Abstract

¿La minería para el buen vivir? Large-scale Mining, Citizenship, and Development in Correa’s Ecuador

Abstract: Through a persuasive discourse on well-being and citizen “participation,” Ecuador Estratégico, a government agency tasked with implementing buen vivir (good living) in regions of resource extraction, plays a pivotal role in justifying and legitimizing resource extraction locally. An examination of the practices and discourses of this state institution and of the responses of community members and the ways they negotiate citizenship in the context of mining-based development calls into question the mobilization of buen vivir to govern local populations and push for a controversial mining project. These political strategies were key for the onset of large-scale mining under former president Correa, the effects of which may endure for decades.