Thursday, May 2, 2013
4:00 pm
Communication 120
Comunidades afectadas por la minería: el caso CONACAMI y su impacto en América
In November 1998, community leaders from the Peruvian Andes came together in a seminar to discuss the effects of mining in their communities. This could have simply been one more meeting, but the conclusions and agreements of this historic gathering opened a new chapter in the long struggle of Andean communities to defend their rights against the mining industry and state mining policies. This new stage is marked by the leadership of the National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining in Peru (Confederación Nacional de Comunidades del Perú Afectadas por la Minería – CONACAMI) and the emergence of a movement to denounce the negative impacts of mining and organize opposition to it. This movement is considered one of the iconic articulations of resistance to mining in Latin America. Its most important contribution is generating a public debate over the impacts and benefits of mining.
Luis Vittor is a Peruvian economist and adviser to the Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas (Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations). He has also advised the Confederación de Comunidades del Perú Afectadas por la Minería (CONACAMI, the Confederation of Peruvian Communities Affected by Mining) since its founding. He is of Quechua origin and was born in Cerro de Pasco, Peru. From 2008-2009 he was a Fellow in the Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights, Governance & International Cooperation program at the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain). He is the author of Resistencias comunitarias a la minería: la experiencia de CONACAMI (Community Resistance to Mining: the CONACAMI experience) (2008) among numerous other publications.
Presentation will be in Spanish with English translation by José Antonio Lucero (Latin American and Caribbean Studies).
Presented as part of B/ordering Violence: Boundaries, Gender, Indigeneity in the Americas, a John E. Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Cultures generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and co-sponsored by the Latin American & Caribbean Studies program, the Jackson School of International Studies, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and the Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, & Sexuality (WISER).
For more on the B/ordering Violence Seminar Series, visit depts.washington.edu/uwch/programs/initiatives/bordering-violence and www.borderingviolence.com.