World Development 130 (2020) 104916

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World Development
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

Latin America in the vortex of social change: Development and social

movement dynamics
Henry Veltmeyer
Estudios del Desarrollo-Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 36 Southgate Drive, Bedford, N.S. B4A4M4, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Latin America is caught up in a vortex of social change produced by the complex and conflicting dynamics
Accepted 22 January 2020 of capitalist development and the forces of resistance mobilized in or against this process. In this paper I
Available online 9 March 2020 propose to deconstruct and dissect these dynamics. First, I reconstruct three cycles of development and
resistance that mark the evolution of capitalism in the region. Second, I review and briefly discuss the
Keywords: advance of resource-seeking ‘extractive’ capital in the development process. It is argued that this advance
Latin America is the defining feature of what might be understood as the new geo-economics of capital in the region.
Development dynamics
The methodology employed is a structural-strategic analysis within a political economy theoretical
Forces of resistance
Geo-economics of capital
framework. The study is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to the growing literature
Extractive capital and debate surrounding an understanding of the contemporary dynamics of capitalist development in
Latin America. At issue are the development and resistance dynamics of extractivism.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Latin America, it could be argued, is caught up in a vortex of
social change produced by the complex and conflicting dynamics
of capitalist development and the forces of resistance mobilized
in the process. In this paper I propose to reconstruct and dissect
some of these dynamics. First, I briefly outline the methodological
procedures and considerations involved in researching the phe-
nomenon of extractivism in the contemporary phase of capitalist
development.1 Secondly, I reconstruct the three cycles of develop-
ment and resistance that mark the evolution of capitalism in the
region. Thirdly, I review and briefly discuss the advance of
resource-seeking ‘extractive’ capital in the development process—rel-
ative to industry-building or industrial capital. I argue that this
advance is the defining feature of what might be understood as the
new geo-economics of capital in the region (Part 5). The paper then
turns to a reconstruction of the new geopolitics of capital—the
dynamics of a progressive cycle in politics and public policy. The
paper ends with a brief overview of several forms of resistance that
have emerged on the extractive frontier in response to the advance
of capital. These forces of resistance relate to diverse expressions of
a peasant movement oriented towards an alternative form of agrar-
E-mail address: hveltmeyer@gmail.com
1
These dynamics have been extensively documented in diverse regional contexts
(see, for example. Bowles & Veltmeyer, 2014). For the sake of clarity and economy this
paper is limited to and based on a systematic review of the literature related to
extractivism in the Latin American context.
ian development (Vergara & Kay, 2017); and an eco-territorial pre-
dominantly indigenous movement formed on the extractive
frontier—a movement based on resistance and protest against the
incursions of extractive capital and its destructive impacts on their
livelihoods and the environment (Tetreault, Ochoa Garcia, &
Hernandéz Gonzaléz, 2019). The aim here is to take stock of the forces
of resistance mobilized by these social movements.
2. Researching the dynamics of extractive capital:
Methodological matters
The latest and still-ongoing phase of capitalist development in
Latin America, in what some theorists have described as the ‘world
capitalist system’, is characterized by the advance of resource-
seeking’ extractive capital—relative to the advance of industrial
capital from the 1930s to the 1970s based on the exploitation of
the ‘unlimited supply of surplus labor’ generated by the capitalist
development of agriculture. The point—and this point has both the-
oretical and methodological implications—is that both forms of
capital and each modality of accumulation has distinct dynamics
that need to be clearly distinguished. For example, the advance of
industrial capital is associated with a process of productive and
social transformation centered on changing an agriculture-based
system into one based on modern industry, and also the disposses-
sion and proletarianization of the direct small-scale agricultural
producers or peasants (Otero, 2008; Kay & Vergara-Camus, 2017).
In contrast, the advance of extractive capital is characterized by

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104916
0305-750X/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
the formation in the countryside of economic enclaves with strong
links to the global economy but very few links to the local and
broader national economy (Gudynas, 2019). This structural fact
has significant implications for researching and studying the forces
of change mobilized in the process of capitalist development. First,
extractivism takes different sectoral forms, each with distinct
dynamics depending on the form and conditions of resource extrac-
tion: (i) the extraction of hydrocarbons or fossil fuels, (ii) industrial
minerals and metals, and (iii) agro-food products (including bio-
fuels), The point, emphasized by Eduardo Gudynas, probably the
best-known researcher into the dynamics of extractivism, is that
each sector implicates certain dynamics that need to be clearly dis-
tinguished; hence his insistence on the term ‘extractivisms’. As
Gudynas sees it, some features of extractivisms,2 such as an export
orientation of productive activities (links to the global economy) and
the virtual absence of processing are shared across sectors, but other
dynamics, such as development and resistance, are not necessarily
the same and need to be analytically distinguished.
Given the constraints and the limited aim of this paper it was
not possible to report on research findings related to the complex
dynamics associated with each of the three main extractive sec-
tors. Thus I chose to focus on and limit my discussion to two coun-
try case studies—Bolivia and Ecuador—that exemplify some of the
major and most significant development and resistance dynamics
involved in the extraction of fossil fuels for export to capitalist
markets as a source of energy for industry and household con-
sumption.3 One reason, besides practicality, for selecting these two
country case studies is that more than any other countries in the
region they most clearly exemplify the policy dynamics of a post-
neoliberal development strategy based on a combination of neode-
velopmentalism and extractivism, what some researchers have
described as ‘neoextractivism’ (Burchard & Dietz, 2014; Gudynas,
2009; Veltmeyer & Petras, 2014).
Both Bolivia and Ecuador also represent what analysts have
described as a radical populist form of neoextractivism formed in
a ‘red tide’ of regime change (vs. the ‘pink tide’ or regime change
in the case of Argentina and Brazil (Barrett, Chavez & Rodríguez
Garavito, 2008). Methodologically this provides us with a very lim-
ited case (basically one form of extractivism both in sectoral and
public policy terms) but also several advantages in the search for
defining patterns of extractivist dynamics. One of these patterns,
also found and confirmed by other analysts in studies of other
extractivisms in other sectors (mining and agro-extraction), relates
to a fundamental contradiction between the strategy of national
development pursued by these ‘progressive’ regimes and the
declared goal of achieving a post-neoliberal national condition of
inclusive development, which, in the case of Bolivia and Ecuador
was conceived of in terms of an indigenous cosmology of ‘living
well’ in social solidarity and harmony with nature (Acosta, 2013;
Acosta, Lander & Gudynas, 2009).4
2
As Gudynas sees it, extractivism does not involve ‘production’ or ‘productive
activities’, thus should not be viewed as an ‘industry’ (as per ‘extractive industries’).
3
For a study of the development and resistance dynamics of extractivism in its
classical and neoextractive forms in the mining sector see Bebbington (2011),
Bebbington and Bury (2013), Burchard and Dietz (2014).
4
Nothing defines an extractivist strategy as well as the notion of contradiction, a
concept that is central to an understanding of the dynamics of capitalist development.
Marxist theorists over the years have focused on two basic contradictions of capitalist
development, namely, the capital-labor relation which gives rise to a class struggle
over land and labour, and the center-periphery contradiction manifest in the
dynamics of uneven capitalist development and dependency. But an analysis of the
extractivist dynamics of capitalism has brought to the fore a fundamental contradic-
tion hitherto ignored by Marxists, namely, a contradiction between the capitalist
development of the forces of production and the ecological foundations of the entire
development process (Acosta, 2013; Bollier & Helfrich, 2002; Foster, 2002; Harvey,
2014; Martínez Alier, 2002; Webber, 2015).
