6. Competing infrastructures in local mining governance in Mexico

Valeria Guarneros-Meza and Marcela Torres-Wong¹

This chapter explores how infrastructures relate directly and indirectly to and against mining as a means for defining governance and policy of place by focusing on two Mexican case studies: southern, indigenous communities in Oaxaca and northern, non-indigenous communities in Sonora. By unpicking the mechanisms underpinning the operation of power and governance, we argue that mining infrastructures bring into question the role of government authorities (local, state, and federal), especially their organisation, procedures, and policymaking practices.

Larkin (2013, p. 330) argues that ‘the act of defining an infrastructure is a categorizing moment’ comprising ‘a cultural analytic that highlights the epistemological and political commitments involved in selecting what one sees as infrastructural … and what one leaves out’. In this sense, this chapter understands infrastructures as more than the physical dimensions that a bridge, road, or a thermoelectric dam represent; rather they are a group of relations (often networked) between actors (social and institutional) and mediators (policies, mechanisms, conducts, resources, and discourses) (The Critical Infrastructure Collective, 2022). These relationships underline the importance of state, business and social actors, all of which, through daily living, contribute to the design, development, and maintenance of the infrastructure in place.

Although infrastructures rely on specific technologies, they become systemic when different dimensions beyond the technological, such as administrative and financial, begin to be amalgamated into the technical layer which gave origin to an infrastructure (Larkin, 2013). These new dimensions are developed through the social relations that emanate from what is defined as infrastructure and through the affect and sensory apprehension generated in the use-value given to that infrastructure (Harvey, 2012; Shove, 2016). Among the different uses given to their value, Shove (2016, p. 255, f. 3) argues that infrastructures can be carriers of moral and political ideas that ‘have various organising and “disciplining” effects on those who interact with them’. In other words, a biopolitical approach can be developed in the study of infrastructures (McFarlane and Rutherford, 2008; Larkin, 2013; Lemke, 2015). Building on these authors’ work, the chapter argues that infrastructures can be a mode of governmentality, which is used as a governing technology not only to discipline but also to create capacity of the targeted populations (von Schnitzler, 2008). It is enacted in the everyday through the reproduction of patterns and practices of exclusion/inclusion of citizens’ voices and needs into infrastructural decisions affecting their lives and environments. We argue that many of these practices resort to arrangements of governance that not only underpin the operation of power concentrated by political and economic elites, but also by empowered, subaltern groups that challenge dominant views of what infrastructures mean.

In critical literature on infrastructures (Arce, 2014; Kirkpatrick and Smith, 2011; Stirling, 2008) it is common to find the extent to which knowledge differential between experts and non-experts and social movements’ protests expose the predatory logics of infrastructures by pointing out the lack of accountability and openness that contribute to community displacement, contamination of their environment and living conditions, and/or fragmentation of social cohesion existing before the infrastructure was built. In other words, these studies underline the exclusionary/inclusionary effects of infrastructures. Because grassroots groups find a voice to express discontent with the dispossession effects that specific types of infrastructures have on their territories (Arce, 2014), we argue that they are able to develop innovative political technologies to challenge appropriation and distribution of resources through, for example, competing understandings of infrastructures that entail the advocacy of collective goods. By engaging in conflict against companies and the state, opposition groups help to reveal the downside of normative assumptions that underpin the operation of power in governance of place (The Critical Infrastructure Collective, 2022:125). Conflict has inspired our understanding of infrastructure; it underlines that infrastructure cannot be divorced from assessments of space; hence it is key to understanding governance arrangements and policy. In this sense, the chapter aims to unpack our understanding of infrastructure through the everyday relationships that different governing technologies unfold. Through the Sonoran and Oaxacan cases, the chapter underlines how everyday life is unavoidably shaped by (mining) infrastructure. In particular, it focuses on local governance institutions to understand how planning is implemented and moulded not only by state actors, but also by businesses and social actors who use infrastructure as a vehicle to either build empowerment or maintain the status quo.

Articulating infrastructure and mining

This chapter addresses in a threefold manner the infrastructures associated to mining: i) those physical materialities (tailings dams, energy generators) that are directly required to either explore or exploit the extraction of a mineral; ii) the physical materialities that are indirectly required to help develop the value chain of minerals, such as roads and other means of communication, storage, transportation, and urban infrastructure that provides services to the immediate community, workers and suppliers in the mining industry; iii) and alternative (social) infrastructures that challenge the mining paradigm as an engine of development, with a particular focus on eco-tourism.

The scale of accumulation that modern mining and other extractive industries generate requires a continuous investment of capital in creating an imposing built environment for its production (Smith in Arboleda, 2016, p. 101). Therefore, it is unsurprising to find debates on mining infrastructure in Latin America alongside debates on development, extractivism and its impact on natural resources (Arboleda, 2016; Bebbington et al., 2008; Svampa and Antonelli, 2010). We find Svampa’s (2018) threefold classification of ‘development discourses’ (orthodox neoliberal; neo-structuralist; radical) helpful for identifying the different meanings given to mining infrastructure.

