asked why Barrick considers the local
employment initiative to be part of its CSR agenda, the head of community relations
stated, “We are convinced that we have to promote local capacities” (interview, 1
August 2008). In other words, the firm cultivates “local” capacities by instructing
intermediary companies to recruit workers from a socio-spatially restricted labor
pool (ie area-of-influence communities). He added that the firm incurs extra costs
given the rotational nature of the system, as each time a new community resident
rotates into a job, he must receive a medical exam, training in the specifics of the
work, new safety equipment, etc.
Barrick is happy to absorb these expenses, asserted the community relations
official, not only because the program builds the skills of community members, but
also because the system of rotation allows more residents to access work in a context
in which permanent employment for the entire local population is impossible. With
the roughly 3 months of wages that a resident may earn per year through the
program:
He can put together enough money to perhaps solve some problems. The child goes to
school, the issue of illnesses, clothing is improved . . . And above all what we advise is that
they use that money to improve their traditional activity. And what is their traditional
activity? If you have always lived from agriculture, ranching, with the money you earn
you should improve those activities (interview, 1 August 2008).
From Barrick’s perspective, then, short-term work at Pierina contributes to social

reproduction in communities where livelihoods necessarily remain rooted in agro-
pastoral pursuits. The fact that Pierina is soon scheduled to close is further rationale
for the program’s rotational nature.8 The official continued: “We don’t want to
train them to be miners, because later on what do we do with them? Where are
they going to go to work? It’s better that they are good farmers, good ranchers,
rather than good miners” (interview, 1 August 2008).9 In sum, then, the rotational
work system represents the firm’s proactive effort to promote benefit sharing and
consolidate local livelihoods, while forestalling residents’ dependency on the mining
economy and protecting them against possible socioeconomic dislocation resulting
from mine closure.
The vision of the temporary and rotational work initiative promoted by the firm
is one of a neoliberal moral economy in which Barrick leads efforts to incorporate
broader social goals into economic decision-making. Such a vision indeed infuses
much of the public relations material that Barrick Gold Corporation produces about
the community development and other CSR initiatives implemented at its 25 global

12 Antipode
operations (eg Barrick Gold Corporation 2009, 2010). Yet, these depictions of
the local employment initiative—and of Barrick’s magnanimity in instituting it—
merit scrutiny. For one, though the rotational nature of the system may in some
respects occasion added costs to the firm, it also permits Barrick to maintain a highly
flexible labor force for the jobs that community residents perform. The number of
residents employed through the program fluctuates considerably over the course
of the year in relation to the firm’s needs: more residents typically are hired during
the May–September dry season, while the onset of the rainy season results in a
marked reduction of employment opportunities. Given this seasonal variability, a
flexibilized labor regime is no doubt of economic value to the firm. Also meriting
inspection is the notion that the system of rotation constitutes an attempt to protect
communities from the shock of mine closure. Issues of socioeconomic dependency
in mining regions are doubtless of great concern, given the industry’s boom and
bust nature. Yet, using intermediary firms to contract community members on an as-
needed basis also saves Barrick from expenses that would be associated with moving
these workers into permanent positions, which are significantly more highly paid.
Further, as has been argued regarding the temporary labor migrations to mining
centers historically (Contreras 1988; DeWind 1987), the rotational system allows the
campesino economy to continue to cover many of workers’ subsistence needs. In
sum, the local employment initiative, while promoted by the firm as part of its CSR
agenda, may in many respects simply represent an economically efficient method
of labor provisioning.
Barrick has not implemented the initiative by decree. Conversations with area
residents pointed to ways that they have influenced the program’s evolution. For
instance, while residents often express dissatisfaction with the short-term nature
of the work, evidence suggests that community leaders at times advocated for
the rotational system as a means of spreading job opportunities throughout their
communities. This points to the program’s negotiated character and the influence
of area residents in shaping decisions regarding its implementation. Still, the control
that Barrick has exercised over the initiative must be underscored. The program’s
structure and the procedures through which it is administered are largely matters
of corporate policy—that is, the result of decision-making processes internal to the
firm (within the bounds of state labor regulations). The program, then, is to a great
extent a system of privatized governance. Related to its privatized nature is the
program’s informality, which is evidenced in the ad hoc and unmediated manner
in which most negotiations between the firm and community leaders over the
program have occurred. The informality of these negotiations is thrown into sharp
relief compared with the formal collective bargaining that occurs between Barrick
and the state-recognized union representing Pierina’s full-time workers, a process
mediated by the National Labor Relations Board (Dirección Nacional de Relaciones
de Trabajo).
The privatized and informal nature of this corporate-centered regulatory
mechanism has allowed the firm to concentrate authority and to design the initiative
in ways that advance a number of corporate interests. Namely, through the program
Barrick has been able to recruit a flexible and cheap labor force for unskilled work
at Pierina, while at the same time presenting to the outside world an image of a