As for the actual methodological procedures used in researching
and analyzing the development and resistance dynamics of extrac-
tive capitalism, or extractivisms as Gudynas insists, they are based
on principles of structural-strategic analysis (the political economy
and sociology of development), which assumes (i) that identifiable
and identified patterns in both development and resistance
dynamics reflect the working of underlying ‘structures’ (identified
by the existence of limited variations in identified patterns) that
are ‘objective’ in their effects on individuals according to their loca-
tion in the system; and (ii) that the forces of change released in the
development process reflect and must be understood in terms of
the collective actions of these individuals in their strategic
response to these conditions. This dictates a methodological
requirement of interrogating the subject or ‘actors’ involved in
the development process. This means supplementing a structural
analysis within a political economy theoretical framework with a
sociological strategic analysis that takes the form of interviewing
the ‘actors’ involved in collective actions.5
Interviews conducted for the purpose of identifying the subjec-
tive dimension of the forces of resistance mobilized in the advance
of extractive capital in the development process included: Napo-
león Saltos, Coordinator of Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales
(CMS), a spectrum of diverse nongovernmental social organisa-
tions and an Afro-indigenous movement that formed in a strategic
and tactical alliance with CONAIE at the time and after a major
uprising against the Ecuadorian State in 1990; Ricardo Ulcuango
and various activists of Ecuarunari, an indigenous movement
within CONAIE; a group of MAS activists with whom the author
and a colleague engaged in prolonged discussions as to the ques-
tion of class vs. ethnic identity in the class struggle for land and
labor in Bolivia; and various community leaders and movement
activists in the struggle against the advance of mining capital in
the Mexican state of San Luis de Potosi (for a report on research
findings related to this struggle see Tetreault et al., 2019).
3. Cycles of development and resistance
For political economists in the Marxist tradition it is a matter of
principle that the development of the forces of production within
the institutional framework of the capitalist system generates
forces of social change that can be mobilized in one direction or
the other by social movements that embody the forces of resis-
tance. That is, each advance in the march of capital brings about
a corresponding change, or advance, in the forces of resistance—
in the form taken by the resistance, and the class struggle gener-
ated by the resistance to the advance of capital. Thus, it is possible
to trace the evolution of capitalism in a particular temporal and
spatial context in terms of diverse cycles of development and resis-
tance. This is what I propose to do in the Latin American context. In
this context it is possible to identify three development-resistance
cycles, the dynamics of which are briefly summarized below.
3.1. First development-resistance cycle (1960s-70s)
In the immediate post-war period, from the 1950 s to the ‘70 s,
the advance of capital in the development process on the Latin
American periphery of the world system was ‘assisted’ by the
agency of what we came to know as the developmental state as well
as what we might term US imperialism—the use of the powers of
the US state to facilitate the expansion of capital and its penetration
of the production apparatus in the form of multinational corpora-
tions and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The resistance to this
5
For a discussion of these principles and the associated method of analysis see
Veltmeyer and Delgado Wise (2018).
 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
advance was led by organized labor, i.e. the union movement in the
cities, and by peasant-based social movements in the countryside—
movements formed in the resistance against forces that led to the
expulsion or forced abandonment of the land and their livelihoods
by the direct producers, small-scale peasant farmers from the land,
and to a process of productive and social transformation. In Latin
America these movements took the form of armies of national lib-
eration and the demand for revolutionary change in regard to land
ownership, production relations and rural livelihoods.
The response of Capital (the agents of capitalism and the archi-
tects and guardians of the system) was to offer the ‘rural poor’ an
alternative to the confrontational politics of the social movements
in the form of a program of integrated rural development, land
reform and micro-development projects. Through a combination
of this development strategy based on International Cooperation,
with the intermediation or agency of nongovernmental organiza-
tions—what in the 1980 s would be described as ‘civil society’—to-
gether with the deployment as deemed necessary of armed force by
the State (viz. a strategy of repression)—what we might view as the
iron fist of armed force hidden within the velvet glove of ‘develop-
ment’, the land struggle and the popular movement in the form of
armies of national liberation was broken, its forces of resistance dis-
persed; and by the end of the 1970 s the revolutionary social move-
ments, with the exception of FARC, were all brought to ground,
defeated by the forces mobilized by capital in its class war against
labor and the resistance. In the same context Lehman (1978)
invoked ‘the end of land reform’. To all intents and purposes both
the peasant rebellion and the state-led agrarian reform program
across the region were brought to an end (Ghimire, 2001).
3.2. Second development-resistance cycle (1990 s)
Fast forward to the 1990 s, which saw a massive inflow of cap-
ital in the form of FDI—capital in search of resources and economic
opportunity, markets and profit. This advance of capital was facil-
itated by neoliberal policies of structural adjustment, under the
aegis of the World Bank and the IMF, the fundamental agencies
of US imperialism at the time. However, this advance also brought
about powerful forces of resistance to the neoliberal policy agenda
in the form of social movements with their social base in the
indigenous communities of peasant farmers and a semi-
proletariat of landless rural workers—the ‘rural poor’ in the World
Bank’s development discourse.
In this context, ‘the rural poor’, mostly dispossessed landless
rural workers or ‘peasants’, were encouraged if not pushed by devel-
opment agencies such as the World Bank to take one or both of the
available development pathways out of rural poverty, namely, labor
and migration. On these pathways see the World Bank, 2008 World
Development report on Agriculture for Development—a capitalist
manifesto of what has been described as ‘modernization theory’.
However, some of the ‘rural poor’ took the pathway not of develop-
ment but of resistance--mobilization of the forces of resistance in
the form of sociopolitical movements directed predominantly
against the neoliberal policy agenda. By the end of the decade these
movements had, in some cases anyway—particularly in Ecuador and
Bolivia, brought about a widespread discontent and rejection of the
neoliberal policy agenda, creating conditions for elements of the
political Left—the center-left of the political class—to assume state
power with the promise and the search for a post-neoliberal model
and an alternative development pathway.
3.3. Third development-resistance cycle (2000–2012)
The activism of the peasant movements in the 1990 s created
conditions that in effect allowed elements of the political class,
the center-left, to aspire to and assume state power in the wake
3
of a sea tide of regime change from 2003 to 2006—what observers
have dubbed as a ‘pink tide’ leading to a ‘progressive cycle’ in Latin
American politics (Barrett et al., 2008; Grugel & Riggirozzi, 2012).
This progressive cycle can be dated with the emergence of left-
leaning post-neoliberal policy regimes in Argentina and Brazil in
2003, in Bolivia and Ecuador in 2006 and 2007, then elsewhere,
including Uruguay and even Paraguay. In Venezuela it is possible
in the same timeframe to trace out a similar political development
but in a more radical form but with different policy dynamics and
under different conditions. But by diverse accounts (see, for exam-
ple, Gaudichaud, 2012) this so-called ‘progressive cycle’ came to an
end with the onset of an economic production crisis that hit Brazil
in 2012 (zero growth in the GDP) and in Argentina in December
2015 with the election of Mauricio Macri, a hard-right authoritar-
ian neoliberal, to the presidency. Coincidentally, the end of the pro-
gressive cycle in 2012 paralleled the beginnings of the end of a
cycle of rising commodity prices on capitalist markets (Katz,
2016; Petras & Veltmeyer, 2019).
The coincidence between these two cycles raises several ques-
tions that can only be answered in the context of the dynamics
of capitalist development at the time. And to unravel and decon-
struct these dynamics we need to distinguish between two differ-
ent forms of capital and capitalism, two modalities of
accumulation, at work: capitalism in its classical or industrial form
theorized by Marx, based on the exploitation of labor; and an older
and now resurgent form of capitalism based not so much on the
exploitation of labor as the exploitation, and degradation, of nat-
ure: the pillage of natural resource wealth, the extraction of natu-
ral resources, and their export in primary commodity form; and
the appropriation of value in the form of land and resource rents
rather than surplus value. Of course, in any specific temporal and
spatial context these two forms of capitalism are always combined
in one way or the other. Even so we need to analytically—and
theoretically—distinguish them because they implicate distinct
development and resistance dynamics.
