Abstract

PARRA-ROMERO, Adela. Who owns the Santurbán Moorland? Mining Ancestry as a Narrative of Territorial Defense in the Municipality of Vetas, Santander. CS [online]. 2022, n.36, pp.147-177.  Epub May 25, 2022. ISSN 2011-0324.  https://doi.org/10.18046/recs.i36.4742.

The conflict in Colombia for the defense of the Santurbán moorland against large-scale mining has marked the national discussion on the protection of these ecosystems. In 2014, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development delimited the ecosystem, and in 2017, the Constitutional Court ordered a new demarcation with the participation of the moorland's population. Based on a fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019, and on an extensive documentary review, this paper analyzes the narrative to defend the municipality of Vetas (the one most affected by the delimitation), based on ancestral mining and the recognition of mining not only as an economic activity, but also as a culture. This paper shows the way in which the narrative produced as a result of the socio-environmental conflict aids to make a social category (ancestral mining), a political subject (ancestral miners), and the negotiation of an ecosystem (alternative demarcation map).

Keywords : Socioenvironmental Conflicts; Ancestral Mining; Moorland Demarcation; Vetas.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )