Post-Extractivist Horizons in Latin America: Between Utopias and Struggles for Re-Existence Against Neo-Extractivism

Abstract

The triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. In Latin America, however, the structural adjustment programmes imposed by international financial institutions and the increased role of transnational corporations were resisted by social and popular movements that eventually translated into progressive politics and policies. Nevertheless, despite anti-capitalist and pro-environment rhetoric, extraction of natural resources has continued to expand under progressive governments, with devastating effects on environmental justice and Indigenous peoples’ rights. Focusing on socio-territorial struggles for re-existence in Bolivia through the cases of peasant struggle in Tariquía and the establishment of the National Coordinator for the Defence of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (CONTIOCAP), we investigate how Indigenous and peasant organisations resist extractive projects and organise collective life in alternative ways. We show how social actors, especially women, defend, propose and imagine post-extractivist alternatives as a societal horizon – both utopian and possible – to the current socio-ecological crisis, in a context of disillusionment with the government’s rhetoric of vivir bien as a state-led ecological and Indigenous policy. We argue that by defending life, women try to heal the human and more-than-human relationality in the territories impacted by progressive neo-extractivism.

Keywords

Bolivia neo-extractivism post-extractivism re-existence utopia

Introduction

Since the 1990s, the triumph of neoliberal globalisation has been presented as the end of history, with no viable alternatives available. The development of Global South nations was assumed to rest on their successful integration into the global economy. As Scholte (2005) puts it, neoliberal globalisation expects that the spatial expansion of global relations should be ‘approached with laissez-faire market economics through privatisation, liberalisation, and deregulation’ (p. 7). To enhance free trade and foreign investments, such transnational financial institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, implemented – and imposed – neoliberal policies for the adjustment of Global South economies and societies to these global market conditions (Gonzalez, 2019). In Latin America, the liberalisation of capital flows led to the rapid advancement of extractive capital, that is, foreign direct investments in the extraction of natural resources for the purposes of capitalist markets (Veltmeyer, 2023). The social and environmental consequences of neoliberal reforms in Latin America were severe, as poverty and unemployment increased, welfare services diminished, and Indigenous lands and territories were threatened by the extraction of natural resources (Kohl and Farthing, 2006; Yashar, 2005).

However, neoliberal policy agendas were fiercely resisted by Indigenous and peasant movements in many parts of Latin America, eventually leading to the rejection of the neoliberal policies and the upsurge of progressive governments (Gonzalez, 2019). The rise of so-called ‘pink tide’ governments in the early 2000s crystallised social and popular movement demands to put an end to neoliberal policies by strengthening the role of the state and using revenues from raw material exports on social programmes, poverty reduction and national development (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012; Siegel, 2016). This neo-developmentalism was based on the perception that while economic growth was necessary for poverty reduction, it had to be responsive to social concerns (Treacy, 2022). The term neo-extractivism, first coined by the Uruguayan political ecologist Eduardo Gudynas (2009), also began to gain prominence in academic debates, as it was seen to characterise progressive governments’ post-neoliberal policies. In contrast to the neoliberal logics of extractive capital, progressive governments were seen to ‘regulate the appropriation of resources and their export by nationalising companies . . . [and] use surplus revenue to expand social structures that favour development’ (Burchardt and Dietz, 2014: 470).

While this growth-oriented and neo-extractivist development model gained momentum in many progressive Latin American countries, in such countries as Bolivia and Ecuador, where Indigenous and peasant movements have been particularly strong, the construction of alternatives against neoliberalism drew also heavily on Indigenous peoples’ ideas of the good life. Their visions emphasised decolonisation, communitarian political ideals and Indigenous self-determination, as well as sustainable coexistence between humans and more-than-humans. In Bolivia and Ecuador, the concepts of vivir bien/buen vivir (living well) were introduced in constitutions and national policies, with the aim of cherishing Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and emphasising the importance of environmental and climate issues (Acosta, 2008; Radcliffe, 2012; Ranta, 2016). While Bolivian and Ecuadorian governments were eagerly portraying vivir bien/buen vivir policies in international forums as environment- and climate-friendly alternatives to capitalism (Fabricant, 2013), in practice, however, they seemed to be bypassed by state-led extractivist practices, with devastating effects on environmental justice and the rights of Indigenous peoples (Gudynas, 2015; Svampa, 2019). At the grassroots level, where Indigenous and peasant peoples live on the extractive frontier, the situation has become very complex – and conflictive.

