This dissertation research project builds on the conflict over copper mining in the Intag region of northwestern Ecuador. Despite sustained interest by a number of mining companies since the mid 1990s, communities adjacent to the mineral concession have blocked engineers from accessing the area. Mining has been a point of tension in places like Intag and a topic of national discourse since the early 1990s, when the World Bank sponsored a series of reforms to attract international mining investment. Though no major mining projects have developed, Ecuador's current president remains equally certain of the country's mining potential.
Contemporary claims of mineral wealth stand in stark contrast to previous assessments of mineral dearth. Through most of the 20th century, geologists describe Ecuador as a country noted primarily for its lack of mineral resources. Until their considerations in the 1970s of plate tectonic models of copper deposits, mining geologists repeatedly stated that Ecuador's geology would not support industrial-scale mining. Based on Ecuador's transformation from a country of mineral scarcity to one of mineral plenty, and drawing on the conflict over copper mining in the Intag region, this research asks the following question. How are mineral resources in the Ecuadorian Andes historically constituted, socially constructed, and differentially imagined?
The goal of this research project is to de-naturalize mineral resources by investigating the historical, political, cultural, and geological contexts through which mineral deposits, especially copper, materialized as objects of economic significance in Ecuador. This research will examine Ecuador's mineral resources as they emerged in scientific journals, in relation to geological maps, and through geological fieldwork. It will compare contemporary assessments, narratives, and metaphors of Ecuador's mineral wealth with depictions of Andean nature by 19th and early 20th century travel writers and naturalists. Through research on Intag's settlement history and ethnographic analysis of contemporary agrarian relations, this project will also consider local resource epistemology, the perspective from which local populations represent and depict subsoil mineral resources. This project draws form and contributes to literature from Science and Technology Studies as well as environmental anthropology and Latin American history. In the way it elucidates resource epistemology, resource history, and state development goals, the results of this project will be a useful reference point for both local communities and policy makers.