Orthodox neoliberal and neo-structuralist discourses consider the mining sector a contributor to the provision of services that require ‘network infrastructures’, such as roads, electricity, and telecommunication systems (Graham and Marvin, 2001). These two discourses align to the modernisation ideology which assumes that, through mining, development is achieved not only because communities will have access to services to cover their basic needs (for a critique on this point see Chapter 7 on broadband Internet), but also because employment, their purchasing power, and the scholarly level of the population will increase over time. Because industrialised mining has been blamed for the environmental degradation it generates, through ‘sustainable mining’ values the neo-structuralist discourse differentiates from its orthodox neoliberal counterpart. Mining corporations – through reports published by different international organisations such as the International Institute for Environment and Development (Bastida, 2002) or resolutions reached by the UN General Assembly (UN, 2012) – are encouraged to minimise the negative impact to the environment through innovative management systems and geo-technologies that not only require information and communication systems, but also models of social responsibility. However, as Vogel (2010) argues, the socio-environmentally-friendly approaches of these types of corporations respond more to risk management decisions required to obtain investment than to genuine commitments of environment and social care as they tend to curtail profit. Hence, the neo-structuralist discourse illustrates the amalgamation of beliefs encompassing mining infrastructure, sustainable technologies, and the global financialisation of the sector.

In Latin America social conflicts are on the increase as anti-mining communities reveal the incompatibility between mining operations and the sustainability of natural resources that local populations depend on to survive (Martínez Alier, 2002; Arce, 2014). While some communities can prevent the implementation of mining infrastructures through different means including social mobilisation, intercommunity alliances, and the development of competing governance models (i.e. self-governance and autonomy) on their lands, most are incapable of counteracting the effects of national mining policies targeting their territories. Anti-mining movements lead us to Svampa’s (2018) third and radical discourse. It underlines the inadequacies of modernisation and development, especially when social non-state actors reveal in their everyday practice that state-service provision is limited as businesses and government authorities are uninterested in, or incapable of assuming, social responsibility. Refusal to assume social responsibility results from lax/non-existent regulation to mitigate and sanction environmental or human damage or from authorities not having capacity for enforcing the management of scarce resources, such as (potable) water.

The deeply rooted narrative of modernisation in Latin America, which is supposed to be achieved through infrastructure networks, is also associated with peace and political stability. However, the social conflicts generated by mining2 and the infrastructure that accompanies mining generate instead social instability which is generally targeted with repression. These downsides of mining (or other) infrastructures not only explain anti-mining mobilisations, but also highlight the ‘fetishism of infrastructures’ (Larkin, 2013). Despite their failures, infrastructures are operated by state and non-state actors on a level of fantasy to symbolise what these actors desire. In this sense infrastructures can become part of a political address to help build identity through the symbolic meaning of traditions and memories given throughout the practice of ceremonies, rituals, or other type of congregation.

Throughout this chapter we will refer to the neo-structuralist and radical discourses as vehicles for potential change. Although Mexican mining policy is framed under the orthodox neoliberal discourse, the resistance and opposition against this orthodoxy merits attention. First, a brief update on the relevance that mining infrastructure has in the country’s national policy is provided. A description of the Sonoran and Oaxacan cases is presented before discussing how the former case uses, what we coin, a disciplinarian approach in mining infrastructure. In contrast, the Oaxacan case underlines a potential alternative to mining infrastructure as a means of empowering its community, while also resorting to repressive disciplinarian tactics through the importance of indigenous traditions. Finally, conclusions are presented focusing on the value of the comparison in order to articulate infrastructure, space, and governance.

Mining infrastructure in 21st-century Mexico

In 1992, following the spirit of neoliberal reforms implemented since the 1980s, the Mexican government approved a new mining law which allowed foreign companies to develop mining operations in the country. Mexico, like other Latin American countries, benefited from the commodities boom, for example, between 2010 and 2016 the amounts of gold extracted doubled those extracted between 1521 and 1830 (Sariego, 2016, p. 24). In 2013, a series of reforms intensified Mexico’s natural resource extraction and although these reforms pertain mostly to the energy sector, such as oil, hydrocarbons, and non-renewable energies, during the same period, minor reforms to mining regulation were also carried out to streamline the issuing of concessions. These reforms spurred the number of contracts with transnational corporations for up to 50 years. By 2019, 10.6 per cent of the national territory was allocated to mining operations (Excelsior, 2019) many of which have been accompanied by increased social conflict (OCMAL, n.d.).

In 2014, a new mining tax was introduced, the Fund for the Regional Sustainable Development of Mining States and Municipalities, commonly known as Fondo Minero (FM) (Mining Fund). Up to 2019, the FM aimed to reinvest the tax paid by mining companies into the states and municipalities from where minerals were extracted. The aim of this tax was to improve the quality of life for residents in extractive communities; 80 per cent of the collection was directed to earmarked social infrastructures chosen and managed by states (37 per cent) and municipalities (63 per cent). These ranged from basic (urban) to more sophisticated infrastructures to improve water and air quality and build renewable energy sites.

In 2016, the Ley de Zonas Económicas Especiales (ZEE) (Special Economic Zones Law) and its subsequent decrees were introduced. It was foreseen that four free-trade zones, including extractive industries, were to be developed in the south-eastern states that were overlooked by the industrial development that occurred after the North American Free Trade Agreement was introduced in 1994. The ZEEs exempted corporations from levies and taxes, while providing them with labour and training subsidies. These free-trade zones require mega-infrastructure projects to which mining and hydrocarbon industries contribute through the demand for services that the different stages of their value chains require: roads and transport, water and energy, and local services (food, housing, administration).

The López Obrador administration (2018–) has not followed the ZEE strategy set by its predecessor. Moreover, the president publicly declared that during his government no more mining concessions were to be allocated (Excelsior, 2019). Yet, rhetorically, infrastructure is still present in the development plans for the country. Examples include the construction and location of a new international airport to relieve Mexico City’s current airport from its overcapacity, the Tren Maya which aims to have an extension of 1,500 km uniting key tourist sites and cities throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, and the oil refinery ‘Dos Bocas’ in Tabasco State which aims to revive this national subsector after decades of importing gasoline. It is interesting to note that in July 2019 the Tabasco State Legislature approved changes to its penal code intensifying the sanction (high fees and imprisonment) to social protesters blocking the transit of people, vehicles, and machinery. These changes have been referred to as Ley Garrote (Cudgel Law) and they have been criticised because they can potentially work as a precautionary mechanism to repress and control any social protest against the construction of Dos Bocas and Tren Maya.