In this article, we present an empirical case of a contemporary extractive conflict in Bolivia, where state-led extractivist practices clash with communitarian and post-extractivist movement strategies at the grassroots. Through the discussion of the peasant struggle in Tariquía and the establishment of the National Coordinator for the Defence of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (CONTIOCAP), we examine how Indigenous organisations and peasant communities resist extractive projects and organise collective life in alternative ways, in a context of disillusionment with the progressive government’s rhetoric of vivir bien as a supposedly ecological and communitarian policy framework. Focusing on the perceptions and experiences of activists – especially women – in the course of socio-territorial struggles, we describe and analyse their attempts to recover and recreate community practices and socio-territorial solutions that not only have the potential to improve the resilience of communities but also to heal human and more-than-human relationality in territories impacted by progressive neo-extractivism. In outlining people’s daily attempts to transition to sustainable living, we present a case for post-extractivist politics as a utopian vision that responds to the urgency of the planetary crisis. Post-extractivism, as we conceptualise it, is not solely a future utopian horizon but also an unfolding process, based on concrete socio-territorial struggles for re-existence, which generate territorially-based alternatives to the extractivist condition in Latin America.

The article is based on semi-structured interviews and fieldwork conducted in Bolivia in 2022. López, who is from the Tarija department where Tariquía is located, conducted two periods of fieldwork during January-February and October. He conducted 30 semi-structured, in-depth interviews related to utopian thinking, social movement dynamics and extractivism with Indigenous and peasant leaders (10), environmental activists (6), state officials (6) and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and universities (8). Ranta conducted seven interviews with Indigenous activists in Bolivia in November to December 2022. The selection of the interviewees was informed by their relevance to the topic of the study, snow-ball sampling, as well as prior contacts. López has previously conducted postdoctoral research, including qualitative and ethnographic data collection, on extractivism in Bolivia during 2016–2017 and 2019, while Ranta has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork on the topic of vivir bien during 2008–2009, and on politics and democracy in 2018, 2020 and 2024. All interviews gathered for the purpose of this article have been anonymised for the protection of the interviewees. There has been a dialectical interaction between data collection and data analysis, typical of ethnographic data analysis and theorising (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2009). To complement the interviews, we have also reviewed national and municipal policy documents, Bolivian legislation, government speeches, official communications and press releases, as well as attended and observed (often through Zoom) various events and seminars organised by Bolivian NGOs and research institutes in which issues related to extractivism were discussed.

The article is organised as follows. After this introduction, we present the conceptual starting points. We then move on to describe the contextual characteristics of the politics of vivir bien and extractivism in Bolivia, after which we analyse the new socio-territorial articulations, resistance struggles, and post-extractivist alternatives in three empirical sections before presenting our conclusions.

Political utopias and struggles for re-existence in Latin America

Latin America is often presented as a continent of multiple political imaginations and utopian visions. The notion of vivir bien/buen vivir, which is important for many social movements and Indigenous peoples and has even been implemented as state policy, can be perceived as a contemporary political utopia. According to Huanacuni (2012), vivir bien is a horizon common to Latin American Indigenous peoples, and it refers both to the recovery of Indigenous identities and ‘the preservation of balance and harmony of the existence beyond mere human beings’ (p. 25). The Quechua concept of sumak kawsay, which has been translated – depending on the context – into Spanish as vivir bien/buen vivir, means ‘life in fullness’ (Cubillo-Guevara and Hidalgo-Capitán, 2015), thus coming very close to what is generally considered to be characteristics of utopia – a full life in an idyllic community with neither private property nor material deprivation (Beauchesne and Santos, 2011: 2). Ecologically sustainable living on lands and territories, as well as communitarian ways of organising economy and politics, describe collective life in Indigenous communities in Bolivia and Latin America, although, at the same time, indigeneity is dynamic and constantly changing – not least due to various historical and contemporary forms of exploitation, dispossession (López and Betancourt, 2021), environmental degradation (Kröger, 2021), and climate change (Heikkinen, 2021).

