Environmental Crime in Latin America

Table of Contents

1. Frontmatter

2. 1. Introduction: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land in Latin America

   Avi Brisman, David Rodríguez Goyes, Hanneke Mol, Nigel South

   Abstract

   Over the last 25 years, Green Criminology has developed into a fertile area of study that now attracts scholars from around the world with a wide range of research interests and theoretical orientations. It spans the micro to the macro–from work on individual-level environmental harms to business/corporate crimes to state transgressions–and includes research conducted from both mainstream and critical theoretical perspectives, as well as arising from interdisciplinary efforts. Nonetheless—and in line with the proposal for a Southern Criminology put forward by Carrington and colleagues (2016)—it is still the case that much work needs to be done to ensure that the environmental crimes and harms affecting the lands and peoples of the Global South are brought to the forefront of a truly transnational Green Criminology. This volume makes a contribution to this process as the first text to focus specifically on examples from Latin America.

3. Sociological Analyses of the Theft of Nature

   1. Frontmatter

   2. 2. The Environmental Damages and Liabilities of Collective Suicide

      Cleotilde Hernández Suárez

      Abstract

      When different types of anthropogenic effects on nature are discussed in daily life and even in academic circles, the phrase “We are destroying the planet” is heard to the point where it becomes a cliché. This expression, however, contains—and conceals—dynamic and complex relationships between and within different human groups and nature with significant impacts on the natural environment.

   3. 3. The Archipelago of Chiloé and the Uncertain Contours of its Future: Coloniality, New Extractivism and Political-Social Re-vindication of Existence

      Eduardo Mondaca

      Abstract

      The recent history of the Archipelago of Chiloé is one of violent exploitation that has affected its place and space, as well as the existential meanings of its community, yet expressions of protest and resistance have been silenced. This was a complex political, institutional and ideological process, combined with a colonial history of extraction that includes both “non-renewable resources” (classic extractivism) and “renewable natural resources” (new extractivism), guided by a logic of exploitation or privatization of these. This chapter will focus on a description and analysis of the process of plunder of nature in Chiloé as part of a “new extractivism” that includes not only aquaculture, forestry and mining projects, but also “luxury conservationist” mega-projects and wind power. Following this, the processes of identity re-definition and re-construction that have allowed a political and social re-vindication of opposition to such a scenario will be addressed. Before proceeding, however, a brief overview of the Archipelago of Chiloé is necessary.

   4. 4. Understanding Environmental Harm and Justice Claims in the Global South: Crimes of the Powerful and Peoples’ Resistance

      Gustavo Rojas-Páez

      Abstract

      Historically, the commodification of nature has been accompanied by, and resulted in, violent processes generating both human and environmental harm. Ever since colonial times, the plundering of natural resources has served the interests of powerful groups that have benefited from dehumanizing practices carried out in the name of civilization and discourses upheld by the western cultural and political project of modernity. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 (also known as the Congo Conference or the West Africa Conference), organized by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, various European states asserted their sovereignty over Africa and divided the continent into colonies. These declarations were fundamental to legitimizing the extraction of minerals from African territories that contributed to the industrial development of Europe and its role in world politics as a hegemonic actor.

   5. 5. Mining in Colombia: Tracing the Harm of Neoliberal Policies and Practices

      Laura Gutiérrez-Gómez

      Abstract

      The mining business has long been known as a dirty one: from nineteenth-century coal mines—where black lung, collapsing roofs and gas explosions were among the standard occupational hazards—to twenty-first-century open-pit gold mines—where land poisoning and depletion of renewable and nonrenewable resources is inevitable. Despite the well-known risks of large-scale extraction of minerals to humans, nonhuman animals and ecosystems, over the last couple of decades, the Colombian government has introduced a series of policies to attract international capital to the national extractive business. The government has been successful in this and, as a consequence, a mining boom—aided by aggressive implementation of neoliberal policies—has taken place.

4. The Takeover of Land and the Plundering of its Products

   1. Frontmatter

   2. 6. Global Pollution, Multinational Oil Companies and State Power: The Case of Yaiguaje v. Chevron Corporation

      Matthew G. Yeager, Jade L. Smith

      Abstract

      This chapter is a case study of an ongoing class action tort claim against one of the largest multinational oil companies in the world, Chevron Corporation (“Chevron”). It highlights not only the early work of Edwin Sutherland on white collar crime (1940, 1949, 1983), but addresses the role of global corporate power as this major oil company aggressively fights a damage award of $9.5 billion issued by the Ecuadorian courts. Indeed, in 2011, Chevron sued legal counsel and the plaintiffs under the U.S. federal racketeering statutes, claiming successfully that the judgment in Ecuador was fraudulent in itself. Here, we find examples of environmental harm being fought in the civil courts (no one has suggested criminal liability) with a multinational corporation refusing to pay the foreign judgment by accusing the plaintiffs, their counsel, and the Ecuadorian courts of fraud.