Case study description

Focusing on the cases of the Sierra of Sonora and the Sierra Norte in Oaxaca State (see Figure 6.1), we will show the extent to which infrastructure has been used by state and non-state actors as a technology to discipline local populations, and also as a means to contest the unequal distribution of resources that define the relationships between local communities and mining corporations. These technologies take different shapes that range from administrative procedures and practices enacted in the everyday by government officials and mining corporations to indigenous autonomic procedures developed within traditional communitarian assemblies, and everyday local management of natural resources. As they are enacted, the reproduction of patterns and practices of exclusion/inclusion are identified in both extremes of the spectrum.

Figure 6.1 Map of Mexico, including two case studies. Wikimedia Commons, designed by Alexis Rojas. Areas indicated on the map added by the authors. CC BY-SA 3.0

The Sierra of Sonora encompasses eight municipalities and the region is known as the Sonora River Region. One of these municipalities, Cananea, has had a strong history of mining. The mine, Buenavista del Cobre (BdC), is owned by Grupo México Corporation. Its productivity focuses on three branches: mineral extraction, construction, and railways. BdC is considered to be the biggest mine in the country and the world’s fourth biggest in copper extraction (Milano, 2018). Grupo México bought the mine in 1989 during the privatisation of many state-owned enterprises in the first wave of structural adjustment policies. The presence of BdC has generated labour, environmental and territorial conflicts that have been latent to date (more below). The communities living in the river region are mostly peasant and non-indigenous. Municipal authorities, formed by their respective mayors and councillors, are democratically elected. Historically, municipalities in the region have been characterised by their institutional weakness: limited resources to respond to citizens’ needs and demands. In Cananea this void has been plugged to a great extent by the mining company, whose ownership over time has been held by public and private, national and international stakeholders. Although Cananea is no longer considered a ‘colonial’ mining enclave, it is still a modern enclave insofar as mining hinders diversification of the regional economy and relies heavily on export markets and foreign direct investment.

The renowned 2007 strike, led by Branch 65 of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros, Metalúrgicos, Siderúrgicos y Similares de la República Mexicana, resulted from changes in labour contracts and working conditions that undermined many of the benefits that the union enjoyed when the mine was state-owned. Concomitantly, the death of 65 miners in another mine owned by Grupo México in Coahuila State prompted Branch 65 to strike as workers were experiencing similar health and safety risks. In 2018, nearly 650 workers and their families were still affected by the strike as they could not be redeployed in the regional mining sector (SoyCobre, 2018). Apart from mining unions, the region has had a history of low-social mobilisation until August 2014 when 40 million litres of acidulant copper were leaked from the pipeline connected to the mine’s tailings dam into the Sonora River. Communities along the river began to mobilise demanding not only compensation for the damage caused by the disaster, but also that their communities be consulted by Grupo México and to have a voice in future decisions of infrastructure development that mining production requires.

Oaxaca is a state formed by 570 municipalities, most of which ascribe to an indigenous ethnicity. In 1995, the system of usos y costumbres was legally approved enabling indigenous municipalities to elect their political authorities according to customary laws that underline the prospect of autonomy, self-determination, and recognition of difference and diversity. The legal recognition of this system is depicted by some scholars and activists as a political conquest for indigenous peoples in Oaxaca as it represents the legitimation of indigenous political systems vis-à-vis the state (Vásquez, 2008). Capulalpam de Méndez (hereafter Capulalpam), like other Oaxacan indigenous municipalities, is co-governed by three types of authorities that hybridise in practice. First, state municipal authorities (i.e. the mayor and councillors) work very closely with other state institutions, the agrarian authorities. The agrarian authorities date from the Mexican Revolution, which redistributed land to peasants and indigenous peoples to be collectively owned, worked, and maintained by the agrarian assemblies. And third, there are indigenous authorities in the form of the (Consejo de Caracterizados) [Council of the Elderly]. In line with the usos y costumbres system, all of these authorities are elected through communitarian assemblies. Capulalpam is not only famous for its use of communitarian assemblies, but also for making decisions about significant political affairs involving territorial organisation.

In this vein, the conflict between the indigenous municipality of Capulalpam and the Canadian firm Continuum Resources has been framed by the local community as an attack against the political rule of indigenous peoples over their jurisdiction. In 2006 Continuum Resources began exploration activity. It had plans to begin an open-cast mine which is considered the worst type in terms of the environmental degradation and contamination of water aquifers given the immensity of the infrastructure that mining extraction requires. Capulalpam, through a long-standing advocacy network formed by academics and environmental and human rights NGOs, has been able to challenge and hinder the renaissance of gold mining in the area. This mobilisation has, on the one hand, been supported by the development of social infrastructure that enabled alternative economies competing with mining such as forestry, handcrafts, and eco-friendly tourism. On the other hand, the mobilisation against mining has generated intimidation and conflict not only against the mining company, but also against the neighbouring municipality of Natividad.