responsible mining firm committed to social development in its area of operation.

Beyond this, I would submit that the program’s character has afforded the firm
leeway to shape a broader sociopolitical project—that is, the delimitation of what
is possible with respect to Andean residents’ involvement with the mega mining
economy. In this respect, the Barrick official’s statement that the firm does not want
to train community members to be miners is telling. While this might be read as a
proactive commitment to local social development, it can also be seen as an effort
simply to legitimize a situation in which extraction at Pierina does not—and will
not—offer long-term productive linkages with rural households. In short, by defining
what is possible in the sphere of mine–community relations, the program can be
interpreted as an attempt to regularize a situation in which the mining economy,
while fabulously profitable,10 offers relatively few avenues for local participation.
The program, nonetheless, has established certain conditions for community
residents to mobilize in new ways at the pan-community level. This is evidenced
in the formation of the Comité Central in 2005. As I now explore, Barrick officials
initially supported this effort, until the Comité Central began to pose a more serious
threat to corporate interests and authority.
Mobilization, Conflict, and Institutional Change

According to an official with the Ancash branch of the Peruvian Defensorı́a del Pueblo
(Ombudsman), the impetus to form the Comité Central emerged from frustrations
felt by communities that had been dealing with Barrick on an individualized basis.
With each community pursuing its interests separately, the official said, it was easy for
Barrick to ignore them: “The mining firm never paid attention to them” (interview,
20 February 2008). This was compounded by general hurdles that rural Andean
communities confront in their interactions with the wider sociopolitical sphere,
including unfamiliarity with the organizational landscape, lack of access to the press,
and language barriers (most area residents are native Quechua speakers). In this
context, the Defensorı́a del Pueblo official continued, the communities near Pierina
decided to form the Comité Central because “they thought that alone they weren’t
going to achieve anything, but together they would achieve something” (interview,
20 February 2008).
Significantly, this effort to organize was enabled by the structure of the temporary
and rotational work program and the patterns of inter-community dialogue it
generated. On the seventh day of every month, leaders of area-of-influence
communities assemble at Pierina’s Office of Community Relations for a meeting
in which Barrick staff coordinates work assignments for area residents. More than
this, these meetings have offered community leaders a chance to recognize mutual
concerns and, it turns out, to organize. According to a leader of the Comité Central,
it was during these monthly meetings in 2005 that the momentum took root to form
an organization that would collectively represent the communities. He reported that,
early on, this endeavor even had the blessing of the then director of community
relations:
When the idea to form the Comité Central came up, even the head of community
relations, who was present at that meeting, gave his approval. He authorized the

