Katy Jenkins, Associate
Professor of International Development and Co-Director of the Centre for
International Development at Northumbria University, writes in Discover Society about her sociological photography project.
“We’re always saying ‘No,
no, no to mining’, but we never put forward an alternative or positive
proposal.” This was how one woman explained her motivation to take part in my
participatory photography project, which explores women anti-mining activists’ conceptions
of ‘Development’, in the context of living with proposed and actual large-scale
resource extraction.
The project, funded by a
Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, involves working with a group of 12 women from
Cajamarca, a small city in the North of Peru, enabling them to use photography
to reflect on and capture their own ways of thinking about Development, and in
particular to think through alternative visions of Development that challenge
the dominant Peruvian national narrative of extractive-led Development.
(Right: Gladis Chilon Gutierrez/Women, Mining and Photography Project 2017)
Yanacocha gold mine, the
largest gold mine in Latin America, is owned by US Newmont Mining Corporation,
Peruvian Minas Buenaventura and the World Bank’s International Financial
Corporation. It has operated in the region of Cajamarca since 1993. During this
time, there has been widespread and growing concern about the mine’s operation
and, in particular, its environmental impact, especially in relation water
quality and quantity. The city of Cajamarca has become an emblematic site in
relation to socio-environmental conflicts around mining.
In 2000, local opposition to
mining intensified, and gained international prominence, when a truck
contracted by the mine spilt significant quantities of mercury along a stretch
of road in and around community of Choropampa, with devastating health and
environmental impacts. Then in the mid-2000s, protests erupted in opposition to
the company’s proposed Cerro Quilish expansion, which sought to develop the
Quilish mountain, which is considered a sacred place by local people, has a
fragile ecosystem and is situated at the head of the watershed. The strength of
community opposition and public opinion eventually forced the Minera Yanacocha
company to withdraw from the Quilish concession but only after violent confrontations
between protestors and the police.
Most recently, Cajamarca has
been in the spotlight for vehement and prolonged opposition to the proposed
Minas Conga project, a proposed multi-billion dollar expansion to Yanacocha’s
existing project. Community opposition in both Cajamarca city and the wider
region of Cajamarca, culminated in protests during 2011 and 2012, leaving five
protestors dead, and eventually leading to the indefinite suspension of the
project. Nevertheless, despite the suspension of Conga, there are ongoing
tensions around actual and proposed extractive activities, personified in the
now iconic figure of Máxima Acuña Chaupe – winner of the 2016 Goldman
Environmental Prize – and her battle against Newmont Mining Corporation.
Activist organisations continue to fiercely resist Conga and other possible new
mining developments, as well as opposing the broader development model
associated with this sort of large-scale resource extraction.
(Right: 2 Felicita Vasquez Huaman/Women, Mining and Photography Project 2017)
The region of Cajamarca has
thus become internationally renowned for its opposition to large-scale mining
and, over the years, there has been a steady stream of journalists, academics,
PhD students, filmmakers and photographers, supporting the Cajamarquinos in
their struggle and sharing it with the world. Whilst this has given
international prominence to Cajamarca’s struggles, activists, such as the women
those involved in this particular project, do feel quite thoroughly
‘researched’ and tend to have a well-rehearsed ‘script’ in relation to
recounting their involvement in the conflict. The women activists embraced this
project as an opportunity to construct and disseminate their own narratives,
and to create a set of resources to enable them to actively communicate their
ideas and perspectives in a distinctive way. Participatory photography provides
a tool with which to achieve this, facilitating a move away from more
traditional interviewer/interviewee power dynamics, and allowing participants
to set the agenda and foreground the topics they deem important.
Over three months during
2017, a group of women drawn from three women’s organisations (two from
Cajamarca city, and one from Celendin (a small town close to the proposed Conga
development)), took part in a series of workshops and activities aimed at
capturing their distinct approaches to contesting mining developments, and
thinking about alternatives, using the medium of participatory photography. In
the course of the project, the women took several thousand photos, reflecting
on three themes they chose to work on – ‘alternatives to resource extraction’,
‘wellbeing’ and ‘community’. These were themes that the women themselves
thought it important to explore, and that reflected discussions about the
meaning of ‘Development’ from the initial participatory workshop.