Capulalpam and Natividad have had a long history of gold mining. The mine, Natividad, which still undertakes minor operations in the Natividad municipality, is currently owned by a small Mexican firm, Minera Natividad y Anexas. The production of the mine declined substantially by the mid-1960s, hence the economic wealth that benefited communities began to decline as well, including urban infrastructure and roads required by mining companies. Unlike Capulalpam, Natividad does not ascribe to an indigenous ethnicity. It lacks an alternative economic model and depends on the mine to survive. In 2006, when Canadian investors attempted to reactivate mining operations, Natividad members welcomed the company in the hopes of recuperating the golden years when mining infrastructure was a sign of development and progress. In supporting mining operations, Natividad residents have suffered different types of reprisals by Capulalpam authorities. Intercommunity conflict in building the governance of place is common in many indigenous communities in Mexico (Dehouve, 2000) and in Oaxaca the mining industry has recently accentuated divisions among neighbouring communities (Hernández, 2014).

Fieldwork was carried out in the municipalities of Capulalpam, Natividad, and Oaxaca City in 2017 and 2018. Data collection included informal conversations, newspaper reviews, and 31 semi-structured interviews with local leaders, state officials, mining employees, and academics between July of 2017 and August of 2018. Fieldwork in Sonora was carried out in Hermosillo, Cananea and three other municipalities along the river: Arizpe, Banámichi, and Ures in August 2018. Thirty-nine in-depth interviews were conducted with state-level and municipal officials, mining employees, trade unions, local journalists, and community members.

Coercive consensus: infrastructure as a disciplinarian mechanism

We observed that the way infrastructure becomes a governing technology in the case of the Sonora River Region was through consensual mechanisms that were accompanied by coercion in everyday governance. First, the consensual mechanisms are discussed; these are reflected in government programmes that promote citizen participation and economic development, alongside Grupo México’s policy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) which underpins its open participation with different tiers of government and citizens. Through these programmes, we reveal the productive side of infrastructural governmentality by unpacking the level of citizen inclusion.

Participatory budgeting in Cananea

The substantial revenue that Cananea has received from the FM became an unprecedented opportunity for state-government and municipal authorities to begin strategising tax distribution and expenditure. In Cananea the first municipal administration that benefited from this resource was the 2015–18 administration. In the first two years of the administration, the FM was invested in road infrastructure. By 2017, and advised by the World Bank, 40 per cent of Cananea’s FM budget was allocated to participatory budgeting, entitled ‘Cananea tú decides’ (CTD) [Cananea you decide]. Participatory budgeting was originally a mechanism of innovative indirect democracy that originated in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Afterwards, it became the World Bank’s flagship of participation under a managerial rubric of transparency and accountability that helped local governments to reduce patronage and corruption (Goldfrank, 2012).

Unsurprisingly, CTD was coupled with ideas of citizen inclusion and associated with the broader discourse on transparency pursued by both municipal and federal governments. The 13 projects voted by citizens prioritised basic infrastructure, such as paved roads, piped water, and sewerage connections or street electrification. Works were built by private firms which tendered for the work commissioned by the municipality and financed by the FM, while citizen groups monitored the works to see if they were built on time and as planned. The number of urban infrastructure projects was noticeable; it more than doubled the investment that the previous two administrations undertook together. Interviews with residents and municipal authorities underlined how this exercise created a space to begin trusting the municipal administration after citizen consultations materialised in the construction of required public works.

For residents it was also the first time they experienced having a voice in the policymaking of their municipality. Their participation was intense for almost 12 consecutive months in which they were asked to propose freely the public works that their neighbourhoods needed, discuss other options suggested by peers, vote for the option which they considered the most important, and oversee that public works were built as planned by municipal authorities. Citizens had to attend meetings after work and at weekends and were exposed to regular municipal government advertisements on social media, radio, and public loudspeakers. It was in the quotidian that citizens were continuously immersed in the importance of urban infrastructure.

Although Grupo México did not have a direct role in the design, management, and allocation of resources of participatory budgeting, during the first three years of the FM’s implementation Grupo México staff were the representative of the mining sector in the state-level regional committee overseeing effective expenditure by the fund. The corporation’s role in this regional committee can be interpreted as a tactical step to understand how far its taxation can influence not only the design and monitoring of fiscal monies, but also municipal government decisions in infrastructure that indirectly benefit mining.

Sonora River Special Economic Zone (SRSEZ)

Following the same logic as the federal ZEE, the state government of Sonora published the SRSEZ law, which aims to promote the economic development of the region by reactivating agriculture and livestock productivity affected by the 2014 river spill. The law also emphasises the promotion of tourism as one of the first pillars in consuming the goods produced in the region, while also being a new source of income after plans for many of the towns in the region to obtain the category of pueblo mágico [magic town – a national recognition of towns that stand out for their attractiveness and customs]. Agriculture, gastronomy, and tourism are accompanied by the importance of road infrastructure which is necessary for transportation of goods and services that the SRSEZ will generate. Curiously mining is neither mentioned in the law nor implementation programme document. However, the regulation (which translates law clauses into implementation) does emphasise that the SRSEZ also promotes mining. Local newspaper articles and interviews with government officials and NGOs also emphasised that the SRSEZ was about developing mining infrastructure. The development of mining infrastructure threatens the communities which have been affected by the 2014 mining spill as more infrastructure involves territorial expansion of mining. It is in the law, regulation, and implementation of policy that infrastructure becomes the pillar of development as underlined by Svampa’s (2018) orthodox neoliberal and neo-structuralist discourses.