14 Antipode
organization. “If you want to organize, do it. I’ll even give you a libro de actas”, he said,
and he gave us a libro de actas.11 We formed the committee immediately (interview, 20
July 2008).
The firm’s benevolence toward the endeavor soon waned, however, as the Comité
Central began to function as a channel for communities to express shared grievances
with Barrick. Given the context in which the committee was formed, it is not
surprising that labor concerns took on pressing importance. As evidenced in a memo
that the Comité Central sent to the head of community relations in late February
2006, one of these concerns revolved around the firm’s hiring practices. In this
memo, the committee denounced a supervisor for contracting outside personnel—
ie persons not from area-of-influence communities—for jobs that area residents
could perform. These actions, according to the memo, were “causing chaos and
complete disorder [and were] in opposition to all existing agreements between the
mining firm and the communities”. Adding insult to injury, personnel hired by this
manager “treat our people arrogantly and with vulgar words”. The committee called
on Barrick to address these issues within 10 days; otherwise, the memo concluded,
“We will consider it necessary to take drastic actions and/or measures in the face of
this abuse.”
Wage stagnation was another concern for the Comité Central. This issue had
indeed been a matter of contention for area residents for some time. In a letter to
Barrick from August of 2003, leaders from 10 communities asked that wages for
residents be re-examined, stating as rationale that “the daily wage of 20.00 nuevos
soles [about US$4.90 at the time] has been maintained for many years and is not
sufficient for us to face the current situation in which we live”. As no wage increase
had been forthcoming, the Comité Central took up the issue again in early 2006.
In a memo from March of that year, the committee asked for residents’ pay to
be brought in line with state guidelines for wages for civil construction workers,
because “mine work is considered high-risk and hard labor”. Further justifying the
request, the memo declared that while wages at Pierina have remained the same
since 1998, the cost of living had risen significantly over that period. It further stated
that in comparison to other transnational mining operations in Peru, workers from
Pierina’s area of influence were the lowest paid.
Weeks went by without an acceptable reply to these demands. The Comité Central
leader recalled that while Barrick officials pledged verbally to address residents’
concerns, a concrete formal response was not forthcoming. In the end, “We grew
tired of waiting for a formal response, because we assumed . . . that they weren’t
willing to pay attention to us; that they weren’t inclined to talk with us, given all the
delays and the uncompromising attitude they showed” (interview, 20 July 2008).
The minutes from a Comité Central meeting on 30 April offer evidence of residents’
frustrations with Barrick’s apparent disregard for their concerns. In this meeting it
was conveyed that the firm had failed to respond to another committee memo
sent 5 days earlier, this one giving the firm a deadline of 48 h to address their
demands. This lack of response, according to the minutes, confirmed that “the firm
is not willing to provide us a response in a responsible manner and is incapable of . . .
respecting all the communities”. The minutes reported community leaders affirming

that “the firm has shown this irresponsibility for years” and that in the matters at
hand the firm had practiced tactics of intimidation by threatening individual leaders
that work assignments for their communities would be taken away.
On the heels of this discussion, the Comité Central decided to organize the toma
de vı́as. According to the Defensorı́a del Pueblo official, though blocking a road
is against the law in Peru, the head of the Ancash police force did not rush to
intervene; instead he called for dialogue between Barrick and the communities.
During the first days of the protest, efforts involving the Defensorı́a del Pueblo and
the Catholic Church to establish this dialogue ensued. The state of affairs, however,
took a distressing turn on 5 May, when the violent confrontation occurred along the
southern access road. Despite media reports stating that the violence was produced
when protestors attempted to enter Pierina, interviewees involved in the conflict
testified that it actually took place several kilometers away from mine property,
on land belonging to the community of Miguel Grau de Shecta. It was here that
protesters clashed with officers from the National Division of Special Operations
(División Nacional de Operaciones Especiales, or DINOES) who had exited the mine
and were attempting to circumvent the road blockade.12 In the confrontation, as
noted in the introduction, one protestor was shot and killed and at least 10 others
were seriously injured. Nine DINOES officers also sustained injuries.
Two days after these events, a mesa de diálogo (dialogue table) was established
in Jangas, which was mediated by the Ministry of Energy and Mines and included
officials from civil society and local and regional governments. After several days
of talks, a memorandum of understanding was signed on 10 May. In addition
to indicating obligations that Barrick would assume in relation to the family of
the man killed and to the injured protesters, this accord detailed commitments
made by Barrick regarding labor concerns. Notably, Barrick authorized a wage
increase for participants in the local employment initiative (from 20 to 30 nuevos
soles per day), pledged to respond to complaints regarding supervisors at Pierina,
consented to act on cases in which outside workers were doing jobs that community
residents could perform, and agreed to fund the work of a specialist to look into
the possibility of creating a community-based labor intermediary company. Further,
all parties involved agreed to maintain harmonious relations and to manage their
differences through dialogue rather than violence. Once the agreement was signed,
the roadblocks were lifted, and Pierina resumed normal operations.
The agreements emerging from these negotiations signified an institutional
shift—that is, a reworking of the regulatory arrangement governing area residents’
involvement with the mining economy as laborers. Importantly, this process of
institutional change was triggered by community residents’ mobilization efforts:
through the creation of the Comité Central and, eventually, the toma de vı́as,
residents sought to leverage their collective power to claim a greater share of
mining’s material benefits, in the form of more secure jobs and higher wages.
As such, this mobilization should not be viewed as anti-mining per se, but rather
as an effort to institutionalize a more beneficial relationship with the extractive
economy. To what extent was this goal achieved? Several of the committee’s core
demands certainly were addressed, especially that of a wage increase. When asked
whether they had accomplished their aims through the events of May of 2006,

