Zoom Link:
https://unilu.zoom.us/j/96980410248?pwd=WUVJcVZzVTgxRWpTOWtjSWp0QnMzUT09

Meeting ID: 969 8041 0248
Passcode: 500274

Down by Law: Criminalization of Social Protest in Peru’s Mining Regions

In recent years, we have observed an increasing “juridification of social protest” (Eckert et al. 2012) in the context of industrial mining projects in Peru. On the one hand, local social movements and national legal NGOs have turned to the courts to demand justice for human rights violations and environmental damage. On the other hand, state and corporate actors have also used the law to assert their interests within the social conflicts. These actors turned to the judicial system to prosecute activists for their involvement in protest movements. My contribution sheds light on this “dark side of juridification” and examines how the criminalization of social protest functions in the context of a mining conflict in the Cajamarca region. In doing so, I examine different forms of law’s domination as perceived by activists on the ground. Furthermore, I discuss how social movements deal with the threat of legal processes, how they respond to them, and what conclusions we can draw from this in relation to current legal anthropological debates about the ambiguous forces of law in social struggles.