While many Latin American social movements, environmental activists and Indigenous advocates continue to find the vivir bien/buen vivir rhetoric appealing (Caicedo Sarralde, 2023; Habersang, 2022), its contradictory usages by progressive governments have started to shed doubt on its potential as an ecological and communitarian alternative to mainstream development, especially in Bolivia and Ecuador (Ranta, 2022). The vivir bien/buen vivir ideals stand in sharp contrast to the political priorities and day-to-day actions of political leaders and state actors, who prioritise the expansion and intensification of extractivism as the foundation of the economy. As a concept, extractivism signals ‘a complex ensemble of self-reinforcing practices, mentalities, and power differentials underwriting and rationalising socio-ecologically destructive modes of organising life through subjugation, violence, depletion, and non-reciprocity’ (Chagnon et al., 2022). The extractivism boom in Latin America has been marked by the rise and fall of commodity prices in the global markets, thus having repercussions in the region through the expansion of ‘extractivist frontiers’ (Svampa, 2019) into new territories previously considered ‘unproductive’. This expansion has generated social and territorial changes, to the extent that, it has occasionally completely transformed the economy of large territorial spaces and entire peoples, as well as their territorialities and their ways of life, according to the new spatial reconfigurations and geopolitical dynamics of global capitalism (Svampa, 2016).

Despite the overwhelming power of transnational corporations in global extractivism, states also play a role in facilitating conditions for extractive industries (Ehrnström-Fuentes and Kröger, 2018). In fact, states often join sides with corporate interests (Nygren et al., 2022). Under progressive neo-extractivism (Gudynas, 2015; Mantovani and Svampa, 2019; Svampa, 2019), the nature-exploiting development models and the dependant role of Global South countries as global suppliers of primary commodities have been maintained, but the states have taken a more active role in guiding and controlling the economy, aiming at greater legitimacy through the redistribution of revenues generated through extractive processes (Acosta, 2011; Burchardt and Dietz, 2014; Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012; Siegel, 2016). The progressive governments in Latin America have also been active in diversifying their trade and development partners, now allying more with state actors and corporations from fellow Latin American countries, as well as China, India, and Russia. As Acosta (2011) puts it, ‘The control of natural resources by transnational corporations is what is criticised, rather than the extraction itself’ (p. 72). In these contexts, the notions of vivir bien/buen vivir have often been instrumentalised by progressive governments to justify the extraction of natural resources (Laing, 2015; Tilzey, 2019; Valladares and Boelens, 2017). In Bolivia, the progressive government further expanded agro-industries and agro-extractivism with the aim of pleasing land-owning elites who feared land reform (McKay, 2017). Subsequently, a criticism has been raised that despite some ruptures, extractive patterns also show continuities with the neoliberal era. According to some authors, there were not many differences between neoliberal and post-neoliberal forms of extractivism (Bebbington and Bebbington, 2011). Andrade (2022), on her part, suggests that the key character of extractivism in Latin America continues to be ‘the neoliberal dynamics of capital accumulation in which state revenue, social income, and wealth were seized to remunerate domestic and international owners of rent- and interest-bearing assets’ (pp. 796–797).

The main aim of this article lies not so much in discussing whether progressive governments in Latin America have succeeded in surpassing neoliberalism, or whether neo-extractivism has been a successful strategy for poverty reduction and social welfare. Our focus is rather on how progressive neo-extractivism has created, in many parts of the region, strong tensions, contestations and conflicts between socio-ecological movements and state actors (Mantovani and Svampa, 2019). Since the beginning of this century, a rising number of socio-ecological conflicts have been registered in Latin America. These are often directly connected with extractivist activities. Our primary focus is on what we call struggles for the re-existence of socio-territorial activists. In our conceptualisation, struggles for re-existence are closely interconnected with post-extractivism, as they combine resistance actions with alternative forms of imagining and practising social life in territories. Increasingly used by many territorial social movements, environmental activists, and scholars in Latin America (Anthias and López, 2023; Blaser, 2019; Escobar, 2018; Leinius, 2023), the Spanish term rexistir includes the word resistir (to resist) and existir (to exist), referring both to resistance against extractivism and to the territorially grounded affirmation of life.

Eco-territorial aspects, such as the access to and control of scarce resources like land, forests and water, are at the centre of the struggles of socio-territorial activists. Equally important are self-determination and territorial autonomy, particularly the defence of collective cultural, economic and territorial rights vis-à-vis neoliberal and/or neo-extractivist economic policies (Bebbington, 2011; Dietz and Engels, 2020; Makaran and López, 2018). However, as Porto-Gonçalves and Leff (2015) note, socio-territorial activists ‘not only resist dispossession and de-territorialization, they [also] redefine their forms of existence through emancipatory movements and the reinvention of their identities, their ways of thinking, and their modes of production and livelihood’ (p. 17). Leff (2006) uses the concept of re-existence to refer to the processes of re-appropriation of the territory, which also relates to the reinvention of Indigenous and peasant identities, as well as human and more-than-human relations. As Leinius (2023) puts it, re-existence is an attempt to find a shared way of speaking, being and thinking as an alternative to capitalist, patriarchal and colonial orders. Some community-based socio-territorial actors are recovering knowledge, recreating practices and developing ecologically sustainable production experiences and/or alternative socio-territorial forms to neo-developmentalism. These experiences may focus on autonomous management of the territory and sustainable production patterns, such as agro-ecology, Indigenous or community forestry, minga (communitarian work) or simply the defence of ancestral forms of production and reproduction. The ideal of post-extractivism lies at the centre of these practices, thus making it both a utopian future horizon beyond neo-extractivism and a ‘nowtopia’, which Demaria et al. (2019) define as concrete and contemporary ‘territorial processes of regeneration that involve non-wage labour and are motivated by a desire to produce an alternative future’ (p. 438). In Bolivia, while socio-territorial activists promote multiple forms of post-extractivist practices, there have been profound setbacks at the national level, as we explain next.