16 Antipode
community residents often recognized the wage increase as a success. Nonetheless,

their satisfaction with the extent of these gains should not be overstated: many still
expressed dissatisfaction with their pay and the limited work opportunities that they
are offered through the temporary and rotational work initiative. Residents were
also quick to note that a dear cost was paid for their gains, in the form of 10 injured
and one killed.
It is also important to underscore that the structure of the temporary and rotational
work initiative—including its privatized and informal nature—remained largely intact
following the May 2006 protest. To a large extent, the accords emerging from the
mesa de diálogo were absorbed into the existing regulatory mechanism without
considerable structural alteration. The following year, however, a challenge to the
program’s privatized and informal nature did materialize. This took the form of an
effort to transform the Comité Central—which lacked legal status and, according
to several accounts, Barrick now refused to recognize—into a registered union.
According to the Comité Central leader, the impetus to establish the union arose
from the fact that many of the firm’s pledges remained unfulfilled. As a result, he
said, “We tried to form a serious organization, a representative organization that
could . . . seek something better for workers” (interview, 20 July 2008). In effect, the
creation of the union would have been a means of supplanting existing patterns of
ad hoc and community-by-community negotiation with formal and state-mediated
collective bargaining. In its unionization effort, the Comité Central received support
from the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (Confederación General de
Trabajadores del Perú, or CGTP), the national trade union federation, as well
as from the Labor Program for Development (Programa Laboral de Desarrollo),
a Lima-based NGO. Evidence suggests that the effort had considerable backing
among community residents,13 and in a meeting held in Jangas on 1 July 2007 the
Union of Workers of Contract and Associated Companies of the Mining Firm Barrick
Misquichilca SA (Sindicato de Trabajadores de las Empresas de Contratas y Afines de
la Minera Barrick Misquichilca SA) was founded. The union promptly sent a request
for official registration to the Huaraz office of the Ministry of Labor and Employment
Promotion (Ministerio de Trabajo y Promoción de Empleo, or MTPE), with a copy
of its by-laws, a list of directors, and the names and signatures of 151 members.
Official registration, however, was denied. In late July the union received a memo
from the MTPE office in Huaraz identifying what it considered defects with the
union’s application and giving it 48 h to respond. The most substantive of these
alleged problems centered on membership rules. In accordance with the temporary
and rotational nature of residents’ work at Pierina, the union’s by-laws stated that
membership was available to residents of area-of-influence communities who “are
working, had worked, or are able to work” for one of the intermediary companies
contracted by Barrick. According to the MTPE, however, the notion that “persons
who are not workers can also become members” contradicted the law, which
requires that a person be employed to be a member of a union. In short, the
ability to unionize was inhibited in part due to the character of the temporary and
rotational work initiative itself: a stark example of how the flexibilization of labor
regimes in the Andes has militated against worker organization (see Webber 2011).
The union responded to this and other issues raised by the MTPE in a letter that

