“All we have left is to defend our reserve”: Social structures and community resistance to large-scale gold mining in the Manuripi Wildlife Reserve in northern Bolivia

Schilling, Janpeter; Cuellar Pinzón, Claudia; Froese, Rebecca; Figueroa, Diana; Villavicencio, Miguel; Werland, Luise; Schönenberg, Regine

Abstract

This article presents a case of community resistance against industrial large-scale gold mining (LSM) in the Manuripi National Amazonian Wildlife Reserve in northern Bolivia. Most of the reserve's population depends on collecting Brazil nuts and other non-timber forest products. Recent plans to start LSM on land pose an existential threat to the forest-based livelihoods and environment of the reserve. Hence, the communities are resisting LSM. As previous studies have stressed the importance of social relations, networks and institutions to organize resistance, the article investigates how communities living in the Manuripi Reserve draw on social structures to resist the planned LSM. To address this question, we develop a framework that combines insights from the literature on political ecology and resistance in order to analyze context conditions, the threat of LSM, and the responses to it. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023, our analysis shows that the communities are strengthening their existing forest-based livelihoods as a form of everyday resistance and utilizing the reserve's management committee for organized resistance against LSM.