(Right: Filomila Sangay Lopez/Women, Mining and Photography Project 2017)
Drawing on their own lives
and experiences, the women’s photos provide an optimistic, vibrant and rich
perspective on the region of Cajamarca and their hopes for its future.
Participatory photography is often used with marginalised and disadvantaged
groups, and provides an opportunity for alternative voices and perspectives to
come to the fore. Many of the women participants in this project had never used
a camera before. For them, the most important aspect of the project is the
opportunity to exhibit their work in the main plaza in Cajamarca city, enabling
them and their ideas to occupy and claim (increasingly restricted) civic space,
and to showcase their newly acquired skills, their creativity and visions for
the future, to local people, government officials, the mining company, and
organisations involved in contesting mining. This exhibition is planned for
International Women’s Day, 8th March 2018.
The women’s photos reflect
the importance they place on a more people-centred, human-scale Development, a strong
contrast with the highly industrialised and mechanised forms of mining that
they experience in their region, and strongly contest. A sense of hope
permeates the women’s images, foregrounding that which they value as
distinctive and meaningful, and portraying Cajamarca as a culturally,
historically and naturally rich region with an abundance of resources and
opportunities.
Such images and perspectives
stand in stark contrast to the devastation and destruction wrought by large
scale mining in the region, and across the global South. In choosing not to
focus on this aspect of mining, the project aimed to open up spaces of
possibility rather than capturing the already well-documented and extensive
negative impacts of mining – which might also have placed the women activists
in difficult or dangerous situations, and exposed them to multiple risks.
The women’s own
subjectivities and positionalities as anti-mining activists have been central
in the types of image they have generated. Indeed, this is an integral
expectation of participant photography; there is no expectation of, or desire
for, objective or values-free ‘data’. In this case, aspects characteristic of
much of the campaigning narratives of the broader anti-mining movement are
central to the visions put forward in the women’s photos. Food and culture,
exemplifying a threatened rural way of life, were recurring themes that
appeared in all twelve women’s photos, despite most of the women currently
living in the city.
Many of the women had grown
up in rural communities, and some self-identified as indigenous women (still
relatively uncommon in much of Peru due to the continuing legacy of severe
discrimination against indigenous peoples). Many women had purposely sought out
images of rurality and, in particular, agricultural abundance, and used these
images to emphasise the opportunities they felt small-scale agriculture
presented for an alternative model of Development, not based on mineral
extraction.
(Right: Yeni Cojal Rojas/Women, Mining and Photography Project 2017)
It should be recognised that
there is an element of rose-tinted spectacles to these sorts of images, they
portray an idealised vision of rural life, and for the most part do not capture
poverty and inequality within their purview. Despite this caveat, they do
reflect on ideas around sustainability, and self-sustenance, attesting to the
women’s belief that Development should not be something imposed from outside
but should emerge from within a community and a particular context.
The women’s desire to
portray themselves and other women as active agents of change within their
communities is also evident in many of their photos. Their images capture
examples of women as micro-entrepreneurs; reflect on opportunities for the
diversification of women’s livelihoods (including herbal remedies, elaboration
of dairy products, soap production); and show women in myriad roles, as
agriculturalists, food producers, mothers, muralists, market sellers,
musicians, community organisers and activists. They portray women as integral
to the functioning and survival of communities and families, and as capable,
self-motivated and hard-working individuals.
Most recently, having come
to the end of the active photography phase of the project, I conducted
interviews with the women about the photographs they have taken – giving them an
opportunity to reflect upon what photos they took and why, and also what photos
they chose not to take, or were unable to take. These interviews, as well as
narratives and poems written by the women about some of their photos, will be
analysed over the coming months, and will provide a deeper insight into the
women’s stances, motivations and aspirations, prior to the final exhibition of
a selection of the women’s images and narratives in spring 2018. The project
can be followed here.
Katy
Jenkins is Associate Professor of International Development and Co-Director of
the Centre for International Development in the Department of Social Sciences,
Northumbria University. Katy’s research focuses on women’s activism and
community organising in Latin America, and she is currently involved in several
projects exploring women’s resistance to large scale resource extraction.