As for the Resistance, as in previous cycles it predominantly
took form as an anti-systemic social movement. However, in the
new context the resistance was no longer directed against the
neoliberal policy agenda, but rather against the new forms of
‘primitive accumulation’ and proletarianization (‘accumulation by
dispossession’, to use David Harvey’s expression), and a new enclo-
sure of the global commons (of land, water and resources for sub-
sistence) as well as a struggle against the destructive force of
extractive capital and its negative socio-environmental impacts.
We expand on this point below.
4. The advance of resource-seeking ‘extractive’ capital
Capitalism is a system in crisis, the inevitable outcome of con-
tradictory forces generated in the development of the forces of pro-
duction (Harvey, 2014). One prominent expression of this built-in
tendency or propensity was the emergence of a system wide pro-
duction crisis at the turn into the 1970s, which put an end to the
so-called ‘golden age of capitalism’ (two decades of sustained eco-
nomic growth and rising wages) and led to a decade of diverse
strategies and structural responses to the crisis in a search for a
way out. One of these strategies entailed policies and actions taken
to reduce the share of labor in the social product. By the end of the
decade this strategy had resulted in a ten percent decrease in the
share of US labor in national income and a corresponding increase
in the share of capital (money available for productive investment,
rather than consumption). On the Latin American periphery this
change in the capital-labor relation was more pronounced with a
likely twenty to forty percent reduction in the share of labor in
national income.
4 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
A second anti-crisis strategy was for corporations to relocate
labor-intensive production overseas closer to sources of cheap
labor, resulting in a new international division of labor (Fröbel,
Heinrichs, & Kreye, 1980). A third strategic response to the crisis
involved the introduction of new production technologies
designed for labor flexibility in the regulation of labor (Lipietz,
1982). When combined in the 1990s with what would turn
out to be a technological revolution in information and commu-
nications this response increased the productivity of labor and
helped restore profitability. A fourth and equally consequential
strategy designed to reactivate the accumulation and capitalist
production process entailed the installation of what was then a
‘new world order’ designed to release the ‘forces of economic
freedom’ from the regulatory constraints of the development
state. The strategy, formulated within the framework of the
Washington Consensus as to the virtues of free market capital-
ism, entailed a series of ‘structural reforms’ in macroeconomic
policy—globalization, privatization, deregulation, and the liberal-
ization of commerce and the systemwide flow of capital (Petras
& Veltmeyer, 2001).
By the end of the decade these ‘structural’ reforms had been
widely implemented in Latin America, where the architects and
guardians of the capitalist world order had the leverage to imple-
ment these reforms. The result was indeed to reactivate the accu-
mulation (if not production) process on the Latin American
periphery of the system, but also in the process to destroy major
forces of production in both agriculture and industry built up in
the region over decades under the aegis of the development state.
Another result was the generation and restoration of forces of
resistance, which in the 1990s coalesced as a powerful social
movement with their social base in what remained of the peas-
antry: communities of dispossessed landless rural workers
(Petras & Veltmeyer, 2011).
The aim and effect of the structural reform process under the
aegis of the Washington consensus was to liberate the freedom
of movement and flow of capital in the form of FDI, and indeed
this flow of capital increased six-fold over the course of the
1990s creating what James Petras has described as the ‘golden
age of US imperialism’, but what could well be described as
the golden age of resistance—the resistance of indigenous and
peasant organizations and communities that were negatively
impacted by the advance of capital in the form of Foreign Direct
Investments. What it shows is a pronounced and increasing ten-
dency for these inflows of capital to take the form of resource-
seeking ‘extractive’ capital (investments in land and the extrac-
tion of natural resources for export in primary commodity
form).
By the end of the 1990s the dynamic inflows of resource-
seeking ‘extractive’ capital (vs. industry-building or industrial cap-
ital) had reinforced a pronounced propensity towards primary
commodity exports (the export of relatively unprocessed natural
resources in exchange for the importation of goods manufactured
in the north), what political economists in the tradition of Latin
American structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s—and then again
more recently in the current context of capitalist development in
the region—theorized as a condition of dependency, dependent
capitalist development, or ‘the new dependency’ (Borón, 2008;
Martins, 2011; Sotelo, 2009).
Table 2 provides a snapshot of this export structure, not only
exhibiting a long-term reliance of economies in the region on nat-
ural resource extraction, or extractive capital—classical extrac-
tivism—but pointing towards a process of reprimarization in
some cases where industrial capital had taken root. Mexico is the
exception here, but notwithstanding a relative advance of indus-
trial capital in both Argentina and Brazil, South America was
clearly and increasingly reliant on the productive operations of
extractive capital. The entire region at the turn into the 21st cen-
tury was a bastion of extractive capital, reinforced by changes in
the global economy such as the ascent of China as an economic
power and the ‘emerging markets’ of the other BRICS), which led
to a growing demand for natural resources in commodity form—
and a boom of commodity prices on capitalist markets.
5. The new geoeconomics of extractive capitalism
Extractive capital, or extractivism, refers to capital invested in
the large-scale acquisition of land—‘land grabbing’ in the discourse
of Critical Agrarian Studies (Borras, Franco, Gomez, Kay, & Spoor,
2012)—and the extraction of natural resources for the purpose of
exporting them in primary commodity form. Latin America has
had a long and sordid history of extractivism so defined—what in
the context of Latin America’s colonial history of pillage and loot-
ing we might describe as ‘extractive imperialism’; even so, in the
context of a development process that can be traced back to the
19th century we might very well write of ‘extractive capitalism’.
As noted above the 1990s represented a significant advance in
the evolution of extractive capitalism in Latin America, resulting
in a structure of economic production and exports biased towards
1) the extraction of minerals and metals, particularly in the case of
Chile and Peru, where, together with Brazil, the main extraction
sites and mining enclaves are located; 2) the extraction of hydro-
carbons in the form of fossil fuels, particularly in the case of Mexico
and both Bolivia and Ecuador, major destination points over the
past two decades for resource-seeking extractive capital in this
sector; and 3) agro-extraction, i.e. the harvesting of agro-food
products and extraction of bio-fuels, particularly in the case of
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the major desti-
nation points of a tsunami of foreign investments channeled
towards the acquisition of large tracts of land (land grabbing)
and the expansion of soybean production (McKay, 2017). In the
exceptional case of Paraguay, up to 80 percent of arable land in
recent years has been converted from the production of agro-
food and related products into the production of soybeans
(Ezquerro-Cañete, 2016).
This biased production structure, already in place for centuries
with respect to the mining sector but recently having experienced
a major expansion in the other sectors, is reflected in both the
structure of exports (see Table 2 above) and over the past two dec-
ades the significant inflows and accumulation of extractive capital.
As for these inflows, the general trend and sectoral and spatial pat-
tern of productive investments is clear enough. In 2000, at the turn
into the new millennium, the service sector still accounted for
almost half of Latin America’s FDI inflows, but Table 1 above points
towards a steady and increasing flow of capital towards the natural
resources sector in South America, especially mining, over the past
decade. In 2006 capital inflows grew by 49 percent to reach $59
billion, exceeding the total FDI inflows of any year since economic
liberalization began in the 1990s (UNCTAD, 2012: Figure II.18).