Contradictions of the Bolivian plurinational state

Since the presidential election of Evo Morales (2006–2019), a peasant union activist of Aymara origin, Bolivia has been internationally considered a prime locus of Indigenous rights and anti-capitalist politics. With the support of all major peasant unions and Indigenous organisations, Morales’ political party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), began a process of nationalising natural resources and the refounding of the constitution, with the aim of redistributing resources, decolonising the state and establishing a plurinational state in recognition of the country’s multiple Indigenous peoples. Through a strong critique of ‘Western development’, the idea of vivir bien, derived from Aymara (suma qamaña), Quechua (sumak kawsay, allin kawsay) and Guarani (ñandereko) worldviews, was proposed as the basis of a national development plan, an ecological and communitarian alternative to neoliberal globalisation (Kunstek Salinas, 2021; Nuñez del Prado, 2015; Ranta, 2016). The rights of Mother Earth were emphasised.

To a great extent, the unprecedented rise of peasant and Indigenous movements to political power, as well as the extraordinary popular support for Evo Morales and the MAS, stemmed from two decades of resistance against neoliberal policies in which transnational corporations had gained a dominant role in the privatisation, extraction and control of natural resources – including oil, gas, mining and water (Kohl and Farthing, 2006). While resource extraction is now more strongly led and controlled by the state to generate more revenues for state-financed social programmes, extractivism as such has continued during the MAS government. A social sciences scholar interviewed in the city of Cochabamba commented on the situation, as follows: ‘[To] fulfil social objectives, which have generated a lot of legitimacy for the state, [politicians] have prioritised . . . developmentalism [and] extractivism. . . There have been good intentions at first, but it has quickly been turning [in the opposite direction]’ (Interview, Cochabamba, February 2022). One social movement leader was more critical commenting that:

[T]he MAS government is doomed to failure because it continues with the extractivist model at all costs. The conditions of the Bolivian economy have not changed; our country is dependent on the exports of raw materials – there is no capacity for industrialisation; we have a subsistence economy . . . (Interview, La Paz, February 2022)

As a result of the major discrepancies between the rhetoric of ecological and anti-capitalist alternatives and the neo-extractivist reality, socio-territorial mobilisations have been developing particularly in the regions of the Amazon and the Chaco, with the aim of defending the territories, through the leadership of community-based movements and the efforts of Indigenous peoples and peasant organisations (Anthias and López, 2023; Laing, 2015; Ranta, 2023). The best-known conflict relates to Indigenous peoples’ defence of the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS). At its height of emergence, two Indigenous marches were organised in 2011 and 2012 in defence of the TIPNIS territory against the imposed governmental plan to construct a highway through the protected park. The infrastructure plans were part of the new geopolitics of extractivism, which would benefit oil and natural gas companies from such countries as Venezuela and Brazil that had negotiated contracts for exploration with the Bolivian state-led hydrocarbons corporation (YPFB) (Makaran and López, 2018). Other resistance struggles have also emerged, for example, to resist hydroelectric projects in El Bala and Chepete (Amazon Region) and the mega-hydroelectric dam in Rositas (Chaco Region), and in defence of the Tariquía Reserve (Southern Bolivia), which we will discuss in more detail in this article.

