Abstract, Financialization, Institutional Reform, and Structural Change in the Bolivian Boom

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Financialization, Institutional Reform, and Structural Change in the Bolivian Boom 

by Alfredo Macías Vázquez and Jorge García-Arias

Since nationalizing its hydrocarbon industry, Bolivia has articulated an ambitious strategy to promote structural change in its economy. Despite positive trends in macroeconomic indicators, the increase in fiscal revenues derived from the export of raw materials has not translated into structural transformation. Although the Bolivian government has broken with classical extractivism, nationalization and state intervention have not been sufficient to produce changes. The institutional control imposed on hydrocarbon revenue by financialization inhibits structural change and threatens the long-term sustainability of recent improvements in social indicators.

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Abstract, Social Environmental Mining Conflicts in Mexico by Darcy Tetreault

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Abstract:   Social Environmental Mining Conflicts in Mexico 

by Darcy Tetreault

Examination of social environmental conflicts around mining in Mexico indicates that neoliberal reforms have facilitated “accumulation by dispossession,” first by transferring public resources in the form of mineral rights and state-run mining companies to the private sector and second by dispossessing smallholder farmers and indigenous communities of their land, water, and cultural landscapes in order to allow mining companies to carry out their activities. The resistance movements that have emerged to confront this dispossession are led on the local level by people whose livelihoods, health, and cultures are threatened by large-scale mining projects. They reflect “the environmentalism of the poor” in that they seek to keep natural resources outside of the sphere of the capitalist mode of production.