Income on FDI (i.e. profits on capital invested in the resource sec-
tor) was particularly high in Brazil and Chile, $14 billion and $20
billion respectively, leading to a surge in the share of retained earn-
ings in total FDI inflows. In the South American countries for which
data are available, income on FDI soared from an average of 10 per-
cent in 2000–03 to 61 percent in 2006. Despite the global financial
and economic crisis at the time, FDI flows towards Latin America
reached a record high in 2008 (US$ 128.3 billion), an extraordinary
development considering that FDI flows worldwide at the time had
shrunk by at least 15 percent. This counter-cyclical trend signaled
the continuation of the primary commodities boom and the steady
 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916 5

Table 1
Percentage distribution of FDI by sector, Latin America 2000–14.

’00 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 13 14
Resources 10 12 12 11 12 13 12 15 30 24 17
Industry 25 26 38 35 38 37 36 35 22 38 35
Services 60 61 51 48 46 48 51 49 47 38 48

Source: Arellano (2010); ECLAC (2014: 23).

Table 2 Together with the expansion of oil and gas projects, mineral
Exports of primary products, % of total exports, 2004–2011. extraction now constitutes the single most important source of
2004 2006 2008 2011 export revenues for a majority of countries in the region (see
Table 2). Although the flow and stock of resource-seeking capital
Argentina 71.2 68.2 69.1 68.5
Bolivia 86.7 89.8 92.8 95.5 is concentrated in four South American countries Brazil accounted
Brazil 47.0 49.5 55.4 66.2 for the bulk of these capital flows. FDI flows into Brazil in 2008
Chile 86.8 89.0 88.0 89.2 reached a high of USD 45 billion, 30 percent above the record level
Colombia 62.9 64.4 68.5 82.5 posted the year before. Mexico, the second largest recipient of FDI
Ecuador 90.7 90.4 91.3 92.0
Mexico 20.2 24.3 27.1 29.3
in the region, was hit hard by the financial crisis and consequently
Peru 83.1 88.0 86.6 89.3 saw inflows fall 20 percent in the same year. In contrast, ‘resource
Venezuela 86.9 89.6 92.3 95.5 seeking FDI’ drove an expansion of capital inflows in Argentina,
Latin America 46.2 51.3 56.7 60.9 Chile and Colombia—inflows that were concentrated in the mining
Source: ECLAC, 2012. sector. Thus, while efficiency- and market-seeking FDI featured
more prominently in Mexico resource-based investments
accounted for the lion’s share of capital inflows at the regional level
(UNCTAD, 2007: 122-23). And in the first and second decades of
expansion of resource-seeking capital in the region (ECLAC, 2012: the new millennium the center of gravity for these inflows could
71).6 be found in South America, which therefore featured prominently
Flows of FDI into Latin America from 2000 to 2007, five years in the new geoeconomics and geopolitics of global capital—neoex
into Latin America’s resource-led boom (Ocampo, 2007), for the tractivism, neodevelopmentalism and postneoliberalism.
first time exceeded FDI flows into the US and was surpassed only
by Europe and Asia. And the global financial crisis brought about
6. The new geopolitics of capital: Dynamics of a progressive
an even more pronounced expansion of capital inflows in the
cycle in public policy
extractive sector. In 2010, in the throes of a financial and produc-
tion crisis, the advanced industrialized economies at the center
The emergence of a progressive cycle in Latin American politics,
of the system and the epicenter of the crisis received less than
which coincided with a primary commodities boom on capitalist
97 percent of global flows of investment capital for the first time
markets, significantly was based on the activism of peasant and
since UNCTAD had tracked and kept records of these flows, i.e.
indigenous movements in the 1990s—movements that mobilized
since 1970 (Zibechi, 2012). In 2005, the ‘developing’ and ‘emerging’
the forces of resistance against the neoliberal policy agenda of gov-
economies attracted only 12 percent of global flows of productive
ernments in the region. By the end of the decade the activism of
capital. But in 2010, against a background of a sharp decline in
these movements (for example, CONAIE)7 created a climate of
these flows, these economies overcame the 50 percent barrier
widespread disenchantment and the rejection of neoliberalism as a
(CEPAL, 2010). In the same year FDI flows into Latin America
policy agenda, creating conditions for the ascent of the center-left
increased by 34.6 percent, well above the growth rate in Asia,
to state power and the emergence of a progressive cycle associated
which was only 6.7 percent (UNCTAD, 2012).
with the emergence of center-left regimes oriented towards the
This flow of productive capital into Latin America was fueled by
new social policy of poverty reduction as per a post-Washington
two factors: commodity prices, which remained high through most
consensus on the need for a more inclusive form of development.
of this period, attracting ‘natural-resource-seeking investment,’
In a matter of a few years from 2002 to 2005—1989, in the
and the solid economic growth of the South American sub-
somewhat exceptional case of Venezuela—‘progressive’ or left-
region, which encouraged market-seeking as well as resource-
leaning post-neoliberal policy regimes oriented towards neodevel-
seeking investments. These investments were concentrated in four
opmentalism were established across South America. While these
South American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia—
regimes were essentially a legacy of the activism of the peasant
which accounted for 89 percent of the sub-region’s total inflows.
sociopolitical movements in the 1990s, center-left elements of
The extractive sector in these countries, particularly mining,
the political class in these countries taking advantage of the open-
absorbed the lion’s share of these inflows. For example, in 2009,
ing towards an alternative form of development, only Evo Morales
Latin America received 26 percent of global investments in explo-
managed to retain a coalition of social movements at the base of
ration for industrial minerals and metals (Sena-Fobomade, 2011).
his progressive regime, albeit—it could be argued—to some extent
by manipulating them. In almost every other case, including
Ecuador, once the political class took power the social movements
6
ECLAC attributes the extraordinary increase in the profits of transnational
7
corporations in the region since 2003 to a combination of two factors: a substantial CONAIE (the Confederation of Indigenous nationalities of Ecuador), at the time
FDI stock and higher returns on that stock—‘a sharp rise in the profitability of FDI in the most powerful indigenous movement in Latin America in 1990 launched an
the region.’ (ECLAC, 2012: 71). Data on FDI disaggregated by sector shows that uprising that brought the movement to the brink of state power. Over the course of
investments in the mining and hydrocarbon sectors of Peru, Chile and Colombia the next decade CONAIE not only led another uprising but a protest movement
generated profitable returns at an average rate of 25 percent. By contrast, returns on against the neoliberal policy agenda of the government, succeeding in halting their
investments in Mexico barely averaged three percent. advance of this agenda as well as forcing the abdication of several presidents.
6 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
were pushed aside or marginalized. In any case CONAIE had been
reduced to but a poor shadow of its former self, its capacity to
mobilize the forces of resistance that were seriously weakened as
the result of the creation of Pachakutik as a political instrument
to contest the elections, together with the ethnodevelopment
strategy8 advanced by the World Bank and the Inter American
Development Bank, which effectively converted Antonio Vargas from
the leader of the most powerful indigenous movement in Latin
America into the head of the biggest World Bank-funded NGO.9 In
any case, with the establishment of his Citizen’s Revolution, Correa
failed to achieve the support of CONAIE, still the most representative
organization of indigenous nationalities and communities in the
country. The tacit support provided by CONAIE and the indigenous
movement to the regime evaporated once it became clear that the
regime’s policies and actions would seriously contradict the tenets
of a multiethnic and plurinational state and the constitutionally-
sanctioned indigenous conception and philosophy of Buen Vivir, i.e.