   3. 7. A Decade of Social and Environmental Mobilization Against Mega-Mining in Chubut, Argentinian Patagonia

      Ana Mariel Weinstock

      Abstract

      The social-environmental movement against mega-mining in Argentina gained worldwide attention in 2003, when Esquel, a small city of no more than 30,000 inhabitants, located in the province of Chubut in the Patagonia region and far away from the centres of power, impeded a multinational firm from extracting gold from an open-pit mine. To be precise, on March 23, 2003, the Assembly of Self-Convened Neighbours (Asamblea de Vecinos Autoconvocados), under the slogan, “Say No to the Mine” (“No a la Mina”), won 81 % of the votes in a nonbinding referendum. This victory started a cycle of socio-environmental protests in Argentina that inspired opposition to other environmentally-destructive projects, including cellulose producing pulp mills, the privatization of river access, and the expansion of transgenic soy.

   4. 8. Agro-Industry Expansion Through “Strategic Alliances”: The Shifting Dynamics of Palm Oil-Related Dispossession

      Hanneke Mol

      Abstract

      In order to open up new terrains to capital accumulation, agro-industries expand into, transform, and, in the process, frequently destroy socio-natural spaces where a noncapitalist logic of production and subsistence hitherto predominated. The expropriations upon which such capital accumulation rests have more often than not been of a forcible and violent character. Marx, writing about the “primitive accumulation” that separates producers from the means of production (1990, p. 875), noted that what he viewed as the prehistory of capital is “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.” Harvey (2003), among others, has pointed to the continuity of the features of expropriation described by Marx as primitive accumulation, coining the term “accumulation by dispossession” to refer to this (see also Gutiérrez-Gomez, this volume).

   5. 9. The Injustices of Policing, Law and Multinational Monopolization in the Privatization of Natural Diversity: Cases from Colombia and Latin America

      David Rodríguez Goyes, Nigel South

      Abstract

      The important part of the massacre [of indigenous leaders] was that it showed that the State, the Army, one of the traditional political parties, the merchants and the paramilitaries were all involved. It was an alliance between all of them. Ultimately the only difference between the army and the paramilitaries is that they dress differently at night.

5. The Subjugation of Nonhuman Animals

   1. Frontmatter

   2. 10. The Use and Abuse of Animals in Wildlife Trafficking in Colombia: Practices and Injustice

      Ragnhild Sollund

      Abstract

      Millions of nonhuman animals (henceforth animals) are abducted from or killed in their nests, dens and habitats on a yearly basis. This transpires in large parts of the world, although for obvious reasons, it happens more in biologically dense and diverse areas, such as in the Amazonian or Indonesian rainforests, than in areas with less biodiversity or in those places where access by humans is limited. This chapter begins by providing an overview of the dynamics of the wildlife trade (WLT) and the means that are employed to prevent and control it on a global level.Next, I will focus on a study of illegal wildlife trade in Colombia and explore the different practices of wildlife exploitation in this country. In so doing, I will discuss the modus operandi of transgressors and consider whether wildlife trafficking offenders are participating in organized crime. After demonstrating that the basis for wildlife exploitation in Colombia is culturally and historically rooted, I will analyze wildlife trafficking from a species justice perspective. This chapter will conclude with a discussion of how to address the harms of the WLT.

   3. 11. Wildlife Trafficking in the State of São Paulo, Brazil

      Marcelo Robis Francisco Nassaro

      Abstract

      The state of São Paulo is one of the 27 states of Brazil. In this state, law enforcement authorities uncover an average of 30,000 illegally caught wild animals every year.¹ Although efforts have been undertaken to address this criminal activity, wildlife trafficking has persisted for a number of reasons. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss why the trade has continued to occur in São Paulo and why efforts to thwart it have been ineffective.

   4. 12. Biomedical Research vs. Biodiversity Conservation in the Colombian-Peruvian Amazon: Searching for Law Enforcement Where There is Lack of Accountability

      Ángela María Maldonado, Thomas Lafon

      Abstract

      Despite global efforts aimed at the creation of novel mechanisms and technologies to control and trace the illegal wildlife trade, the magnitude of trafficking suggests that the current global approach is failing and governments do not prioritize the issue (WWF-Dalberg 2012). Different sources estimate the value of this trade as between US$7 and 23 billion dollars annually (see Nellemann et al. 2014). A large part of the market is due to the demand for primates for use in biomedical and pharmaceutical research in the United States, which rose from around 57,000 in 2000 to more than 70,000 animals in 2010 (Miller-Spiegel 2011). Although more than 80 % of these creatures were reportedly captive-bred, recent investigations reveal that most came from tropical countries, mainly Southeast Asia and were caught in the wild (Eudey 2008). Corruption is one of the most critical factors enabling the illicit commerce, according to a study conducted by WWF-Dalberg (2012).

6. Afterword

   1. Frontmatter

   2. 13. An Epilogue to the Book, Not an Elegy for the Earth

      Avi Brisman

      Abstract

      One evening, in the middle of the 2015–2016 academic year, I was preparing dinner while my then-8-year-old daughter, Zeia, sat at the kitchen table completing the homework she had received from her third-grade teacher. Zeia worked quietly, breaking the silence only occasionally to ask me to clarify instructions, check her answers or inform me that she had completed an assignment and was moving to the next one.

7. Backmatter