In Unearthing Conflict. Corporate Mining, Activism and Expertise in Peru, Fabiana Li takes the reader on a personal storytelling journey into the aggressive expansion of mining in Peru and the civil protests it generated in the late 1990s. Li’s book provides the first in-depth analysis of some of the most significant conflicts that mining companies generated in Latin America as well as an accurate and detailed essay on the broad range of multi-level negotiation processes that took place.

During her fieldwork, Li experienced, firsthand, crucial events in the territories just when mining began to generate greater opposition and conflict in Peru.Footnote ¹ In this book, Li adopts a descriptive and academic stance to analyze the changing technologies around mineral extraction and reviews emergent and unique forms of political activism in the country through personal stories from various stakeholders. Specifically, Li examines how civil society has tried to gain a more equitable distribution of mining revenues by introducing the concept of ‘equivalence’.

Compared to other Latin American countries, the intensity and frequency of conflicts in Peru was unparalleled. Li notes, for example, how mining has transformed local communities into new actors in the political realm of a ‘local-global front’ against mining, and how mining has accelerated the communities’ demands for access to water. Li also stresses that the so-called ‘conflictos mineros’ (mining conflicts) seemed to intensify despite the introduction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures by mining corporations. Building on political ecology, which combines political economy with a concern for the environment, Li states that ‘pollution’ materializes as what she calls an ‘entity’ and that ‘conflicts’ consist of ongoing efforts towards stabilization.Footnote ² The book’s analysis starts in La Oroya and Tambogrande and ends in Yanacocha, South America’s largest gold mine.

The book first posits a very common dilemma in Peru, as well as in other Latin America countries, where most governments pledged the benefits of mining as a secured path for developing the country’s economy. Li discusses how local communities adopted strategies to counter the corporate and political powers. During the 1990s, marches, protests, and roadblocks became common occurrences in many parts of the country while the government embraced foreign investment and defended a neoliberal economic approach that emphasized that resource extraction was a necessary path to progress and development.Footnote ³ Protests were not unprecedented in the history of Peru but Li shows how the protestors’ demands were predominantly expressed in ‘environmental’ terms and, in particular, linked to the right to water.Footnote ⁴

The book is divided into three parts. In Part 1 ‘Mining Past and Present’, Li discusses the relevance of mining and metallurgical activity in the Central and Northern Highlands. She focuses on mining technologies, political activism, and corporate practices. In Parts 2 (‘Water and Life’) and 3 (‘Activism and Expertise’) Li focuses on the Yanacocha mine. In these two parts, Li presents the model of modern mining and describes a participatory water monitoring program. She details how different stakeholders used the language and tools of science and negotiation to support their claims in regards to water rights. She also explains how the protests related to the expansion of Yanacocha into Cerro Quilish.

Chapter 4 (‘Irrigation and Contested Equivalences’) discusses one of the key issues of the book. Here Li presents ‘the logic of equivalences’ by describing how an irrigation canal became the focus of disagreement and how the logic of equivalences lead to an agreement through a participatory water monitoring program.Footnote ^{5 ,} Footnote ⁶ The author affirms that this logic often confronts analytical tools, that make things quantifiable and comparable, with a process of negotiation aimed at achieving a common definition about what counts as an authoritative knowledge. Li argues that, ‘the concept of equivalence serves as an analytical tool to make sense of the processes that were intended to resolve the disputes between the mining company and canal users but that contributed instead to the endurance of those disputes’. With this concept, Li overcomes the restrictive idea of ‘exchange’ by representing ‘equivalence’ as a process of negotiation where what is being negotiated often falls outside the logic of the market. This is particularly true in the case of water which, according to the author, has not only a utilitarian value but also creates new relationships and ways of understanding landscape. Li finally draws our attention to how disputes over equivalence created both new ways of measuring pollution and novel forms of social relations—in particular with the mining company—participation, and disputes. The author mentions how this process created new ‘connections’ that allowed campesinos, for example, to become entrepreneurs.Footnote ⁷ Li finally suggests that ‘equivalences helped to establish consensus and agreements, but these agreements were necessary compromises for an irreparable loss’.Footnote ⁸

Another key issue of the book is presented in Chapter 5 (‘Stepping outside the Document’) which is dedicated to the analysis of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) model (‘the document’) applied in the expansion of the Yanacocha mine.Footnote ⁹ According to the author the EIA is the main channel for corporations and states to achieve legitimacy for mining activities. Nevertheless, Li argues that this type of accountability framework prioritizes mining interests because it enables companies to define the standards of performance that governments will use to establish their compliance criteria at the national level. According to the author, the risks considered in an EIA are those that a company deems to be technically manageable by means of, for example, a mitigation plan. It conceals other risks that are difficult to ‘ascertain, quantify and control’.Footnote ¹⁰ Li also stresses that the EIA, which is carried out by the mining company and its consultants, is also usually the baseline study used by the government to ground its future analysis of the region. Hence, the EIA ‘serves as a self-regulatory regime that contributes to state legitimacy’.Footnote ¹¹ Moreover, Li affirms that the EIA participatory process can, in fact, lead to a limitation of public critique and create a false image of consensus. Indeed the EIA may lead to some modifications of projects but it would never be able to stop a proposed project, as recent history shows. In this regard, the author presents her theory about transparency vs. participation by showing that the latter is not implied in the process-seeking consensus during the EIA participatory process. Finally—and even if this is not the core intention of the author—Chapter 5 shows how local communities are often put at a disadvantage while corporate and governmental powers prevail. Li’s descriptive style often leads to vague conclusions. It seems like she is reluctant to draw clear conclusions from her rich data.

The strength of Li’s book lies in its detailed study of the conflict around mining in Peru. It is relevant for non-governmental organizations as well as scholars that would like to understand the development of that conflict and especially the logic of negotiation and confrontation between mining corporations, governments, and local communities. It thereby reflects the diminished role of states in relation to the protection of their citizens’ rights when confronted with the negative impacts of mining.

At the same time, though, Li fails to scrutinize in more depth some of the issues that she encountered during her fieldwork. She could have drawn more explicit conclusions about the factors and indicators able to measure the imbalance of powers between the binomial state-company and local communities. Her extremely balanced approach regarding all stakeholders makes her avoid making more explicit conclusions about a possible connivance between the companies and the state and other supra-level connections between other agents. The analysis stays descriptive and lacks a tailored, systematized and theorized model for the analyses of mining conflicts that could be applicable to other contexts.