Living Well in social solidarity and harmony with Nature (Acosta,
2012; Acosta, Lander & Gudynas, 2009).10
As for Bolivia, another exemplar of a multi-ethnic and plurina-
tional state, Evo Morales’ party MAS (Movement toward Social-
ism), which he used as a political instrument to contest the
elections and capture the state apparatus in the name of the coun-
try’s indigenous nationalities and communities, was closely linked
to—and indeed an outgrowth of—the social movements that had
coalesced in opposition to the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, cul-
minated in the anti-neoliberal uprising of October 2003 (Hylton &
Thomson, 2007). This broad coalition of peasant, indigenous, and
worker organizations formed the Pacto de Unidad (Unity Pact),
which was essential in Morales’ rise to power. It was integrated
to varying degrees into the post-neoliberal regime established
upon Evo Morales’ election in December 2005 (Fabricant, 2012;
McKay, Nehring, & Walsh-Dilley, 2014; Webber, 2015). Similarly
integrated were a number of indigenous men and women, espe-
cially women, who were drawn from not the social movements
but from the fairly large number of nongovernmental organiza-
tions funded by diverse international organizations in the develop-
8
The strategy basically was to target indigenous communities for micro-project
development assistance, appealing to the cultural self-identification of many
‘peasants’ engaged in the land struggle as indigenous. In discussions held by the
author and a colleague in 2004 with activists in ECUARUNARI and MAS (Movimiento
al Socialismo) activists it was explained to us that although members of both
organisations identified as both peasants (campesinos) and indigenous, accessing
development assistance funds obliged them to identify themselves primarily as
indigenous (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2011).
9
A classic example of the World bank’s ethnodevelopment strategy was the
success of the Bank in coopting Antonio Vargas, former maximum leader of CONAIE
and a member of the short-lived triumvirate that took power in the wake of the 2000
January indigenous uprising (ICCI-RIMAY, 2001). Vargas represented the indigenous
nationalities in the Amazonian region of Ecuador, which had been thoroughly
penetrated by the evangelical churches, and because their interests were tied more to
territorial autonomy and ethnic cultural identity than the land it was not too difficult
for World Bank officials to ‘turn’ him away from the confrontational politics of the
class and land struggle to a local micro-project development approach to social
change. As of the mid-1990s, barely five years after heading an indigenous
insurrection Vargas headed PRODEPINE, an NGO well-financed by the World Bank
and with a large staff that operates in the localities and communities of the rural
indigenous poor to build on the social capital of the poor (rather than mobilize the
forces of resistance).
10
Correa’s position, like that of the Morales regime in Bolivia, is that the extraction
and export of the country’s natural resources in an alliance with foreign investors is
an ‘economic opportunity’ of which the country must avail itself in Ecuador’s pathway
towards both economic and social development. This is notwithstanding the forces of
resistance this approach has generated among the indigenous communities directly
impacted by the operations of extractive capital and also among environmental
justice groups and activists—‘environmental terrorists’, in Correa’s view—who put
their concern for the environment over the needs of the population and the
government’s development agenda. In Correa’s infamous words in promoting the
exploitation of minerals and crude with appropriate environmental policies: ‘We
cannot be beggars sitting on a sack of gold’.
ment sector. Thus, while the establishment of a political
instrument to contest the elections and participation in the World
Bank ethnodevelopment strategy in Ecuador served to divide the
indigenous movement, weakening its mobilizing capacity, in Boli-
via the same strategies served to consolidate the social movement
base of the regime.
On assuming state power Evo Morales, like other heads of state
constituted in the so-called ‘progressive cycle’, turned towards an
extractivist development strategy, inviting the multinational cor-
porations in the extractive sector (oil and gas exploration and dril-
ling, mining) to invest in the exploration and extraction of oil and
gas, and both industrial minerals and metals. In fact, the important
role played by these companies in the extractive sector is illus-
trated by the large number of multinational oil companies that still
operate in the country, many of them with long-term (30 years
plus) exploration and drilling contracts, notwithstanding a formal
declaration in 2011 by the government that the country’s natural
resource wealth now belonged to ‘the people’ and that the coun-
try’s rich mineral deposits were a ‘blessing’, allowing the govern-
ment (‘the people’) to regulate industry at national, regional and
local levels’—the expression of a radical form of resource national-
ism if not socialism.11
Another clear indication of the central role played by the multi-
national corporations in Bolivia’s extractive sector is the continu-
ing reliance of the State on both their extractive operations and
the marketing and sale of the social product on capitalist markets.
Although, in a model that has won praise from the UN for giving
‘mother earth’ (the natural world’s rights) equal status with the
people, the government has elaborated a strategy and attempted
to implement a policy requiring these companies to invest some
of their profits in the processing and industrialization of the
extracted resources it is evident that these companies have the
upper hand in their relation to the government. A clear indication
of this is the division of the spoils of commodity exports between
the government and these companies. Although difficult if not pos-
sible to calculate precisely, it would appear that in the mining sec-
tor, for example, less than twenty percent of the value of the social
product in the extractive sector on capitalist markets is appropri-
ated by the government in the form of ground rent (export duties,
taxes and royalties); the remainder is appropriated by the multina-
tional corporations in the extractive sector and the commodity tra-
ders in the form of windfall profits.12 At the same time, the social
and environmental costs and destructive impacts of the operations
of extractive capital are borne by the communities contiguous to
the sites of extraction and the economic enclaves formed around
them.
Over the past few years, the leaders of some social movements
have called into question the extractivist-export model and its
attendant violence and environmental devastation, wrought
primarily by transnational capital in conjunction—in the case of
Bolivia—with the agrarian oligarchy and the small commercial
family farm sector. This has resulted in the fragmentation of the
Unity Pact, with CIDOB (the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples
11
According to Evo Morales, during an Encuentro Departamental in Cochabamba
(June 9, 2019) where new and updated proposals were advanced for what was
described as a ‘Bicentennial Patriotic Agenda, in the past different international
organisations used to treat Bolivia as a colony, deciding the future of the people using
an economic model based on privatization. But, he continued, the country’s wealth
now belongs to the Bolivian people who are building their own future.
12
In an article published on April 18, 2013, Financial Times documented that traders
in commodities within the global economy have accumulated large reserves of capital
and made huge fortunes in the context of the primary commodities boom. As the
author of the article observed: ‘The world’s top commodities traders have pocketed
over US$ 250 billion over the past decade, making the individuals and families that
control the. . .privately-owned sector big beneficiaries of the rise of China and other
emerging countries’—and we might add, the turn towards extractivism and export
primarization.
 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
of Bolivia) and CONAMAQ (the National Council of Allyus and
Markas of Qullasuyu), for example, splitting in 2011, partly in
response to the co-optation of some leaders and machinations of
the national government. In response, MAS has striven to disable
and delegitimize the capacity of these organizations independently
to represent indigenous groups.13
In the case of Ecuador, the period leading up to Rafael Correa’s
2006 election as the country’s president saw the social movements
presenting a powerful challenge to the prevailing neoliberal para-
digm. Correa’s anti-neoliberal, and anti-imperialist campaign,
much like that of Morales in Bolivia, drew centrally on this social
unrest, and its eventual success depended on the support of the
country’s social movements (Becker, 2008). Prior to 2006, the Mesa
Agraria (a coalition of four peasant/indigenous organizations) had
signed an agreement with Correa in which he gave a commitment,
upon election, to initiate an ‘agrarian revolution’ based on the
demand of the peasant movement for food sovereignty, a demand
centered on the democratization of land and water access, and
upon state resources for the revival and stimulation of the ‘peasant’
economy (Henderson, 2017). Unlike Morales, therefore, Correa
(who was replaced by Lenin Moreno in 2017) lacked deep roots
in civil society and the social movements and sought actively to
demobilize peasant and indigenous activism once in power. Thus,
the Alianza Patriotica, a party formed by Rafael Correa to contest
the presidential election represents a much more technocratic,
Keynesian project than is the case with MAS.