The neo-extractivist approach of the Bolivian government’s policies is generating socio-territorial impacts, hand in hand with authoritarian signals from the state itself (Gudynas, 2015; Ranta, 2024; Tilzey, 2019), aimed at guaranteeing the implementation of these policies. Another university scholar interviewed for this study criticised the repression of Indigenous peoples related to extractivist policies as follows:

After a decade of talking about vivir bien and [government’s] model in reality being neo-extractivist, the Indigenous people have become repressed. The government proposes a capitalist and extractivist model and this is where all the fragmentation starts, because it was hoped that plurinationalism would be something else. (Interview, Cochabamba, February 2022)

This can be interpreted as a countertendency to the ‘utopian impulse’ (Beauchesne and Santos, 2011), as critical social movements have increasingly become co-opted by the executive, Indigenous organisations have been attacked and dissolved, and many Indigenous activists have been silenced, especially if they have resisted the extractivist policies of the state (Ranta, 2024; Tapia, 2017). Yet this has generated processes of resistance against the neo-developmentalist policies of the state, which we will discuss in the following sections.

New socio-territorial articulations

Neo-extractivism promoted by the MAS has led to organisational dissolutions and reorganisations. The Unity Pact, which has been the most important alliance between Bolivia’s many peasant unions and Indigenous organisations, and whose role has been foundational in the political rise of Evo Morales and the MAS, has been disintegrating. Furthermore, many peasant unions and Indigenous organisations have become internally fragmented, splitting into pro-government and autonomous factions (Nuñez del Prado, 2015; Tilzey, 2019). The TIPNIS conflict showed how economic and political interests between peasant groups and Indigenous groups started to diverge, as peasants who had migrated to the Chaparé region were generally more prone to supporting road building, infrastructural development and neo-extractivism, while Indigenous peoples defended their ancestral lands, territorial rights and self-determination against government’s extractivist intrusion (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2015). Historically, the nationalist revolution of 1952 conglomerated rural populations into state-led peasant unions (sindicatos), and the populations labelled as Indians (indio) at the time became peasants. As neoliberal globalisation expanded and global Indigenous mobilisations intensified during the 1980s and 1990s, activism based on indigeneity grew (Yashar, 2005). Major Indigenous organisations, such as the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) and the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu (CONAMAQ), were established for the repatriation of Indigenous territories and defence of collective land rights.

Currently, indigeneity in Bolivia is highly contested, with small Amazonian Indigenous groups identifying as indígenas (Indigenous), those Andean Aymaras and Quechuas seeking the repatriation of Indigenous territories as originarios (Natives), and the rest of the rural populations as peasants. The contemporary constitutional definition of Indigenous peoples not solely as pueblos indígenas-originarios, but as pueblos indígenas, originarios, campesinos (Indigenous, Native, and peasant peoples) has expanded the notion considerably (Ranta, 2023). Yet the case of Tariquía, which we will discuss below, will also demonstrate the heterogeneity of peasant lives and stances.

Contemporary division of peasant unions and Indigenous organisations into pro-government and autonomous factions has given rise to new forms of articulation between movements. Andreucci et al. (2023) have suggested that the main dividing line in today’s extractivist conflicts is between what they call ‘the state-peasant project’, supported by the MAS government and main peasant unions, and ‘the communitarian-Indigenous project’, which includes Indigenous communities, Indigenous organisations and dissident peasant communities. Alliances have also been created between socio-territorial activists from Indigenous territories and urban environmental and feminist activists (López-Flores, 2024). Within the territories, the role of women as activists and defenders of the environment has become notable. A process of politicisation of women within the Indigenous and peasant communities has emerged, which has led to the initiation of a process of depatriarchalisation of existing organisational structures, historically led by men (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019). Due to their visible role, women have also become targets of violence and abuse. According to human rights defender Franco Albarracín, who gave a presentation at a seminar organised by CEDIB (6 November 2023), a Bolivian NGO working in human rights and environmental issues, more than one hundred female environmental defenders had been attacked in Bolivia between 2015–2022.

In 2018, the National Coordinator for the Defence of Indigenous Territories and Protected Areas (CONTIOCAP) was established as an alliance and articulation of Indigenous and peasant organisations, communities and territories that challenge and resist government’s extractivist policies and defend their territories and collective rights. Its establishment was motivated partly by the 2015 decision of the MAS government to allow the exploration and drilling of oil and natural gas in protected national parks. While the initial convenors of the alliance were the defenders of the National Reserve of Flora and Fauna of Tariquía (discussed in more detail in the next section), it is currently organised in the general coordinating body, as well as regional coordinating sections in Chaco, Amazonia, valley regions and the Andean high plateau. Many of CONTIOCAP’s leaders are women. One of them commented on the beginning of this new territorial alliance as follows:

The call was for such resistance [movements], who in the face of the destruction and co-optation of the traditional organisations, fought at the grassroots in our respective Indigenous territories and protected areas, defending themselves from the government’s plans to impose extractivism, such as oil exploration, open-pit mining in highlands and lowlands, construction of mega hydroelectric plants in the main river basins, expansion of deforestation for agribusiness and agrofuels, and the commodification of our territories and protected areas. (Interview, La Paz, January 2022)

