UNEARTHING CONFLICT

Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru

Fabiana Li
Duke University Press!Durham and London!2015
Unless otherwise indicated, photos are by the author.

© 2015 Duke University Press

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free
paper ♾
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Warnock Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Li, Fabiana, 1976–
Unearthing conflict : corporate mining, activism, and
expertise in Peru / Fabiana Li.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8223-5819-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8223-5831-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8223-7586-9 (e-book)
1. Mineral industries—Social aspects—Peru.
2. Mineral industries—Political aspects—Peru.
3. Mineral industries—Economic aspects—
Peru. 4. Mineral industries—Environmental
aspects—Peru. 5. Mines and mineral resources—
Peru. 6. Social conflict—Peru. I. Title.
HD9506.P42L54 2015
338.20985—dc23
2014038000

Cover art: ( from left) View of Cerro Quilish, from

the neighboring community of Tual, photo by author.
Opencast mine, Yanacocha Gold Mine, Cajamarca,
imageBROKER/Alamy.
CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

INTRODUCTION A Mining Country!1

PART I Mining Past and Present

CHAPTER 1 Toxic Legacies, Nascent Activism!35
CHAPTER 2 Mega-Mining and Emergent Conflicts!71

PART II Water and Life

CHAPTER 3 The Hydrology of a Sacred Mountain!107
CHAPTER 4 Irrigation and Contested Equivalences!143

PART III Activism and Expertise

CHAPTER 5 Stepping outside the Document!185

CONCLUSION Expanding Frontiers of Extraction!215

NOTES 235
REFERENCES 243
INDEX 257
CHAPTER 3

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN

Sitting on the grass near Herlinda’s two grazing cows, we had a

perfect view of Cerro Quilish, the mountain that had become
an icon of mining conflict (see figure 3.1). As we watched the
clouds moving above Cerro Quilish, she wondered out loud
whether Minera Yanacocha might go ahead with plans to mine
the mountain. Like many people living in the vicinity of Quilish,
Herlinda had participated in the protests in 2004 against the min-
ing project. She pointed to the area where she found herself run-
ning as the police went after the protestors with tear gas. At some
point, someone set fire to the grass, they started throwing rocks,
and the police pushed back. The fear she felt and the intensity of
the confrontations were still fresh in her mind. For days, people
from Tual and other communities gathered just outside the city
of Cajamarca and blocked the highway leading to the mine. They
said they were there to protect their water, which had its source
at Cerro Quilish.
People wouldn’t allow Quilish to be turned into a mine, said
Herlinda; they would do anything to defend their source of water.
Then she added: “The mountain has to give its consent in order
for it to be mined” (“el cerro tiene que dar su consentimiento para
que lo exploten”). Herlinda went on to tell me that before the
mine began operating, Brant Hinze (Yanacocha’s general man-
FIGURE 3.1 View of Cerro Quilish, from the neighboring community of Tual.

ager at the time) and other engineers made an offering to the mountain
that they were going to mine.1 A truckload of sugar was given as payment
in exchange for the gold: this is what the mountain had requested, Her-
linda explained. But this was not all that it wanted, for the mountain was
fierce (bravo). In the first years of operations, many mine workers lost their
lives, “eaten” by the mountain. The company hired workers only from far-
away places instead of locals, so that their families would not know their
fate. Herlinda had heard from other campesinos that at midnight, the
devil (in the form of a blonde female, whom they called “La Gringa”) ap-
peared driving a mining truck. The workers were like sacrificial lambs in
a pact that the company made with the devil. What would Cerro Quilish
demand, Herlinda wondered, if it allowed the company to mine it?
This chapter explores the relationships forged between Cerro Quilish,
Minera Yanacocha, and people living in the vicinity of the mine. What
does it mean to say that a mountain must give its consent to be mined?
How do city dwellers, mining companies, and campesinos relate to an
agentive landscape transformed by the continued expansion of mining
activity? What compelled thousands of people to protest against the min-
ing project? On the surface, the Quilish protests shared many charac-
teristics with other mobilizations in response to mining expansion. Like