Grupo México’s corporate social responsibility policy (CSR)

CSR introduces concepts of rights, democracy, and sustainability into profit-making understandings of business corporations. Grupo México’s CSR began in 2009 in Cananea after three years of labour conflict with the main mining union and which until today has not been completely resolved. The main ethos of the CSR, according to staff, is to be a ‘good neighbour’ and to ensure that the activities of the BdC benefit the immediate communities. The CSR policy encompasses a community development programme that promotes education and skills training for the community as well as providing seed-corn funding for civil society groups to implement social and cultural projects. Before the FM was implemented, the CSR policy included urban infrastructure projects, but since the introduction of the tax, infrastructural needs are no longer covered by the CSR programmes. However, urban infrastructure and equipment are still an area in which Grupo México invests in other municipalities along the Sonora River that do not receive income from the FM. Particularly, the sponsorship by Grupo México to seven of the municipalities in the region to pay consultancy services to prepare their municipal development plans (2018–21) illustrates how the influence of Grupo México reaches planning projects that involve infrastructure at municipal and regional levels. This illustrates how mining infrastructure, planning of space, and everyday policy are intertwined.

In the subsequent paragraphs, we discuss the coercive side of the disciplinary mechanism that Grupo México uses, alongside other actors, to consolidate mining infrastructure. We observe coercion in the continuous threat caused by the negligent maintenance and expansion of mining infrastructure and in the meaning given by Grupo México and communities to the use of space by infrastructure in everyday practice.

Infrastructure as threat

The 2014 toxic spill from BdC was the result of bad maintenance in one of the pipelines and valves controlling pressure in the tailings dams. Regulations stipulated that there had to be an emergency dam to capture any potential leaks filtrating out of the main dam. However, on the day of the accident, this emergency dam was still under construction (Lamberti, 2018). The origins of the disaster point to the negligence of maintaining mining infrastructure according to environmental regulation, but also the lack of capacity of environmental federal authorities in monitoring that regulation is followed (civil servant). These types of shortfalls from federal authorities and Grupo México’s health and safety procedures were widely disseminated by media, and it was the mining union and human rights activists who alerted communities to the scale of the threat that mining toxic waste generated. Although Cananea’s residents have normalised the pollution generated by mining over a century of existence (Madrigal, 2019), the magnitude of the 2014 spill instilled fear into residents of other municipalities along the river. In 2016, a group of residents, organised into Comités de Cuenca Río Sonora (CCRS) [Sonora River Basin Committees], found out that Grupo México was building a second tailings dam 138 times bigger than the community of Bacanuchi, which is closest to the dam construction (Infobae, 2019). The threat of dam construction has consolidated the legal struggle that CCRS have raised through a series of lawsuits presented at the National Supreme Court of Justice, demanding the participation of communities during the decision-making of infrastructural expansion.

Infrastructure as spatial exclusion

Although road signs indicate that Grupo México has funded the construction of some highways connecting Cananea with other municipalities in the river region, the corporation has also closed old roads as it bought land to expand mining infrastructure. As local residents explained, the new Cananea-Bacanuchi road built by Grupo México takes longer because it circumvents its private land. The new road contributes to the sense of isolation that Bacanuchi residents feel as the two town centres (Cananea and Arizpe) which provide them goods and services are each a two hour-drive away. As Grupo México mining activities increase, other privatisation of public space continues to ensure that the infrastructure of the value chain of mining is well safeguarded. For example, Cananea streets that led to the rail tracks have been fenced off, to ensure that no street protest by mining workers stop the trains transporting copper to the foundry and seaport depots. Similarly, all water wells owned by Grupo México, but also owned by peasants who lease them to the corporation, are fenced off to prevent any damage to the pumps directing water to the mining site. Finally, through our observations we found that the leisure centre in Cananea, Plaza Tamosura, the only example of urban infrastructure built by Grupo México, which includes a cinema, an ecological park, restaurants, a gym, and a hotel, provides services that are mostly used by high-ranking employees of BdC, their families, and suppliers who visit Cananea on a temporary basis. However, this excludes a significant portion of Cananea’s population who cannot afford the private fees and find the centre hard to access.

Infrastructure as intimidation

As a result of the 2007 strike, which was accompanied by street protests and police repression, Grupo México followed a series of measures to protect the mining site premises in Cananea. These measures increased the security of the mine’s entrances, relocated its entrances away from the city centre of Cananea, and as mentioned above increased security of wells. Also, the new road to Bacanuchi has been guarded by armed security as residents need to cross a section that is the corporation’s private property. The increased presence of private security safeguarding the mining site and the infrastructure it requires generates an environment of not only exclusion, but also indirect intimidation of neighbouring communities. More direct forms of intimidation were also mentioned by a resident who lived in a rural district and was threatened by the local mafia after the agrarian assembly that he led complained to BdC about its breach of the water contract signed with them.

In summary, the disciplinarian approach has worked as mechanism used by the corporation and state actors to legitimise and impose consensually mining infrastructure, while discouraging communities, through coercion, from becoming a threat to mining. The combination of tactics of exclusion and violence in government and corporation policies also shows that infrastructure is key to understanding governance of place.

Eco-tourism: antidote to mining infrastructure and empowerment of local governance

The way infrastructure becomes a governing technology in the case of Oaxaca is through the opposition shown by the indigenous community of Capulalpam – and the hybrid composition of its local authorities (municipal, agrarian, and indigenous) – to an expansive open-cast gold mining project. In this municipality, opposition to mining is conjunctural to the emergence of a social type of infrastructure which is produced by collaborative effort between local leaders and ecologically progressive state actors. In Capulalpam, social infrastructure works in favour of local, indigenous authorities to maintain its autonomy and contributes to empower local governance institutions against the state-level and federal government narratives of modernisation and development. In this case, social infrastructure in the form of eco-friendly materialities, such as organic-food markets and restaurants, hospitals offering traditional medicine, ecological roads and accommodation, boosted alternative economies. These materialities have undermined the value of mining and have competed against the infrastructure accompanying it (Torres-Wong, 2019).