The aforementioned leader goes on to explain about coordination:

The CONTIOCAP was formed so that in unity we defend ourselves from all kinds of systematic abuses from the central government, transnational and national companies, organisations and groups related to the government. The founders were 12 resistance movements, and during the second Congress in 2019 more have joined, in 2020 [new members] were also added. Thus, to date it includes 35 resistance groups nationwide. (Interview, La Paz, January 2022)

Consequently, in recent years, the Bolivian context has become marked by the reactivation of social movements as socio-territorial movements that include Indigenous communities, socio-territorial activists and dissident peasant communities. They take part in imagining and proposing post-extractivist societal alternatives that would reinstate people’s intimate territorial relationships – or re-existence – with lands, water, forests and other more-than-human actors. In the next section, we will focus on one of the resistance struggles – that of the Tariquía Reserve – looking at what utopian alternatives to the extractivist policy have been produced and how they are enacted in this case of territorial struggle.

Peasant re-existence struggles in Tariquía

The National Reserve of Flora and Fauna of Tariquía is located in the southwestern region of Bolivia, in the department of Tarija, which is part of the Tariquía-Baritú ecological corridor. Its ecosystem corresponds to the biogeographic subregion of humid mountainous forests known as Yungas Andino. It hosts a remarkable diversity of bio-genetic resources and water sources for the region. The area was declared a Nature Reserve by Law 22277 in 1989 (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019: 82). Historically, Tariquía has faced several threats due to the expansion of the agricultural frontier, logging, extensive cattle ranching and, currently, oil exploitation. The reserve is inhabited by ten peasant communities engaged mainly in subsistence agriculture, beekeeping (distinctively a women’s profession) and sustainable forest use. There are another 13 peasant communities in the areas surrounding the reserve (Chávez and López, 2018: 409). While there are no Indigenous peoples in the reserve nor its surroundings, many of the peasant communities in the reserve highlight their communitarian and ancestral character instead of the sindicato traditions inherited from the nationalist revolution.

While there were already some oil activities in the region in the 1990s, interest in oil extraction had expanded notably since Morales’ first government, when the YPFB started exploring the region in collaboration with the Brazilian company PETROBRAS (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019: 82–83). Through several laws in 2015, the MAS government legalised the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in protected areas of the country, including the Tariquía Reserve, which activated the mobilisation of communities in defence of their territory. In 2018, agreements were made between the PETROBRAS, YPFB and the Bolivian government concerning the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in the areas of San Telmo Norte and Astillero, which are part of the reserve (Campanini, 2023: 3). The Churumas area had already been part of the YPFB plans for natural gas extraction since 2007 (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019: 82–83). By 2022, 52% of the Tariquía protected area had been redesigned as hydrocarbon zones (Campanini, 2023). The state’s plans for oil exploitation in the Tariquía nature reserve, which have been presented by the government as ‘necessary’ for development and growth, are clearly positioned within the geopolitical and ‘glocal’ (Dietz and Engels, 2020) processes of territorial dispossession, promoted by a neo-extractivist stance.

At the beginning of 2017, the Committee for the Defense of Tariquía was organised, made up particularly of women from dissident peasant communities. Six of the ten peasant communities in the reserve stood up against the government’s extractivist plans. Women-led dissident peasant communities also stood against the traditional male-led peasant unions, including the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), which supported the government’s stance (Chávez and López, 2018: 409). Through a media announcement, the protesters informed the Bolivian population about the start of a peaceful march from Tariquía reserve to the city of Tarija, called ‘Paso a paso por la dignidad: Tariquía de Pie, Nunca de Rodillas’. One of the peasant leaders of the committee explained the events leading to the march as follows:

To organise the march, the defence committee was created before 2017, which was dedicated entirely to the defence [of the territory]. Each community elected its representative, and together we chose a president, a vice president and a directive. . . [W]ith the board structure set, we started to organise the march, which has had a big prize on us, as [state] institutions have started to divide us so that we would accept their entrance [to the territory] for the exploration [of oil and gas], in order to gain development. (Interview, Tarija, October, 2022)

The community members of the Tariquía National Reserve walked several days to the city of Tarija. Eventually, they were joined by environmental activists from the city of Tarija and people from various urban collectives from different parts of the country. During the march, the participants affirmed the complete rejection of oil exploration and exploitation activities in the reserve.