108!|!CHAPTER 3
other mining-related conflicts, the controversy over the Quilish project
centered on the costs and benefits involved in converting mountains into
open-pit mines. But what made this case different was that Cerro Quilish
emerged in the conflict as a particular kind of mountain: one that holds
water and has special significance for the local population. In anti-mining
campaign materials and news reports, Cerro Quilish was presented as an
aquifer—the source of the main rivers and tributaries that supply water
to the city and rural communities. Activists argued that mining activity
would compromise the quality of that water (with increased sedimenta-
tion and the potential leaching of heavy metals and toxic substances into
rivers and streams) and reduce the quantity of water available in what is al-
ready a drought-prone region. Protestors also argued that the mine should
not be built because campesinos living in the area considered Cerro Qui-
lish to be an Apu, a Quechua term that is commonly translated as “moun-
tain spirit” or “sacred mountain.”
The anti-mining campaigns brought together these various concerns
in ways that challenged the representation of Cerro Quilish as a valuable
mineral deposit. They shifted the debate away from the question of who
should benefit from the project (the state, foreign corporations, or local
communities) or how the project should be carried out (i.e., what measures
would be taken to ensure social and environmental responsibility). Cerro
Quilish, as depicted in the anti-mining campaigns, was not just a moun-
tain rich in mineral deposits; it was that, but it was also an aquifer (a store
of life-sustaining water) and an Apu (an animate being). By multiplying
the identity of Cerro Quilish, the protests challenged how conflicts over
mining had come to be understood: as conflicts of interest that measure
the benefits to be derived from a particular project against the social and
environmental costs associated with it.
Framed around the protection of an aquifer and an Apu, the aims and
strategies of the anti-mining protests did not always fit within the dis-
courses of existing political movements focused on economic justice or
the nationalization of resources (for example, local unions or left-leaning
political parties). While arguments calling for nationalizing the mines
or better pay and working conditions did surface in conflicts emerging
throughout the country, activism against mining at once incorporated and
exceeded established political discourses and practices. The Quilish pro-
tests became part of a movement “in defense of life” that encompassed

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!109

water and livelihood, landscapes and cultural identity—but it was also
more than this.
The mountain was not just an economic resource to be defended, but
the embodiment of life itself. By calling Cerro Quilish an Apu, the pro-
testors suggested that it was a living entity, and furthermore, that other
lives (both human and nonhuman) depended on its existence. Arguments
against mining at Cerro Quilish were entangled with discussions about
“water” as a life-sustaining substance—life in a general biological sense,
but also with relation to particular (and by some accounts, disappearing)
ways of life. Additionally, the mining industry’s new ventures in Caja-
marca and other parts of the country were coming up against unexpected
forms of life: not only the animal and plant species deemed valuable by
local people and environmentalists, but also entities like Apus and other
earth-beings that animate the Andean landscape. The invasive technolo-
gies of open-pit mining were disrupting landscapes and, along with them,
the conditions necessary to sustain ways of living and interacting with
those landscapes.
As anthropologists Mario Blaser (2009) and Marisol de la Cadena
(2010) have noted, many contemporary environmental conflicts are con-
flicts over different realities or worlds. The conflicts do not simply con-
cern competing interpretations of Nature (which assumes the existence of
many cultures but a single reality) but should be understood as struggles
over the enactment, stabilization, and protection of multiple socionatural
worlds. In the conflict I examine, Cerro Quilish was not only a mountain
or a resource, nor was it simply perceived in different ways by the various
constituencies involved in the controversy. Rather, it emerged as radi-
cally different entities—a valuable mineral deposit, a mountain that holds
water, a sacred mountain, and a sentient being—through the practices of
the actors involved.
This chapter explores the actors and processes that put Cerro Quilish’s
complex identity as aquifer-water-Apu at the center of the anti-mining
campaign and national debates over resource extraction. I suggest that by
presenting Cerro Quilish as something more than a contested territory
with valuable resources, protestors mobilized elements that are usually
absent from public debate: Apus, spirits, and sacred mountains existed
only in the sphere of “myth,” perhaps accepted as remnants of quickly
disappearing Andean worldview, but they were not to be taken seriously

