Livelihoods, Mining and Peasant Protests in the Peruvian Andes

This paper explores the relationships between Andean Peru's new mineral-based neoliberal political economy, protests against transnational mining corporations and the transformation of livelihoods taking place in the region. It evaluates how new transnational mining operations are dramatically altering livelihood resources in two case-study areas of the Peruvian Andes and in what ways they are linked to community mobilizations against mining operations. The paper argues that the utilization of frameworks based on resources and livelihoods can contribute to analyses of the spatial relationships between transnational mining corporations and local livelihood transformation. Through a comparative case study of two peasant protests that began in late 1999 and continue today in the Cordillera Huayhuash and Cajamarca, the paper illustrates how transnational mining corporations are transforming the environmental, social and economic contexts for livelihoods in the region and how these changes are linked to household engagement in protests against mining operations.