Mining, Criminalization and Developmentalized Sustainability Violence in the Peruvian Highlands: The Case of Conga

The article explores the use of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) discourse in transforming longstanding socio-environmental development and commons conflicts in the mining landscape of the Peruvian Andes shaped by historical patterns of dispossession and violence. Building on the case of Conga, a megaproject in the region of Cajamarca, the article links histories of violence and resistance by the rondas campesinas with the proliferation of sustainable development initiatives. The findings suggest not only addressing the relationship between sustainability discourse, mining and violence, but considering sustainability as integral to the different forms of violence currently affecting the sector. The “SDGization” of the mining encounter does not resolve but rather has the paradoxical consequence of normalizing the structural violence of extractivism. In what can polemically be labelled “sustainability violence”, we argue that sustainability agendas and discourses offer another co-optable layer or materialization (investing, reporting and projects) that normalize and perpetuate century-old forms of extractivist violence against indigenous commons and their defenders. Alternative development visions, customary institutions and indigenous identities are not simply ignored, but “othered” as in discursive and legal terms. Developmentalized violence, we argue, is not only the physical presence, concession or the displacement resulting from extractivist policies, but one equally shaped by narrow sustainable development plans, objectives and reporting practices. The article displays the distinct translations and mediations between sustainable development measures and the structural violence experienced in the sector.