110! |!CHAPTER 3
in political terms (de la Cadena 2010). Yet Cerro Quilish, as mountain,
animate being, water, and livelihood, entered into the sphere of politics
and became a powerful force with which corporations and the state had
to contend.
Cerro Quilish posed a challenge not only for the mining industry, but
also for political and social movements long defined by their identifica-
tion with parties on the “Left” or “Right”; by nationalist, socialist, or neo-
liberal ideologies; or by religious affiliation. Amid the diversity of actors
that joined in the protests, Cerro Quilish emerged as a kind of “boundary
object” (Star and Griesemer 1989) that multiplied as it entered into rela-
tionships with different actors. A boundary object is able to travel across
borders and inhabit various communities of practice while maintaining
a constant identity. In this particular case, the capacity of Cerro Quilish
to accommodate diverse viewpoints and interpretations enabled alliances
across geographical and political divides. The multiplicity of Cerro Qui-
lish proliferated the relations and material connections that were crucial
to the success of the campaign. Water springs, canals, and rivers that have
their origins at Cerro Quilish gave people from various communities a
direct connection to the struggle; and the mountain itself—not merely its
economic potential, but the force of its physical presence (cf. Orlove et al.
2008)—renewed people’s sense of connection to a landscape that mining
would permanently transform.
Political responses to mining activity involve a diverse group of actors,
and mobilizations are often loosely organized around multiple demands.
Participants involved in various kinds of mobilizations do not neces-
sarily share common interests or an ideological stance that defines their
position vis-à-vis extractive activity. My analysis of the Quilish conflict
seeks to show how various actors sometimes came together in ways that
strengthened the movement. At other times, their different interests had
unpredictable effects. For example, the importance of Quilish as an aqui-
fer helped make water into a focal point of debates over mining. Indeed,
it could be argued that the Quilish campaigns’ explicit focus on water set
the tone of future protests and debates around mining activity at a re-
gional and national level. While these arguments helped draw supporters
to the movement against the mine, they also led the mining company to
focus its public relations campaigns on technical arguments and water
management programs.

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!111

 In the years immediately following the protests, the situation in Caja-
marca changed dramatically; NGOs and mining activism weakened, and
Minera Yanacocha mounted a concerted campaign that emphasized the
mine’s responsible water management practices. I argue that focusing on
a single aspect of Cerro Quilish (water) reduced the complexity of the
mountain and the challenge that it posed for the company. The shift from
multiplicity to singularity helped neutralize opposition to the project. But
as I have already noted, the stabilization of facts requires constant effort.
Thus, the potential for multiplicity remains, and conflicts that might seem
to have been resolved are likely to reemerge.

In Defense of Water and Life

On the morning of September 2, 2004, protestors marched to Cerro Qui-
lish to demand an end to mining exploration activity. Over the course of
fifteen days of protesting, thousands filled the town square in the city of
Cajamarca (see figure 3.2). The massive protests put a stop to the extrac-
tion of an estimated 3.7 million ounces of gold from Cerro Quilish. As
activists involved in the protests would later remark, the mobilization of
both city and countryside was crucial for halting the mining project.
The protests brought together a diverse mix of people, from urban pro-
fessionals and irrigation canal users, to unions and religious organiza-
tions. As in many social protests, the teachers’ union (SUTEP) mobilized
its bases, contributing strength in numbers. Although there was a long-
standing association between the SUTEP and leftist parties (including
communist party Patria Roja), the protests were not organized along party
lines. At the time of the conflict, the political scene was characterized by
fragmentation. Political parties were severely weakened following Alberto
Fujimori’s presidency, leaving an eclectic mix of independent parties. Cer-
tainly, established and aspiring politicians would have brought their own
political ambitions to the Quilish campaigns, but political parties did not
play a leadership role in the protests. At least in the memory of those who
later recounted the events, the movement was marked not by the pro-
tagonism of a few individuals or by political opportunism, but by the mas-
sive support of people from all walks of life. What they recalled was the
involvement of people like the city’s market vendors and transportistas
(operators of public transit vans and taxis), which essentially gave protes-
tors the power to shut down the city by closing businesses and paralyzing

