Alexander Dunlap and Martín Correa Arce: ‘Murderous energy’ in Oaxaca, Mexico: wind factories, territorial struggle and social warfare

Published in The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2021

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Abstract

This article examines the struggle against the new Électricité de France (EDF) wind park, Gunaa Sicarú, in Unión Hidalgo (UH), Mexico. Foregrounding Indigenous land defense, the article refers to wind energy as ‘wind factories’ to discuss agrarian change in the region. Revealing the counterinsurgency colonial model as a foundational approach to extractive development, the article argues that the distribution of money, Sicarios (hitmen) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are instrumental to engineering ‘social acceptance’. Moreover, the liberalism underlining NGOs, if not careful, advances processes of infrastructural colonization and, consequently, wider trajectories of (neo)colonialism.

View the publication on the publisher's website.

Authors

Alexander Dunlap and Martín Correa Arce

Alexander Antony Dunlap was Postdoctoral Fellow at Centre for Development and the Environment, 2019-2023.

Postdoctoral Fellow Alexander Dunlap
Postdoctoral Fellow Alexander Dunlap

 

Published Mar. 3, 2021 12:46 PM - Last modified May 8, 2023 2:41 PM