From the point of view of social organising, a central aspect of the Tariquía struggle – and other territorial struggles in Bolivia – was leadership by peasant women, who became the key referents of resistance, occupying spaces until recently held by men and creating new arenas for societal action beyond the traditional, MAS-supporting peasant and Indigenous organisations. In the interviews, they explained their leadership as deriving from their roles as women in their communities: they are responsible for reproducing life, for caring, for preparing food, for finding fresh water, for collecting firewood and for collecting and caring for the food sources provided by nature. They know that the destruction of the forest would pose a direct danger to the livelihood of their households, the future of their children and, above all, their productive autonomy and intimate relationality with the land. It is precisely women who are the first to suffer from the multiple direct and structural forms of violence of the ‘colonising ethos’ (Makaran and López, 2018), through the dispossession of the means of reproduction of life, their knowledge and control over their bodies. In terms of the need to heal human and more-than-human relationality, another interviewed peasant leader commented:

For me, when we say that we are defending Mother Earth, it is like defending our common home, which belongs to us all . . . we are women and we are the ones who, by defending water, air and land, we are defending life. That is why we continue in the struggle, and we remain firm in this defence, because we want to leave that for our children . . . Men are not in the kitchen every day, and that is why some men are not interested in defending [the land] or they even want to hand it out for exploration [of oil and gas], but we do not. That is why [women] have occupied the executive positions . . . We have dedicated ourselves to the struggle and told ourselves that we must do something. We also have some men who are defenders [of the reserve], but others are only interested in money . . . (Interview, Tarija, October 2022)

As was the case with the CONTIOCAP, in which the socio-territorial activists of Tariquía actively participate, the political imaginaries of community organisation, mobilisation and struggle in Tariquía no longer relate to such concepts as vivir bien, as local residents often identify them as the cover-ups for the government’s neo-extractivist policies. New territorial resistance movements instead account for the strengthening of struggles for land and territory, and alternative ways of organising life in the territories to which we will turn next.

Alternative ways of organising collective life in Tariquía

Within the Tariquía reserve, several peasant communities and women’s groups undertake social and economic activities that can be considered post-extractivist alternatives. These include, for example, communitarian management of the territory, sustainable forest management and agroecology. Peasant communities produce high-quality honey and peanuts. These products are popular amid the Bolivian consumers, as they are organic and produced inside the protected reserve. Regarding honey production, one of the protection officers in the reserve commented in an interview that, ‘The product is popular amongst the Bolivian population as the honey is from the reserve and we do not allow any kind of contamination of the environment, water, vegetation; it is all organic . . . The honey is ecological and pure’ (Interview, Tariquía, January 2022). The honey producers conglomerate in the Association of Beekeepers of the Tariquía Reserve (AART), which is an association of producers of organic honey. The AART operates as a cooperative and is responsible for purchasing and marketing honey from all producers on the reserve. The AART has been able to demonstrate the viability of beekeeping as a sustainable production alternative for the communities of Tariquía, respecting the natural cycles of the ecosystem (Chumacero, 2023). This beekeeping activity promotes sustainable rural development and care for the environment and natural resources with an agroecological approach. Peanut production is another traditional income-generation activity for the peasant communities of the reserve. The producers sell the peanuts in markets in the city of Tarija. They also organise an annual peanut festival to celebrate the local agricultural production, introducing new products made from peanuts (Agencia de Noticias Ambientales Bolivia, 2023).

In general, the socio-territorial struggles in Tariquía can be perceived as ‘struggles for the conservation of life’ (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019: 85). Thus, socio-territorial activists not only seek to enable the conditions for post-extractivist production modes, as evidenced in honey and peanut production, but also strive for a wider way of living in, and with, nature. According to women defenders of the territory, animals, water, rivers, and trees are essential inhabitants of the reserve, and their struggle emphasises the intimate interrelations between humans and more-than-humans (López Pardo and Chávez León, 2019: 85). As Chávez and López (2018) put it: Women ‘struggle alongside nature and animals, from the river where they fish to the bees that produce honey around them. The inhabitants of the reserve live in interdependence with one another, and together face the threat of collective dispossession’ (p. 410). This is an alternative way of organising collective life as a joint exercise of relationality between humans and more-than-humans. Consequently, women’s struggles in Tariquía take part in wider regional efforts at recovering and healing ‘life territories’ challenged and destroyed by extractivism, whether neoliberal or progressive (Escobar, 2014).