Extractivist activities, particularly in the mining sector, are
wreaking ecological and social havoc in the Amazonian region of
both Ecuador and Peru, the intensification and deepening of
extractive activities in the region and the consequent rise in con-
flicts raising serious questions about the desirability and sustain-
ability of the neo-extractivist strategy (Arsel, Hogenboom, &
Pellegrini, 2016; De Echave, 2005). But the beneficiaries of the rev-
enues derived from resource extraction and commodity exports
are, in the main, spatially distanced from its negative ecological
and social impacts, which are borne by the communities contigu-
ous to the sites of extraction. They are, as Herrera Revelo (2017)
notes, ‘afuera de la linea de fuego’ (out of the line of fire) of extrac-
tive capital.
By hiding the destructive impacts of extractive activities from
public view, wrapping up and disguising them in what turns out
to be a beguiling development discourse the Correa/Moreno
regime managed to mute oppositional voices from both critics
and the social movements (Dávalos & Albuja, 2014). Further, oppo-
nents of extractivism in this context have been. . .denigrated as
‘terrorists’ and enemies of the people and the ‘citizens’ revolution’
(De la Torre, 2013). Indicative of this was the arrest in 2017 of hun-
dreds of indigenous/Campesina demonstrators for protesting
peacefully against the oil and mining policies of the regime. These
protests were a response to the declaration by the government of a
state of emergency in Morona Santiago province in the Oriente,
where the regime has deployed military and police forces to
displace and dispossess, forcefully, Shuar indigenous people whose
territory occupies land earmarked for mining projects (Riofrancos,
2017).
To sum up, in the case of Ecuador it is not so much the case of
the social movement leadership being co-opted, but, as argued by
Tilzey (2019), as a case of the membership being politically
beguiled by strategically targeted policies and welfare disburse-
ments. The result, Dávalos and Albuja (2014) argue, has been to
progressively divorce social movement leaders from their mass
base in the case of organizations such as CONAIE and FENOCIN
13
For these points and this interpretation the author has relied on Tilzey (2019),
Webber (2015) and one of the reviewers of this paper.
7
(see below), as well as Ecuarunari (Confederation of the Peoples
of the Kichwa Nationality of Ecuador).
These policies and payments have more or less neutralized any
counter-hegemonic tendencies in organizations such as FENOCIN
(Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesina, Indígenas y
Negras).14 Thus, from 2013 onwards, as documented by
Henderson (2017), FENOCIN’s discourse and political strategies
changed significantly as it became once more a vocal supporter of
Correa and his ‘Citizens’ Revolution’. But rather than calling for
the radical transformation of Ecuador’s agrarian structure through
mass expropriation and redistribution the organization’s current
leadership uses food sovereignty, according to its reformist defini-
tion, as a political tool to negotiate projects and resources for its
membership as well as measures designed or promoted to ‘revital-
ize’ the productivity of ‘peasant’ agriculture; i.e. to make the well-
to-do or petit-bourgeois peasantry more competitive. Projecting
the state as the driving force if not the engine of the economic
and social development process, Correa responded to a number of
key national popular demands of the peasant organizations for pro-
tection against unfair competition from corporate capital in the agri-
food sector and compensatory welfare measures for impoverished
semi-proletarianized peasants and rural landless workers. But in
this policy response he effectively weakened the counter-
hegemonic demands of the food sovereignty movement for an alter-
native, anti-capitalist model, a model articulated by the leadership
of the peasant movement (Herrera Revelo, 2017). Undoubtedly this
was Correa’s aim.
7. The agrarian question and the resistance: whither the
peasantry?
Capitalism as we have come to know it—i.e. through the lens of
Marxist theory—is predicated on a process of ‘primitive (or origi-
nal) accumulation’ (to separate the direct producer from their
means of production), the proletarianization of the direct produc-
ers, the small- scale family farmers or peasants, and the exploita-
tion of the ‘unlimited supply of surplus labor’ generated in the
capitalist development of agriculture.
This capitalist development process, as well as the associated
land struggle based on the demand of land and agrarian reform,
can be traced out throughout the 20th century in diverse regional
and historical contexts. The end result has normally been the
transformation of an agrarian economy characterized by precapi-
talist production relations and a traditional communalist culture
into a modern industrial system based on the capital-labor rela-
tion. Another theoretical formulation of this historic trend is the
transformation of the peasantry into an industrial proletariat, a
process that has led to diverse permutations of a debate about
the ‘agrarian question’—the anticipated disappearance of the
peasantry.
In Latin America, however, under conditions of capitalist devel-
opment in the 1980s, this process had a rather different outcome,
namely, the disappearance of a nascent industrial proletariat and
the formation of a semi-proletariat of landless rural workers
formed in the peri-urban centers where the dispossessed peasants
have taken refuge from the forces of change and capitalist
development.
14
The roots of FENOCIN, founded in the 1960s, can be found in the Catholic Church’s
attempts to draw support away from the Communist-affiliated FEI (Federación
Ecuatoriana de Indios). In the 1970s, FENOC broke with the church and assumed a
more radical socialist stance (Tilzey, 2019). In the 1990, it assumed its current name
to reflect the incorporation of indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian communities into its
membership. A member of La Via Campesina, FENOCIN emphasizes an interculturality
that embraces Ecuador’s diversity and strives to unify all poor people into a struggle
to improve their quality of life, democratize the country and forge a sustainable and
equitable form of development (Becker, 2012).
8 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
In the 1990s, as in the 1960s and 1970s in an earlier develop-
ment era, in response to the powerful forces of change operating
on them (the destruction of their forces of production, disposses-
sion of their land, and forced migration), the dispossessed near-
landless peasants or landless rural workers had two options. One
was to take the development pathway of migration and labor
offered them by the agencies of ‘international cooperation’
(World Bank, 2008).15 The other was to take the path of organized
resistance—to join the social movements that mobilized the forces
of resistance against the neoliberal policy agenda of many govern-
ments at the time.
These social movements in the 1990s at their social base had
what remained of the peasantry as well as the indigenous com-
munities on the extractive frontier, namely, a semi-proletariat
composed predominantly of landless rural workers and near-
landless peasant farmers, many of whom managed to retain one
foot in agriculture and the rural communities, and the other in
the informal sector and slums and streets of the peri-urban cen-
ters formed in several decades of peripheral capitalist
development.
As noted above, the political activism of these movements with
their social base in what remains of the ‘peasantry’ (communities
of semi-proletarianized rural landless workers) and the indigenous
communities generated conditions—widespread disenchantment
with neoliberals as a doctrine and policy—that allowed elements
of the political class on the center-left in some contexts of the
‘pink Wave’ of progressive regime change (Bolivia and Ecuador)
to successfully contest the presidential elections and achieve state
power. Needless to say, the indigenous peasants and communities
at the base of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas were not in the
same position and were forced to take a different road in the
struggle to resist the advance of capital in the development pro-
cess. As for the social movements that mobilized the forces of
resistance in Bolivia and Ecuador, and that led the popular struggle
from 1990 to 2005 against the neoliberal policy agenda, as noted
above their political activism had different outcomes and went
in different directions. In Bolivia, notwithstanding the split of
some of these movements from the Morales regime because of
its extractivist stance, others have stuck with the regime. As for
Ecuador the indigenous movement has distanced itself more and
more from both the Correa and Moreno regimes (Dávalos &
Albuja, 2014).