112!|!CHAPTER 3
FIGURE 3.2 Protest against mining at Cerro Quilish in Cajamarca. Courtesy of
GRUFIDES.

traffic. Students from the local university, artists, religious organizations,

and NGOs joined in the marches and roadblocks.
While the support of the city was essential, the strength of the move-
ment also came from rural communities that would be affected by the
mining project. At least four campesino communities were considered
to be within the area of the proposed project, but many more were com-
pelled to participate in the protests because their sources of water origi-
nated at Cerro Quilish. Irrigation canals became an important link that
enabled peasant leaders to mobilize members of the canal users’ associa-
tions ( juntas de usuarios). In addition to canal users, the rondas campe-
sinas played an important role in the protests. The region of Cajamarca is
the birthplace of the rondas, which began as a means to counter cattle theft
(see Starn 1999). Though focused on night patrols and delivering com-
munity justice, the rondas are a backbone of peasant political organizing
and a source of authority in most communities. The ronderos (members
of the rondas) came not only from the province of Cajamarca, but also
from Bambamarca. They were drawn into the struggle because the river
and other waterways that extended into the province would be affected by

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!113

the mine’s operations. The canal users’ associations and the rondas pro-
vided the organizational structure (at both the local and regional level)
to mobilize people quickly and effectively. Members agreed to support
the Quilish protests in communal assemblies, in some cases imposing a
penalty or fine for those who did not participate. This ensured high turn-
outs and the constant presence of people who took turns to sustain the
roadblocks.
The protests against the Quilish project did not erupt spontaneously
but were the result of tenacious education and advocacy campaigns
that spanned almost a decade. Spearheading these efforts was the NGO
GRUFIDES—and in particular, Father Marco Arana, one of its found-
ing members. GRUFIDES is a small development organization that was
formed in 2001 by former members of the Universidad Nacional de Caja-
marca (Cajamarca National University) parish youth group under the
guidance of Father Arana, who was the university parish priest. The stu-
dents, with university training in diverse disciplines such as law, engineer-
ing, sociology, and economics, were united by a common interest in social
justice from a Catholic faith perspective. Upon graduating from university,
the group formed GRUFIDES with Father Arana as executive director, and
solicited funding from European and North American institutions for de-
velopment and education projects in Cajamarca’s rural areas. However,
the NGO’s efforts were gradually consumed by problems brought on by
Minera Yanacocha’s mining operations.
GRUFIDES became the primary contact and source of information for
foreign journalists, researchers, and solidarity activists. These international
connections were crucial for much of their work on mining issues, pro-
viding not only funding for their work but also expertise and support net-
works to disseminate information internationally. The GRUFIDES office
was a lively and sometimes chaotic environment filled with the energy
of its young staff, volunteers, and international interns. The waiting area
near the reception was often occupied by campesinos who had come to
seek legal counsel or advice for dealing with their latest problems with
the company. The NGO’s close identification with the defense of commu-
nities affected by mining earned them a reputation as “ecologistas” (“en-
vironmentalists”). In Cajamarca, the label “ecologista” (in the context of
mining conflicts) had become a pejorative term to identify any individual
or organization with a critical stance on mining.

