Book Manuscript

Veins of Conflict: The Transcorporeal Politics of Copper Mining in Peru, 1884 – 1930

By Juan Manuel Rubio

Veins of Conflict examines conflicts over copper mining in Peru through the lens of the body. In the early twentieth century, a process of massive electrification around the world increased the demand for copper and prompted capitalists in Peru to go in pursuit of the rose-colored metal. This mine-owing class had extracted silver from the Peruvian Central Highlands for more than century and they had mastered ore-refining techniques that polluted rivers and intoxicated bodies. They had also developed a technique of labor control known was enganche, which coerced Indigenous villagers from downstream valleys to seasonally join the mining workforce. After 1902, when a U.S.-owned mining company called the Cerro de Pasco Mining Company (CPMC) arrived in the area, this process of environmental and labor exploitation reached a gargantuan scale. The bodies of miners were systematically crushed, mutilated, and intoxicated. Smelter pollution blanketed the agricultural valleys and caused the massive death and impairment of domestic animals. In an attempt to protect their bodily integrity, miners, town residents, and Indigenous communities mobilized against the company, filing lawsuits, conducting sabotage, and going on strike. 

The struggles of miners and Indigenous communities vis-a-vis the growing copper industry happened at the intersection of body and the environment. Drawing from disability studies and feminist theory, this book conceptualizes this intersection as transcorporeality — the space where body meets environment and disability is produced. Through this lens, the fight for protections against mining accidents and the struggles against pollution were all transcorporeal struggles that resisted the voraciousness of the CPMC. In other words, the body was a central site of contention in the labor, racial, and environmental politics of early-twentieth century Peru. This book also proposes that the heuristic of bodies is a powerful analytical framework when considering the material transformations that mining brings about within an ecology. Mines are social metabolisms that consume forests, rivers, and energy in a process of digestion that expels not only refined matter, but also large amounts of waste. This book, then, tracks the expansion of the CPMC mine not as a feat of technological prowess, but as an accelerating metabolism that engendered transcorporeal struggles and produced blasted landscapes.

Selected Articles

Peruvian Capitalists and the Politics of Infrastructure

My article in Hispanic American Historical Review examines struggles over a water drainage tunnel as a window into the politics of mining, infrastructure, and national development in early twentieth-century Peru. It argues that the Peruvian mining elite operated as an organized network of entrepreneurs, mobilizing capital, environmental technology, and the power of the state to challenge the rising hegemony of American interests in Peru’s copper corridor. Unlike the classic literature on nineteenth-century mining in Peru, which has presented Peruvian mine owners as a struggling bourgeoisie, this study focuses on this group’s innovations and dynamism in the wake of the copper bonanza. It also studies its discursive strategies, which appealed to preexisting skepticism of free trade and anxieties about foreign influence. Altogether, this paper contributes to the literature on U.S. imperialism and capitalist penetration by centering local actors and studying U.S. hegemony as a contentious and contingent process. Read

Historical Roadways and Lead Contamination

Our research paper published in Environmental Research uses geo-spatial data collected through archival research to estimate the impact of two potential sources of lead contamination in the past — lead-paint and leaded gasoline. Our close study of the city of Santa Ana (CA) shows that, while contemporary traffic volumes do not correlate with soil-lead concentrations, historical traffic patterns have an important predictive value in mapping high concentrations of environmental lead today. These findings suggest that the current approach used by public health agencies to prevent lead poisoning, primarily focused on lead-paint and consumer products, is overlooking leaded gasoline as a major source of environmental lead. Moreover, our study indicates that legacy soil-lead may be present in many other urban environments that received sustained flows of traffic during the twentieth century.

This publication was the result of a multi-year collaborative project between a team of UCI researchers and activists with Orange County Environmental Justice.

Lead Isotopes

Our recent study, led by Dr. Shahir Masri, incorporates the history of leaded gasoline and lead paint in the analysis of isotopic signatures detected in contemporary soil samples. Understanding where and when lead was mined is a useful tool in evaluating the traces left by polluting industries, such as lead paint companies and gasoline manufacturers. More

Book Reviews

Juan Manuel Rubio. Review of Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken, The Three Deaths of Cerro de San Pedro: Four Centuries of Extractivism in a Small Mexican Mining Town. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. August, 2023. Read