contested the Ministry’s interpretation of the law. Yet this discussion would go no
further, as the Huaraz office of the MTPE swiftly denied the request for registration on
the grounds that the union’s response was not received within the 48 h deadline.
The actions of the MTPE’s Huaraz office suggest that it was wholly uninterested
in seizing this opportunity to provide a formal structure for negotiations between
communities and Barrick.
In September 2007 the CGTP filed a complaint with the International Labor
Organization against the Peruvian government and Barrick for violating the
freedom to organize of community residents employed at Pierina. Nonetheless, it
was evident in the years following the 2006 toma de vı́as that efforts to organize
at the pan-community level lost steam. This was witnessed in the fact that, as
of July 2008, two communities had withdrawn from the Comité Central.14 While
the reasons for this demobilization are uncertain, one salient issue is that several
of the community businesses established with Barrick’s assistance have become
labor intermediary companies themselves, contracting workers through the firm’s
local employment initiative. As such, continued labor-related mobilization is not
necessarily now in their interests. Whatever the causes of this demobilization, the
effect is that the general structure of the temporary and rotational work initiative
emerged from the protest of May 2006 and subsequent unionization drive more or
less unscathed. While the agreements reached in the mesa de diálogo did represent
a shift in the content of the program, its underlying character as a privatized and
informal regulatory arrangement that structures residents’ participation in the
mining economy has persisted. Thus, ongoing negotiations over the program’s
implementation continue to occur primarily on a community-by-community basis
and without formal mediation. This capacity of the regulatory mechanism to absorb
certain institutional changes without significant structural alteration suggests that
Barrick will continue to exercise authority in defining what is possible in regards to
community residents’ involvement with the mining economy in the years to come.
Conclusion
Through an analysis of processes of regulation and resistance occurring at the
Pierina mine, this paper has had two main aims. First, it has sought to advance an
interpretation of Barrick’s local employment initiative as a neoliberalized regulatory
mechanism that has emerged in response to the potential for conflict generated by
large-scale mining’s increasing economic exclusivity. In developing this argument,
my hope is to have shown the continued utility of the regulation approach for
understanding processes of expansion, conflict, and institutional change in the
extractive sectors. The regulation approach offers an analytical framework for
linking the metabolism of mineral commodity production—ie the concrete ways
that extraction is carried out in techno-organizational terms—with the sociopolitical
forms that guide and stabilize these “economic” processes. Analyzing the Pierina
case through the lens of the regulation approach has allowed me to situate the
emergence of Barrick’s temporary and rotational work program (and related firm-
led regulatory mechanisms) within the context of a specific set of tendencies and
contradictions within the mining industry in Peru—in particular, the tendency

