Excited that this article has finally come out - it has been in the works for over two years. You can follow the citation below to find it online.

Andrea Marston (2019) Vertical farming: tin mining and agro-mineros in Bolivia, The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2019.1604511

Abstract:
Throughout Bolivia, collectives of small-scale miners known as ‘mining cooperatives’ have developed a reputation for cutthroat extractive practices that were shaped by neoliberal restructuring starting in the 1980s. Charting a history that starts at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper argues that cooperative mining in the tin belt of Northern Potosí has emerged as a vertical instantiation of small-holder farming practices that migrated, along with miners themselves, from surrounding indigenous ayllus. In the subterranean, however, these practices interacted with the legacies of tin mining, which was characterized by labor hierarchies that corresponded with vertical variation in ore quality. New social striations crystallized as small-holder farming customs settled into the subterranean structure, creating sharp social differentiation across these subsoil‘family farms.’ The class composition of mining cooperatives at the national level has been shaped by these entangled underground histories, with implications for the country’s economic and environmental futures.

Berkeley doesn't have proper dissertation defenses, but we do have required exit talks. It's a celebratory occasion - it's so great to see what everyone has been up to for the last six or seven years. Feels good to put this out there!

Excited to be giving a lecture at Queen's University in the Global Development Studies department this Wednesday, November 8th at 10:30am. If you happen to be in the Kingston area - it's free and open to the public!

Two papers that have been in the pipeline for a while have just come out:
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• 2017. Marston, A.J. “Alloyed waterscapes: mining and water at the nexus of corporate social responsibility, resource nationalism, and small-scale mining.” WIREs Water 4(1), 1-13.
• 2016. Marston, A. & Perreault, T. “Consent, Coercion and Cooperativismo: Mining and Environmental Governance in Bolivia.” Environment and Planning A 49(2), 252-272. 

The first is an invited review article that examines the state of scholarship about water and mining, while the second is a piece coauthored with Tom Perreault about the role of Bolivian mining cooperatives in maintaining an extractivist hegemony in highland Bolivia.

Speaking of an extractivist hegemony, here's a photo from biennial national meeting of mining cooperatives held in September 2016, in the wake of Deputy Minister of the Interior Rodolfo Illanes's violent death at the hands of miners. This was an important meeting because cooperative miners were rethinking their political stance while taking stock of their losses, which include a few dozen imprisoned compañeros and the overthrow of their previous leadership:

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Dave Koller of The Young Turks about Bolivian mining cooperatives. We discuss the violent events that transpired in late August, when cooperative miners tortured and killed the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Rodolfo Illanes, and I explain what mining cooperatives are and how they emerged historically and in relation to other social groups such as the miners' unions and Indigenous organizations.

A few weeks ago, Bolivia's Deputy Minister of the Interior Rodolfo Illanes was killed by a group of cooperative miners with whom he was allegedly trying to bargain.

The miners had set up a roadblock in Panduro to protest a change to the General Law of Cooperatives, which was passed in 2013. The change was slated to make explicit that third-party employees of cooperatives can unionize. While it was aimed at service cooperatives (electricity, telephone lines, water, etc.) who often employ technicians and accountants, it was a threat to cooperative miners who employ laborers to mine on their behalves - a very common practice among the gold cooperatives of northern La Paz and the silver cooperatives in the city of Potosí.

More importantly, however, the mining cooperatives were using the media attention generated by their protests to launch a 10-point list of demands that included flexible environmental standards, the right to mine in protected areas, and the ability to negotiate partnerships with private companies (which they have been demanding since the passage of the new Mining Code in 2014).

Illanes went to the roadblock to negotiate but was taken hostage. In the wee hours of the morning on August 25th, he was tortured, killed, and left in the street wrapped in a sheet. Some of my contacts within the mining cooperatives say that they took Illanes hostage because he appeared to have come as a spy, without any identification or body guards. They also say that Illanes's killers were drunk and stricken with grief and rage because they had recently found out the police had shot and murdered several miners at the roadblock.

In the aftermath of the murder, many cooperative miners were taken into custody. Most of these had nothing to do with the murder - they were the people the police could grab most easily - and are being held without a clear set of charges. The president of FENCOMIN (the national federation of mining cooperatives), Carlos Mamani, was also imprisoned in the maximum security prison Chonchocoro.

On September 1st, Evo Morales announced five supreme decrees that are clearly designed to curb the influence of the mining cooperative sector: 

1. DS2888 prohibits the use of explosives in all protests. Dynamite has long been the weapon of choice for miners fighting state powers.
2. DS2889 declares that mining cooperatives must register with the Autoridad Jurisdiccional Administrativa Minera (AJAM). To register, each cooperative must submit a set of paperwork that few cooperatives will able to adequately produce, including monthly volume of production, financial reports, and lists of all members.
3. DS2890 reverts all currently inactive concessions held by mining concessions to the state. 
4. DS2891 reverts all concessions held jointly by mining cooperatives and private companies to the State. There were a number of these partnerships that had been grandfathered in following the passage of the new Mining Code in 2014, which explicitly forbids them.
5. DS2892 explicitly recognizes the rights of all workers employed by mining cooperatives (re-affirming the change to the General Law of Cooperatives)