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.