18 Antipode
for mega mining operations to operate with relatively few productive linkages to
surrounding areas.
My second aim has been to assess how the emergence of corporate-centered
regulatory arrangements has shaped the nature and trajectory of mining-related
struggle at Pierina. In addressing this question, the paper has sought to extend
the regulation approach to directly consider the effects of resource governance
neoliberalization for social and environmental justice movements, a topic of
increasing interest to critical geographers (eg McCarthy 2005a, 2005b; Perreault
2006). Here, the Pierina case exposes the complex relationship between the
shift toward firm-centered modes of regulation (as illustrated by Barrick’s local
employment initiative) and the efforts and abilities of area residents to collectively
influence how and under what conditions mining is carried out. On the one hand,
the privatized and informal nature of the temporary and rotational work program
has allowed Barrick significant leeway to delineate the terms of mine–community
engagement and to institutionalize patterns of community involvement in the
mining economy that ultimately serve a number of corporate interests. The
program, on the other hand, has put in place certain conditions for area residents
to recognize mutual concerns and to organize in new ways at the pan-community
level (on the basis of a shared identity as “area-of-influence” communities). Barrick
officials, as we saw, even initially supported these mobilization efforts, until they
began to prove a more significant challenge to the firm’s authority (ie through the
creation of the union and the attempt to formalize mine–community negotiations).
Intensified mobilization, in short, threatened to weaken the firm’s capacity to utilize
the local employment initiative as an instrument of power—as a mechanism for
defining the possible in the realm of mine–community engagement. It was at this
point that the firm’s position hardened, and with the aid of key state decisions, this
threat was defused.
These findings hold insights for efforts to contest the injustices of capitalist
extraction. In the case of Peru, much emphasis has been placed in academic
and activist circles on the need to reinvent the institutional frameworks governing
mineral extraction in order to, inter alia, more fully include affected populations in
decision-making, bolster environmental regulations, and more equitably distribute
the material benefits of extraction in sociospatial terms (eg De Echave 2008). These
are worthy aims, and this paper gives further evidence of the need to challenge the
corporate-centered regulatory mechanisms so popular of late, especially those of
CSR, which place authority with industry actors and may inhibit more substantial
institutional change (see Bebbington 2010). The analysis presented here also
underscores, however, that while contesting the neoliberalized aspects of resource
governance would no doubt advance the goal of creating more just and equitable
political economies of mineral development (including by wresting decision-making
power from the private sector), a set of deeper and more structural issues in the
mining industry must also be confronted. As this paper has sought to document,
the tendency toward economic exclusivity exhibited by the large-scale mining
sector (along with the forms of uneven development generated by this tendency)
is strongly rooted in a series of long-term transformations to how minerals are
produced—transformations that have been generated through the interplay of

various factors, including competitive pressures in the industry, technological

advances, and ongoing declines in mineral resource quality. While the neoliberal
“opening” of the Peruvian mining sector intensified the propensity for large-
scale mines like Pierina to operate with little articulation with area livelihoods,
this tendency is not a product of neoliberalization per se. Indeed, evidence
from purportedly “post-neoliberal” Andean governments, like Bolivia and Ecuador,
suggest that many of the patterns observed in the Peruvian context have been
recurrent, including the marginalization of populations affected by the expanding
extractive frontier, mounting ecological impacts, and the highly uneven sociospatial
distribution of the risks and rewards of extraction (Bebbington and Humphreys
Bebbington 2010; Kaup 2010; Webber 2011). All this would indicate that a
transformative extractive-sector politics will require a more fundamental rethinking
of how minerals are produced in social, political, economic, and technological
terms—a rethinking that entails not only a move away from neoliberal forms of
resource governance, but also a more direct confrontation with the underlying socio-
ecological contradictions of contemporary forms of capitalist resource extraction.
Acknowledgements
My gratitude goes to the residents of Pierina’s area-of-influence communities who shared their
thoughts and experiences with me, and to Haydée Artica, Zarela Trinidad, and the CODISPAS
team for their invaluable support. Personnel from PLADES generously provided information
on the toma de vı́as and unionization drive. I wish to thank Nik Heynen, Reecia Orzeck, Tom
Perreault, Patrick Vitale, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier
versions of the paper. The usual disclaimers apply.
Endnotes
1
Throughout the article I use “Barrick” to refer to the Peruvian subsidiary and “Barrick Gold
Corporation” when referring to the parent company. Barrick Gold Corporation is currently
the world’s largest gold producer with interests in 25 operating mines on four continents (six
are joint ventures). An open-pit operation that utilizes cyanide heap leaching to obtain gold
from mined ore, Pierina is one of two Barrick operations in Peru, the other being Lagunas
Norte, another open-pit mine, located in the region of La Libertad.
2
Employment data for Pierina vary according to the source. While a recent responsibility
report (Barrick Gold Corporation 2010) states that Pierina has almost 700 employees and 600
contractors, Pierina’s closing plan (Vector Perú 2006), which was submitted to the Peruvian
state in 2006, states that the mine had 465 employees and on average 400 contracted
workers.
3
A Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship from the US
Department of Education funded 10 months of primary research in 2007–2008. Additional
funding for the project was provided by Syracuse University and Illinois State University.
4
According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, gold production in the country jumped
from 20,179 kg in 1990 to 202,826 kg in 2006, while copper production rose from 323,412
metric tons to 1,048,472 metric tons during this same period.
5
De Echave and Ospina (2002) report that while overall employment in the mining industry
rose from 50,684 to 59,813 between 1990 and 1999, employment in the large-scale sector
actually fell from 29,373 to 23,413. The Ministry of Energy and Mines reports that between
2000 and 2010, employment in the industry rose from 71,144 to 147,374 (MINEM 2011).
However, these data are not fully disaggregated by sector (ie large scale, medium scale, small
scale, and artisanal), and it is notable that, according to this same report, in 2010 only 38.6%
of workers in the mining industry were employed directly by mining firms, the remainder
through contractors.