It has been more than a decade since eco-tourism and the sustainable management of the surrounding forest came to define the social and economic life of community members in Capulalpam. Community companies and collective businesses associated with tourism and the production of sustainable food and furniture provide employment for nearly 80 community members (Arango et al., 2018). In 2007, after a long and continuous municipal administration, the municipality became a pueblo mágico. Since then several state agencies are launching innovative marketing plans to expand tourism in Capulalpam (Secretariat of Tourism, 2020). In our interviews with indigenous leaders, municipal and agrarian authorities emphasise that young men and women are now able to find jobs as tourist guides, food providers, traditional healers, among others. However, the downside of the eco-friendly option is the repressive acts that the Capulalpam authorities use to discipline some of their own community members and neighbouring Natividad. Mining is perceived as a major threat to the existence of Capulalpam; in this regard, actions perceived as capable of undermining anti-mining stances are severely punished.

Opposition and mine production

Opposition to mining has been led by the Capulalpam authorities in their three modalities: the agrarian, the indigenous and the municipal. They received wide support from community members when Continuum Resources began an exploration phase. Strong mobilisations against the corporation’s plans began to develop through the broad networks that Capulalpam authorities created with Red de Afectados por la Minería [Network of Those Affected by Mining] and other indigenous forums that questioned and challenged the orthodox neoliberal discourse of economic development. Different street protests, road blockages, and acts of disobedience (vandalising the mine’s premises and equipment) took place. As a result, Continuum Resources left, but Minera Natividad has continued to extract gold, albeit in very limited amounts, while plans for expansion still exist.

Opposition reached its climax when the Capulalpam authorities decided to begin a lawsuit in 2015 against Minera Natividad underlining that the land, in which the mine was located, was theirs and not Natividad municipality’s, as was commonly believed. This claim accentuated the land conflict that the two municipalities have experienced over the last decade because the Natividad authorities are pro-mining and the entrance to the mine is located within Natividad’s administrative boundaries. Before the conflict, Natividad was only a municipal type of authority. Unlike Capulalpam, Natividad does not ascribe to an indigenous ethnicity and does not own agricultural land, therefore indigenous and agrarian authorities were non-existent. Yet, after the legal battle against Capulalpam unfolded, Natividad strategically elected agrarian authorities to make their territorial control claims more legitimate and counterbalance the power of Capulalpam, but without much success.

The reasons Capulalpam opposes mining are threefold. The first, is local awareness of the negative impacts that mining has on environmental resources and people’s health. When asked about why they opposed mining, it was common for people to remember previous experiences when the Natividad Mine was at its zenith back in the 1960s (Méndez, 2017). Miners and agrarian authorities of Natividad recall that although levels of employment were high, they also remember poor labour conditions for workers, their poor health, and water scarcity. The second reason is linked to the Capulalpam authorities’ battle in the 1980s against the paper company, Papelera Tuxtepec, which was indiscriminately logging their forests. As a result, an environmental consciousness and awareness began to develop that later on became useful in emphasising the pollution of the rivers and aquifers caused by the toxic waste generated by open-cast mining.

The third reason is related to the arrival of the Canadian Minera Cuzcatlán in the Oaxacan Valley Region in 2006, which has generated violent conflict among community members (pro- and anti-mining groups) and several have been killed due to increased intracommunity tension. These experiences have helped Capulalpam authorities to resolutely reject gold mining in their territory despite the promises of development for the local population that generally accompany CSR mining programmes. One of Capulalpam’s local leaders recalls the time when an employee from Continuum Resources came to Capulalpam to explain to the authorities how open-cast mining would create jobs and development for the youth. However, the authorities remained firm in their decision to reject the mining project.

Despite the strong opposition, Minera Natividad is still extracting some gold, but our data pinpoint that the extraction has been in a clandestine manner. One of the tactics of the Capulalpam authorities to discourage gold mining has been a series of environmental lawsuits against the company, underlining their lack of compliance with environmental regulation, especially with regard to toxic waste management. As a result, the Federal Attorney for Environment Protection (PROFEPA) closed down the mine while the lawsuit is being resolved. This recent lawsuit began in 2017, but while we were visiting, we observed that the mine was still in operation. Some workers told us that this was just maintenance work, but other residents mentioned rumours that small amounts of gold were still being extracted because of fully loaded lorries travelling during the night. PROFEPA officials denied that this was happening, while one official of the State Secretariat of Economy mentioned to us that low levels of extraction were happening in order to ensure maintenance. Although technically this may be a genuine reason to extract minerals, it is not administratively speaking, as the corporation is avoiding the FM which should be redirected to the Natividad municipality.

Although Natividad obtains few benefits from the operation of the mine (60 jobs for miners and sporadic economic donations to the mayor’s office), this municipality continues to support mining. Natividad claims that mining does not represent an environmental threat; on the contrary, the authorities fetishise it through their belief that it will revive the economy and bring development for the population. As is frequently observed in localities where mining companies attempt to carry out operations, deep divisions were created between Capulalpam and Natividad over which of these municipalities has the right to decide whether mining should take place.

One of the lawyers of Minera Natividad argues that the conflict between Capulalpam and Natividad is in reality a territorial dispute and mining is window dressing that indigenous leaders use. In contrast, Natividad residents say that it is the other way around. The conflict is about whether mining should move forward and the territorial dispute is only about how this conflict is presented legally (more below). The fact remains that according to our respondents in both Natividad and Capulalpam, these two towns never experienced a territorial dispute before. Instead we observed that different stances over the implementation of the mining project by Continuum Resources was the main trigger of the conflict.

