Authoritarian enclaves, extractivism and social contestation in the Peruvian Andes

In contemporary Peru, declarations of state of emergency are used as governmental devices to control social opposition to extractive projects. Since 1933 the Peruvian Constitution contemplates the regime of exception – in the forms of state of emergency and of state of siege—as a legitimate hiatus of fundamental rights, to deal with extraordinary circumstances such as natural catastrophes, declarations of war, or armed conflict and extreme social unrest. But in the past 23 years, democratic governments are continuously issuing declarations of state of emergency to deal not with extraordinary circumstances but with citizens’ protests and confrontations over extractive projects that have increased and expanded throughout the national territory during the 21st century. Although the Peruvian state has designed and implements a national policy of dialogue that seeks to settle disagreement through negotiation, at the same time, it persistently resorts to the state of exception, in the form of declaration of state of emergency, suspending fundamental rights such as the right to association and the inviolability of the domicile. This presentation, informed in statistical and ethnographic research in an emblematic case in the Peruvian Andes, analyzes the authoritarian use of declarations of state of emergency to secure the functioning of Las Bambas, one of the biggest open-pit copper mining projects in the world with a production of over a billion tons and an estimated lifetime of half a century. The analysis takes the recurrent use of state of emergency decrees to deal with social discontent as an indicator of the informal institutionalization of an authoritarian rule in the form of an enclave. Paradoxically, democratic institutions coexist with exceptional mechanisms that suspend –many times for years—fundamental democratic rights. What does it mean that the exception has become the norm with regards to the use of declarations of state of emergency to deal with social demands? What are the consequences for the functioning of democracy? How is the exception legitimized? This article describes and analyzes the legal and political processes by which the state of exception is formally instituted, as well as the consequences for democracy and the rule of law.