The forces of resistance generated in the development process
that has unfolded over the past two decades have taken diverse
forms but can be put into four categories. One relates to the resis-
tance of the working class against austerity measures and neolib-
eral policies implemented by various right-wing regimes formed
in a recent pendulum swing of electoral politics away from the pro-
gressive policies of the postneoliberal regimes that emerged in a
so-called ‘pink wave’ of regime change from 2002 to 2012
(Petras & Veltmeyer, 2019). Another relates to the peasant move-
ment—a movement that brings together diverse forces of resis-
tance mobilized in the search for an alternate form of
development, an alternative to corporate capitalism in the agricul-
tural sector (Vergara-Camus, 2017). A third form of resistance
relates to a region-wide dynamic movement on the margins of
the capitalist system in the cities and urban centers. This resistance
15
In the case of Ecuador from 800,00 to one million citizens migrated to Spain and
New York from 1999 to 2004, relieving the government of the need and the problem
of providing for them and at the same time generating for the government an
important source of foreign currency to maintain the Balance of Payments as well as
local development funds in the form of migrant remittances.
movement has taken form in diverse region-wide efforts and pro-
ject to construct a social and solidarity economy based on cooper-
ativism, workers’ self-management and local development
(Coraggio, 2011). A fourth form of resistance relates to the eco-
territorial struggle of indigenous and farming communities in the
countryside against conditions generated by the expansion of
extractive capital (Bebbington et al., 2008). We end with a brief
synopsis of this particular struggle in its diverse forms and the
forces of resistance associated with it.
8. Resistance on the extractive frontier
In the development context described above, on the extractive
frontier the forces of resistance have taken and are taking multiple
forms. The most dynamic forces of resistance have emerged in the
form of an eco-territorial movement characterized by the struggle
of mostly indigenous communities to reclaim their territorial
rights and a socioenvironmental movement resisting the destruc-
tive impact of extractive operations on both the habitat and liveli-
hoods of the communities contiguous to the sites of extraction
(see, for example, the case of Mexico in Tetreault et al., 2019).
Whereas the resistance mounted by the peasant movements
against the incursion of capital in the agricultural sector in the cur-
rent context has taken, and is taking, the predominant form of a pro-
posal for an alternative model of development, in the mining sector
the advance of extractive capital has resulted in a relation of violent
conflict between the companies in the sector and the indigenous and
non-indigenous communities. Over the course of the last decade a
growing number of eco-territorial conflicts have emerged around
mining projects across the region. OCMAL, an observatory of mining
conflicts in Latin America, identified and documented up to 219 con-
flicts in the mining sector in 2016, with 229 projects involving 234
communities in 20 countries (OCMAL, 2018). Peru had the largest
number of conflicts (39), followed by Mexico and Chile with 37 each,
then Argentina with 27, Brazil with 20, and Colombia with 14.
There are two issues of particular significance in the struggles
involved in these mining conflicts. One is the role of the state, which
in many cases has taken the form of promoting the expansion of
extractive capital, with the government taking the side of the min-
ing companies in the relation of conflict with the communities, and
providing these companies with both the authority and a license to
implement their projects and operate—to mine the minerals and
metals that have been identified by the companies for extraction,
sub-soil resources that are technically or legally owned by the State
(in a denial of the communities’ territorial rights to these
resources). The other issue relates to the diverse strategies pursued
by these companies to either obtain a social license to operate in
indigenous territory or to defeat the resistance.
To date the main strategy pursued by the mining companies to
both obtain a social license and to defeat the resistance was adher-
ence to the protocol of ‘corporate social responsibility’ constructed
within the framework of a model oriented towards the achievement
of ‘inclusive growth’ (Sagebien & Lindsay, 2011).16 Unlike the model
of ‘inclusive development’ constructed by economists at CEPAL this
model is predicated on the agency of the private sector (=the compa-
nies and multinational corporations in the extractive sector). Within
the framework of this model (‘inclusive economic growth’) the expan-
sion of extractive capital is predicated on the ability of the companies
with state support and international cooperation to obtain a social
16
The CSR protocol was constructed within the framework of an UN-led Compact
geared to the incorporation of multinational corporations into the development
process as well as a strategy of corporate self-regulation: Inclusive Growth, as its
protagonists describe it. This model was given what some regard as its consummate
form in a Report tabled in the House of Commons in 2012 (Canada, Driving Inclusive
Economic Growth).
 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
license, which in turn requires both an environmental impact study
and the ‘informed consent’ of the local communities.17
An interesting development in regard to the strategies pursued
by the corporations in Chile’s extractive sector of mining has been
reported on by Fernando Leiva, a Chilean political economist
(2019). It relates to several initiatives and strategies pioneered by
a number of powerful economic conglomerates in the mining sec-
tor in Chile. By Leiva’s account these conglomerates are in the van-
guard of constructing a new strategy for expanding extractivism
designed to defeat the community or popular resistance to the
advance of extractive capital. These strategies, aimed at the coun-
try’s strategic extractive sector, include the design of new political
technologies that reshape state, economy, and society relations to
better anchor capitalist domination at the local level. They also
include three post-2012 initiatives explicitly designed to overcome
community-based resistances to mega-extractivist projects. Pro-
moting ‘early community participation’ and ‘territorial dialogues’
these initiatives encourage the setting up of private–public social
development corporations which take on for entire regions the
production of public goods, legitimacy and social cohesion, tasks
previously performed by the State. Co-created by transnational
capital and center-left epistemic communities, these novel forms
of political domination illustrate the great variety of relations
between capital, the state, and the Left emerging in Latin America
during the Pink Tide and its aftermath.
Beyond the dynamics of conflict in the mining sector the resis-
tance on the extractive frontier has taken the form of demands by
the communities in this space for the companies and the govern-
ments to respect both their territorial rights to both the global
commons of land, water and subsistence resources; to approve
any extractive project that might impact their health, their liveli-
hoods and the environment; and to demand respect for their role
as custodians of the rights of nature, as well as the right of
decision-making related to the implementation of any projects.
Some of the most dynamic forces of this resistance have
emerged on the extractive frontier of oil production in Bolivia
and Ecuador, particularly as regards the indigenous communities
of peasant or semi-proletarianized farmers that in both countries
have led the resistance (Bozigar, Gray, & Bilsborrow, 2015).18 In
the Amazon basin of both countries, and particularly in Ecuador,
the indigenous communities on the frontier of oil extraction have
had to confront, and resist, the incursions of extractive capital in
the search for and the large-scale extraction of mineral resources
and fossil fuels.19 Given the employment opportunities and eco-
nomic assistance (micro-development projects) offered by the com-
panies the researchers found that not all indigenous groups were
opposed to the expansion of extractive activities in their territories.
This is consistent with the findings of other researchers (for e.g.
17
An interesting and well-documented example of this struggle relates to a case
still ongoing in Ecuador, where dozens of members of the Shuar Arutam, an
indigenous nation whose ancestral territory spans the mountain range along the
Ecuador-Peru border, face criminal prosecution stemming from their activism against
an open-pit copper mine in their homeland. The government did not consult with the
Shuar Arutam nation about the project, run by Explocobres S.A., a subsidiary of two
Chinese state-run companies. As it moved forward, the Shuar tried to engage various
government entities in dialogue, demanding their right to prior consultation under
the Ecuadorian constitution as well as international law. When those attempts failed,
the Shuar turned to protest. . .and the rest is history.
18
Latin America’s 600 or so indigenous groups have often been at the front lines of
the conflict over the use and purpose of land and natural resources, and the struggle
to reclaim the territorial rights of communities on the extractive frontier. This is
because of the happenstance that many of the region’s most sought-after resources lie
in their ancestral territories.
19
In the search for new insights into the struggle waged by indigenous communities
in the north of Ecuador’s Amazonia, a team of researchers led by Bozigar et al. (2015)
drew on a unique longitudinal dataset collected in the Ecuadorian Amazon over an
eleven-year period from 484 indigenous households with varying degrees of exposure
to oil extraction. Their findings are briefly summarized in the text of the paper.