Infrastructure and identity formation

Before the outbreak of the conflicts, Capulalpam and Natividad were good neighbours, cooperative, and friendly. Capulalpam owns the land where Natividad is located through the agrarian land system. In 1995, a presidential decree confirmed that the owner of the land was Capulalpam. However, Capulalpam shared land and water with their neighbours. When Natividad aligned itself to the interests of the mining company in the 2000s, the relationship between these two communities deteriorated. Capulalpam claimed that Natividad, even when it had a population and the administrative power to govern its community, ‘had no territory in which this rule can be proclaimed’ (Member of agrarian committee, Natividad). This interpretation is the rationale that the Capulalpam authorities use to prohibit gold mining. As a result, a long legal battle at the Agrarian Tribunal was filed. In 2020, the Third District Court recognised Capulalpam as the legitimate owner of the land, yet it is unlikely that this decision will end the legal battle and contribute to restoring relationships between these neighbouring municipalities.

Opposing views regarding mining operations relate to the different experiences that both municipalities had regarding the mining industry. While Capulalpam is a pre-Hispanic community, Natividad did not exist until a mine was discovered in 1776, becoming a municipality in 1939. People from all parts of the country came to Natividad to work for the mining company and settled in Natividad. The whole town was designed and built to facilitate mining. As of today, visitors can observe that the town is full of one-room constructions that miners used to rent to sleep for a few hours after the end of their shifts in the mine. During the mining peak, Natividad was famous for its cantinas, good restaurants, hotels, and a cinema. Local residents recall with pride that these types of infrastructures did not exist in any other town in the state of Oaxaca. Residents of Natividad looked back with nostalgia to the golden years when the mining company employed nearly 1,000 workers. Several interviewees emphasise that because Natividad was born out of the mining industry it has a cosmopolitan identity made up of different cultures not only from Mexico but also from other countries. Romantic memories of this idealised past help to explain why people in Natividad received with joy the news of the arrival of Continuum Resources and the built environment that accompanies mining. It is in this sense that infrastructure is closely intertwined with space and identity.

Residents of Capulalpam also worked in the mine and several of the leaders who now oppose mining do not hesitate to say publicly that they are the sons of former indigenous miners who were able to improve the quality of life of their families because of the salaries they received for their work in the mine. Yet, while the identity of the people in Natividad was shaped by the extraction of gold and silver, Capulalpam kept its indigenous government which has favoured community decision-making. Because of the geographical closeness to Natividad and that most male residents of Capulalpam worked for the mining company (only 10 minutes away), it would have been expected that Capulalpam would become a mining town like Natividad. However, indigenous leaders never allowed the opening of foreign-owned restaurants or cantinas within the jurisdiction of Capulalpam. According to a Natividad resident, the people from Capulalpam were always very protective of their traditions.

Their tendency towards a more radical anti-mining stance has been shaped by indigenous collective systems of decision-making partly empowered by the collective resistance against Papelera Tuxtepec, which required cooperative mechanisms of self-organisation and management. In 2000, the local authorities took advantage of an opportunity to develop eco-tourism made available by the State Secretariat of Tourism. Tourism officials identified that developing an eco-tourism project was viable because most people in Capulalpam were professionals and at the same time maintained a strong political organisation based on customary laws. The Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples provided the funding for the eco-tourism project and Capulalpam provided labour to build the required infrastructure. State funding was aimed at restoring old indigenous architecture and improving the quality of services to make the community attractive. Decades ago, under a government initiative, traditional, indigenous roof tiles were replaced by more functional tin roofs. Hence, the restoration of the older indigenous roofs began alongside the painting of houses according to a specific colour scheme provided by the Secretariat of Tourism.

As mentioned above, local authorities contributed to the project with materials and labour, one leader explains, ‘We put out the wood, the gravel, the sand, the stones, and the tequio (unpaid but recognised work by indigenous members).’ As a result of joint efforts, eco-tourism is now a source of employment for Capulalpam residents. Local authorities received economic resources from the state but retained the power to develop a vision of tourist activities organised by community companies; they began to administer income without state interference. In contrast to Natividad, the development of eco-tourism as a new economic model contributed to the reinforcement of anti-mining attitudes in Capulalpam as part of their collective identity.

Empowerment and repression

The most important weapon that Capulalpam used to prohibit mining for good was its system of collective decision-making anchored in customary law, hybridised with state institutions. Indigenous Mexican communities are governed by values encompassed by what anthropological studies call the Mesoamerican civilising matrix (Bonfil in Sierra and López, 2013). The state through administrative and agrarian laws defines the legal framework to which indigenous communities have to align, but the community organisation also responds to its customary law. This underlines the ‘collective’, bringing local authorities into account while promoting commitment, respect, reciprocity, cooperation and collective work (Sierra and López, 2013, p. 33). These values are reflected in the community’s overall organisation, where in principle, the municipal authorities (mayor and councillors) as well as the agrarian commission (president, secretary, and treasurer), and the indigenous council (Consejo de Caraterizados), are subject to the Communitarian Assembly, the highest authoritative body. This type of organisation was immediately recognised in our interviews with Capulalpam authorities.

Communitarian Assemblies served to reinforce anti-mining stances. Through collective scrutiny of positions to ban mining activities, local authorities were able to ensure that all community members complied with their decision to prohibit the entry of the Canadian company. We found that in practice the power of the agrarian commission was key to making decisions with regard to mining. Although the Communitarian Assembly met regularly and governing plans were presented and discussed, we were told that the proposals presented were led by the agrarian commission’s president and agreed by the rest of the Communitarian Assembly. But as Natividad’s local leader commented, not all people attended the assemblies and if they disagreed with the general decision fines or other informal sanctions, such as house evictions, took place.