20 Antipode
6
The area of influence includes communities that sold land to Barrick, which are referred
to by the firm as Pierina’s “direct” area-of-influence communities; and an outer ring of
communities that Barrick refers to as its “indirect” area of influence.
7
According to Peruvian labor regulations, employees engaged directly in the mineral
production process must be hired directly by the firm itself. The use of labor intermediary
companies is reserved only for work that is deemed “complementary” to the production
process.
8
As of July 2011, production is scheduled to end at Pierina in 2016. The closure date,
however, is a moving target: in recent years it has been extended several times, primarily
as a result of the skyrocketing price of gold, which has made the extraction of lower-quality
deposits profitable.
9
Conspicuously missing from this depiction is recognition that the construction of Pierina
has significantly reduced residents’ access to the land needed to carry out agriculture and
ranching.
10
Between 1998 (when production began at Pierina) and 2010, the mine produced
approximately 7.6 million ounces of gold. In 2008, Barrick’s two Peruvian mines together
produced 1.6 million ounces of gold, and the Peruvian subsidiary obtained net profits of
US$659 million.
11
In English, a book of minutes, a libro de actas typically functions as the official records-
keeping book for organizations in Peru.
12
DINOES is a division of the Peruvian National Police trained “to execute operations
against subversives” (see http://www.pnp.gob.pe/direcciones/diroes/dinoes.html). The
circumstances under which this group of DINOES officers came to be at Pierina remain
unclear. Though it was suggested by several interviewees that these officers had been
recruited and paid directly by Barrick, documentation that would confirm this relationship
is lacking. In any case, the presence of DINOES provides a dramatic example of how state
power/violence is ultimately relied upon to provide the conditions for capitalist resource
extraction under neoliberalism.
13
This evidence includes the minutes from meetings in eight individual communities in
which residents voted to support the unionization effort.
14
Follow-up research in July 2011 revealed that the Comité Central had renewed its activities
and was focusing on several issues, including labor concerns, the impacts of mining on local
water resources, and the firm’s commitments in the area of social development. The extent
and possible implications of the remobilization for mine-community relations remain to be
seen.
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Regularizing Extraction in Andean

Peru: Mining and Social

Keywords: mining, Peru, social movements, resource governance, regulation approach,

Antipode Vol. 00 No. 00 2012 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1–23 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01001.x

Then, seeking to contribute to efforts to critically assess the implications of

community mobilization at Pierina and the impacts of this mobilization on the

within resource extraction economies, however, regulationist accounts point to

of this neoliberalization of resource governance for justice movements in areas

Tending Toward Exclusivity

interdependencies—between Andean communities and Peru’s mining centers.

A Neoliberal Moral Economy?

Figure 1: Pierina and area-of-influence communities

high-altitude grassland, situated in the headwaters of three valleys. The owners

which Barrick promotes the establishment of community-based businesses, which

From Barrick’s perspective, then, short-term work at Pierina contributes to social

responsible mining firm committed to social development in its area of operation.

Mobilization, Conflict, and Institutional Change

community residents often recognized the wage increase as a success. Nonetheless,

various factors, including competitive pressures in the industry, technological

Frynas J G (2005) The false developmental promise of Corporate Social Responsibility:

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