Conclusion

In this article, we have investigated the post-extractivist horizon in Latin America, which, as a region, has been the epicentre for the complex and tense dynamics – both historically and in today’s societies – between extractive development and its counterforce: socio-territorial resistance struggles and alternative ways of organising collective life. In Bolivia, progressive, peasant and Indigenous movements succeeded in entering state power with their ambitious goals of halting neoliberal globalisation and the corporate power of transnational corporations. However, with time, the so-called alternatives to ‘Western development’ such as vivir bien/buen vivir have become secondary to neo-developmentalist policies that depend on the intensification of natural resource extraction. Our case study of Tariquía clearly demonstrates the contradictions between the ideals of the plurinational state and vivir bien that in principle cherish ecologically sustainable living and territorial self-determination, and real-life progressive neo-extractivism that has expanded oil and gas extraction, as well as mining, even to protected natural parks during the MAS era.

Our Tariquía case also demonstrates the internal division between peasant communities – some allying with Indigenous peoples, environmentalists and feminists in support of territories, and others allying with the MAS government and extractive industries in facilitating state-led development plans. While the division between Indigenous organisations and peasant unions has already been noted in much of the earlier literature on extractive conflicts in Bolivia (the TIPNIS in particular), our article shows how peasant unions – the main support basis of the MAS – have become fragmented. As is evident in the case of CONTIOCAP, – a new form of articulation of socio-territorial resistance in Bolivia – Indigenous peoples, communities in resistance and dissident peasant unions have found each other in their fight against progressive neo-extractivism. The future of progressive politics in Latin America requires a profound re-thinking and re-orientation towards a more ecological and sustainable direction in which communities’ self-determination is respected and the plurality of voices is not silenced by top-down stances. In this sense, the demand for self-determination as a collective right to decide upon life in territories is clearly evidenced in our article. We show that a counter-hegemonic horizon in Latin America today has arisen around Indigenous and peasant resistances for self-determination.

If vivir bien was a utopia, which failed because it was implemented in the framework of state-led neo-developmentalism and neo-extractivism, our article evidences that new political imaginations of a more just and sustainable future in Bolivia – and Latin America more generally – are currently being born in situations where people live a relational life with more-than-humans, land and territory, and thus suffer intimately and acutely from the destruction of their waters, forests, plants and air, as they are conditions for life in the territories. The socio-territorial resistance movements that oppose extractivism and envision a different world – as is the case of the struggle of Tariquía and CONTIOCAP – do not create abstract theories of utopias, but the basis of their utopian configurations is instead to ensure the continuation of life in the threatened territories and communities. Their struggles do not focus on inventing something that has never existed, but rather on protecting their land and nature, without which there is no life. By opposing extractivism with a post-extractivist horizon, socio-territorial activists claim re-existence and aim to heal human and more-than-human relationality, thus in turn providing solutions to the planetary crisis at the local level.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: P.C.L.F. has reported funding from the University of Sevilla and E.R. has reported funding from the Research Council of Finland under the research projects Citizenship Utopias in the Global South (323051) and Social Justice and Raciality in Post-Utopian Latin America (346411).

ORCID iD

Eija Ranta

Author biographies

Pabel Camilo López Flores is a Bolivian researcher, with a PhD in sociology from the Scuola Normale Superiore/University of Milan ‘Bicocca’ (Italy). He is Associate Researcher with the Postgraduate Programme in Development Studies, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés CIDES-UMSA (Bolivia) and distinguished researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Sevilla, IEALC-US (Spain). His current research activities are situated in the fields of political sociology, sociology of social movements, and sociology of territory. He is the co-editor of Neoextractivism and Territorial Disputes in Latin America: Social-ecological Conflict and Resistance on the Front Lines (with Penelope Anthias, Routledge). He has co-authored with Anna Preiser a book chapter ‘Reloaded Neo-extractivism, Multi-Actor Conflicts and Alternative Horizons: Keys to the Socio-Ecological Crisis’ in a book edited by Henry Veltmeyer and Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete and published in the Routledge Critical Development Studies book series.

Eija Ranta is an Academy of Finland Research Fellow and university lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She leads two National Research Council of Finland funded research projects, ‘Citizenship Utopias in the Global South’ (2019–2024) and ‘Social Justice and Raciality in Post-Utopian Latin America’ (2021–2026). Her work focuses on development, politics, and power from ethnographic and decolonising perspectives. She has written widely on alternative conceptualizations of development, particularly buen vivir/vivir bien in Latin America. She is the author of Vivir Bien as an Alternative of Neoliberal Globalization (Routledge, 2018) and has recently published in journals such as Third World Quarterly, AlterNative: International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, and Journal of Latin American Studies.

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