These types of practices by the Capulalpam authorities have ensured that the threat of gold mining and the infrastructure accompanying it have not taken place, but instead repression against its own community was regularly used. Several residents and authorities mentioned that repressive acts were also perpetrated against Natividad through sanctioning tactics that resulted from land conflict; the most mentioned one was an infrastructural intervention – the cutting off of the water supply to Natividad in 2003 after the Capulalpam authorities broke the water pipes. Because the water source is within Capulalpam ‘territory’, they had the capacity to interrupt provision to Natividad. A resident of Capulalpam and the former municipal authority recalls that he did not agree with the decision to cut off water to Natividad, ‘they were our brothers and sisters, there were children there, but the authorities made their decision and there was nothing we could do’.

Repression alone would not have been as effective without the political decisions that the Capulalpam authorities had made in the past and which have helped to provide economic wellbeing to the community. As a result of the mobilisation against logging in the 1980s, opportunities to develop forestry activities emerged. In turn, they became a gateway to other economic activities such as wood carving and eco-tourism. Over time they have developed and provided the community with income. Capulalpam’s nomination as a pueblo mágico has been particularly helpful in developing local businesses dedicated to tourism, such as small hotels and restaurants selling local produce. In order to thrive, these economic activities, especially forestry and eco-tourism, work as opposition to open-cast, gold mining activities.

Capulalpam has thereby become a community with a more diversified economy that can dispense with gold mining. It has a governing institutional assemblage that empowers its local authorities, led by the agrarian commission, which have shown their resourcefulness: to accuse the mining corporation of violating environmental regulation, to challenge Natividad’s local-government status by claiming that its lack of territory is supported by archival evidence and to build a network of alliances with state-level politicians, national and international academics and NGOs, and indigenous umbrella organisations that have fought not only against mining, but also against the orthodox neoliberal discourse of development. It is this conjuncture of factors that render Capulalpam as a potential example of radical discourse insofar as local customary laws fill-in the void left by the state’s inability to respond consistently to social and environmental responsibilities. However, the potential that the Capulalpam case embodies is curtailed by the exclusion and violence inflicted on Natividad and some of its community members. Violence and exclusion break the reciprocity, interconnectedness, and respect for life that broader values of alternative transformative projects within the radical discourse pursue. Equally, the benefits obtained from the pueblo mágico programme can raise questions on the extent to which Capulalpam is really overcoming the neo-structuralist discourse of development.

Conclusions

Through the Sonoran and Oaxacan cases we have shown how infrastructures work both as a governing technology to discipline populations and to produce capacity or empower. In Sonora the governing technology has shown that discipline is achieved through a more conventional approach that combines consensual and coercive mechanisms to maintain the power of the traditional elites, in particular, local-government authorities and Grupo México and the broader mining industry. The consensual mechanisms have been identified through the creation of government programmes, state-led citizen participation initiatives, and the CSR. The CSR has adopted values on sustainable mining where participatory mechanisms are important to offer a more caring approach toward the environment and wellbeing of the population. However, these values are encompassed by the neo-structuralist discourse, which subject them to a growth-led-by-exports rationale. The coercive side is implemented through threatening and intimidating mechanisms that are materialised in the fragmentation of living space to ensure the protection of mining production while accentuating the exclusion of sections in the community. However, it is fear and extreme material precarity (displacement), a result of these coercive tactics, that mobilised communities (CCRS) to expose the downsides of the sustainable assumptions behind neo-structuralist development. How successful this mobilisation will be is still unknown, but it may be that their network of support will keep motivating their fight.

In contrast, the Oaxacan case through enforcement of indigenous political systems and customary laws shows how Capulalpam has been able to challenge the neoliberal discourse of development backed by mining infrastructure. Local leaders showed that their governance model based on indigenous-community values and collective memories can be more effective than mining in delivering development for local populations without damaging their health or environment. In this case territory, mediated by infrastructure acquires significance as social struggle is linked to the prospect of autonomy, self-determination, and recognition of difference and diversity, while building a relative distance from the market and the state. The experience of Capulalpam shows that community empowerment is created through the hybridisation of opportunities offered by state institutions (i.e. Secretariat of Tourism, the Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples) and by customary and agrarian laws. Nevertheless, the empowerment attained over the last 40 years is not exempt from disciplinarian mechanisms. The Capulalpam authorities use these to maintain the power acquired against neighbouring communities (Natividad) and if need be against their own population when the local leaders’ interests are challenged. By building an alternative to gold mining, leaders have addressed eco-tourism, alongside the infrastructural materiality it involves (restaurants, hotels), to build their identity. However, this new identity would not have been acquired without the mining identity that previous generations held.

Overall, these two cases show the plurality and tensions of local governance that Mexican mining involves and which would not have been possible to discern without the focus on the system of dimensions (beyond technology) that give meaning to infrastructure (Larkin, 2013). Both cases show the importance of local governance institutions and related everyday arrangements to understand how policy is implemented and shaped not only by local state actors, but also by business and social actors who have used infrastructure as a vehicle to either build empowerment or maintain the status quo. In contrasting the two cases, we have shown that the orthodox neoliberal discourse (Svampa, 2018) is resisted and challenged. The labour and environmental conflicts in the Sonoran case have shifted the discourse, albeit very gradually, towards the neo-structuralist pole of the continuum. Therefore, the discipline and order in local governance follow a conventional approach to power, in which coercion is whenever possible masked by consensus. Oaxaca’s more radical discourse responds to the presence of customary laws alongside indigenous identity. This conjuncture underpins a struggle against a double colonialism (resource extraction and the state ruling indigenous territories) that renders discipline and order more empowering and unconventional than the Sonoran case.

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