9
Bebbington & Bury, 2013; Cepek, 2012; Valdivia, 2007), even in the
case of Ecuador’s Western Amazon region and Bolivia’s lowland fron-
tier where oil and gas extraction and exploration overlap with some
of the world’s highest concentrations of biodiversity as well as the
territories of indigenous peoples living in isolation. Nevertheless,
these researchers found a multitude of reasons for the resistance
and the struggle waged by Ecuador’s indigenous communities
against the incursions and destructive operations of extractive capi-
tal in their territory.20 However, not to belabor the point, what these
and other researchers, and we ourselves for that matter, found was
that while some communities were actively engaged in acts of pro-
test and the resistance movement others were more concerned with
being properly consulted with informed consent and to have a say
and participate in decisions in regard to acceptance of any proposed
extractive project. Thus, not all indigenous groups are opposed to the
expansion of extractive activities in their territories (Valdivia, 2007).
On this point also see Gudynas (2019) as well as Bebbington and
Bury (2013). Some communities are clearly divided on this point,
with some members disposed to negotiate with either or both the
companies and the government in regard to possible or perceived
benefits (employment, etc.), and others actively concerned with
mobilizing the available forces of resistance.
There is a third possible strategic response of communities on
the extractive frontier to the incursion of extractive capital and
its destructive operations, and that is abandonment of their rural
livelihoods. Unfortunately, none of the researchers whose findings
we reviewed asked the questions that might have elicited or
thrown some light on this response, which would relate to or illu-
minate the concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ popularized
by Harvey (2005). Even so, based on our own research on extrac-
tivist dynamics in Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico it is highly unlikely
that some, if not many, members of communities on the extractive
frontier have responded to the advance of extractive capital by nei-
ther adjusting to its negative socioenvironmental impacts, or
mobilizing the forces of resistance to this advance, but by taking
the ‘pathway out of rural poverty’ opened up by the World Bank
rather and other development agencies, namely, migration and
labor.
9. Conclusion
Latin America, as noted in the introduction, is caught up in a
vortex of conflicting forces of social change that can be, and have
been, mobilized towards both the right and the left. In the current
context of capitalist development in the region these forces of
change are associated with the advance of capital on various fronts
and also with forces of resistance that have been mobilized in
response to this advance. As for the forces of capitalist develop-
ment in the current context they are predominantly associated
with the accumulation and advance of resource-seeking extractive
capital within the institutional and policy framework of progres-
sive policy regimes that managed to both expand the forces of pro-
duction (increase the growth of the GDP) and improve the social
distribution of national income, bringing about a more inclusive
form of development based on poverty reduction. However, the
20
In discussing the ‘global commons’ and the struggle dynamics of social
movements it is useful to distinguish between the concept of ‘land’, at issue in
struggles throughout the 20th century, and ‘territory’, very much at issue in many
contemporary struggles. According to Walter Barraza, a representative member of the
Tonokote people—the camache (chief) of the Tonokote people of the Santiago del
Estero province, Argentina—land ‘relates to private property’ as a ‘capitalist concept’,
whereas ‘territory includes. . .people who live in that place. . . [with an] obligation to
take care of its nature.’ He adds that ‘w]e native peoples live in harmony with our
animal brothers, plants, water. We are part of the territory, which provides us with
everything we need. Cutting forests down is like cutting a limb. They are coming for
natural resources, while we live in harmony with those resources’ (Pedrosa, 2017).
10 H. Veltmeyer / World Development 130 (2020) 104916
dependence of these regimes on foreign investments in the extrac-
tion of natural resources for the purpose of exporting them in pri-
mary commodity form has turned out to be their Achilles heel.
With the end of the commodities boom the capacity of these pro-
gressive regimes to finance and sustain their social development
(poverty reduction) programs collapsed, creating conditions for a
swing in the pendulum of electoral politics towards the hard
neoliberal Right. The progressive policy agenda of these regimes
thus foundered on the reef of extractive capital. The one apparent
exception to this development was the policy regime established
and led by Evo Morales thirteen years ago in Bolivia. While other
progressive regimes in the region were forced to contend with a
dwindling surplus or a drastic reduction of resource-based fiscal
revenues, and succumbed to pressures from the hard neoliberal
right, Bolivia continued on a path of resource-export driven eco-
nomic growth, income redistribution and poverty reduction. A pos-
sible explanation for the capacity of the Morales regime—at least
until November of 2019—to resist the forces of change wielded
by the forces of reaction and the right-wing opposition is that it
was the only progressive ‘pink wave’ regime that managed to
retain its social base in the country’s social movements. Neverthe-
less, in November 2019 the regime also succumbed to the forces of
right-wing reaction, and Evo Morales was forced to resign the pres-
idency. However, it would seem that in this case the political
dynamics of regime change were different and did not involve elec-
toral politics or respond to the pressures of falling commodity
prices and reduced resource-based fiscal revenues.
As for the forces of resistance that emerged in the context of
regime change they have assumed diverse forms with uncertain
outcomes but with social movement dynamics that allow us to
conclude that none appear to have the potential of constituting a
catalyst or agency of transformative change in the immediate
future. For one thing, this resistance has to contend with the appar-
ent success of many companies in the extractive sector to divide
the communities on the extractive frontier, disposing many mem-
bers of these communities, even entire communities, to accommo-
date themselves to the advance of extractive capital in the
development process. Even so these forces of resistance bear a clo-
ser look and further research and study. At least one analyst and
several colleagues have an entirely different perspective on these
movements, viewing them as a ‘collective revolutionary subject’,
a force of social transformation (Barkin, 2019; Barkin & Sánchez,
2017).
Clearly, this is a matter of further research and closer study. At
issue here are three types of social movements, each with a
demonstrated capacity to mobilize forces of resistance. First, we
have those movements with their social base in what remains of
the peasantry—the dispossessed, landless or near-landless rural
workers created with the capitalist development of agriculture-
and indigenous communities on the extractive frontier. The cur-
rent resistance dynamics of these movements are focused not on
the land struggle, as throughout most of the 20th century, nor on
protesting the neoliberal policy agenda as was the case of the peas-
ant movements in the 1990 s. Instead, in the current context the
forces of resistance mobilized by these movements appear to be
focused on the search for an alternative to the corporate model
of capitalist agriculture, a model based on small-scale production
for local markets, an ecological revolution in methods of agricul-
tural production, and food sovereignty (Vergara & Kay, 2017).
A second form of anti-capitalist resistance has emerged on the
margins and the interstices of the capitalist system across the
region in the form of a search for and the construction of a social
and solidarity economy based on cooperativism, workers’ self-
management and local development (Azzellini, 2016; Bollier,
2014; Vieta, 2015). These resistance dynamics warrant further
research into communities on the margins of the capitalist system
engaged in resistance in the form of diverse efforts and projects to
construct a social and solidarity economy.
Also on the agenda for further research are those communities
on the extractive frontier that are seeking to reclaim their right of
access to the global commons and are actively engaged in an eco-
territorial struggle to reclaim their territorial rights. These move-
ments include movements in the Andes formed in the extractive
sector of mining oil and gas development, engaged in what
Bebbington and Bury (2013) view as ‘subterranean struggles’ over
livelihood and rural territorial development. As noted above, the
capacity of these movements on the extractive frontier, as well
as those peasant movements of rural landless workers engaged
in a struggle for land and agricultural development, to mobilize
the resistance and bring about a process of social transformation,
is a matter of dispute and further research.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Henry Veltmeyer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing -
review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the support of my colleagues and several
of my doctoral students at Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas for
critical comments and feedback on my research and the writing of
this paper.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104916.
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