114!|!CHAPTER 3
 GRUFIDES came to be seen as the leading “anti-mining” organization,
along with other local groups. Most notably, Cajamarca’s Frente de De-
fensa (Defense Front) became known for its uncompromising opposition
to mining expansion. The Frente was a diverse group of urban residents,
people with experience in political activism, and campesino leaders. One
of its key members was Reinhard Seifert, a German national but longtime
Cajamarca resident with a background in engineering. Mr. Seifert arrived
in Cajamarca to work in rural development and carried out a study of
the dairy industry in the region. He brought his field experience, knowl-
edge of the rural economy, and concern for the plight of campesinos to
his work with the Frente. Among those who were involved in the Quilish
campaigns, even his detractors credited Mr. Seifert for building ties with
the rondas and going out to rural communities to give talks on the effects
of mining activity.
While recounting his involvement in the campaigns against Minera Ya-
nacocha, Mr. Seifert distinguished between the different strategies used
to defend Cerro Quilish. It was Father Arana, he told me, who embraced
and helped disseminate the imagery of the sacred Apu; by contrast he, as a
scientist, was more interested in the technical arguments against mining.
Their joint efforts—even if part of a sometimes conflictive relationship—
are indicative of a network of collaboration that contributed to the effec-
tiveness of the Quilish campaign. Their different interests made an alliance
possible, even if they did not always converge. While the image of Cerro
Quilish as an Apu held romantic appeal and added a new dimension to
the anti-mining struggle, the language of aquifers gave it scientific validity.
Looking through papers he had collected over many years campaign-
ing against Minera Yanacocha, Mr. Seifert pulled out an old article from a
local paper. He told me this was where the first reference to Cerro Quilish
as a mountain that “holds water” appeared. The article published in 1996
in a local weekly publication read: “Mayor Guerrero indicated that these
mountains are the water ‘sponges’ or ‘cushions’ of the city of Cajamarca,
and showed concern over the possible activities of the mining company”
(Clarín 1996). Having the city’s mayor refer to Cerro Quilish as a water
source was a major step in a campaign that gradually gained supporters.
For both the city and the countryside, water became a mobilizing force.
Flyers and other campaign materials communicated that Cerro Quilish is
only 14.5 kilometers (nine miles) from the city of Cajamarca as the crow

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!115

flies, and a mere eight kilometers from the city’s water treatment plant, “El
Milagro.” Activists stressed that Cerro Quilish was the source of the Por-
cón and Grande Rivers, which together provided 70 percent of the water
consumed in the city. This message struck a chord with city dwellers, who
might previously have felt disconnected from the mine and the problems
of the countryside.
Alongside the educational campaigns carried out by several organi-
zations, key figures in the movement published books and articles about
why Quilish should not be mined. Reinhart Seifert focused his arguments
against the mine on evidence of water contamination from mining opera-
tions already underway (Seifert 2003). Nilton Deza, a biologist at the Uni-
versity of Cajamarca, wrote about the risks of cyanide leaching (Deza
2002). But it was Father Arana who, in numerous newspaper editorials,
e-mail missives, and published reports, imbued the technical arguments
against mining with what he saw as a cultural and moral dimension to the
struggle against the mine. He based his arguments on the defense of a way
of life rooted in Porcón, an area made up of campesino communities that
begins just beyond the city of Cajamarca and extends into the property of
the mine. His experiences as a rural priest made him attuned to the hard-
ships of campesinos and their particular ways of expressing their identity
as “Porconeros” (as the area’s locals are called).
Undoubtedly, the effectiveness of narratives that centered on Cerro
Quilish’s role as aquifer and Apu rested on their seemingly timeless quali-
ties. The mineral deposit that Minera Yanacocha hoped to exploit was
located in Porcón, a place that had become emblematic of a precolonial
past. These narratives sometimes presumed that locals had always con-
sidered Cerro Quilish to be the primary source of water for the city and
surrounding region, and implied that it was an Apu according to “Andean
tradition.” On the other hand, counterclaims to disprove the validity of
these arguments dismissed them as “inventions” with the intent to ma-
nipulate. Yet both of these views ignore the dynamic and creative con-
nections among people, technologies, and landscapes that brought Cerro
Quilish to the center of a complex controversy.
This is the irony of Cerro Quilish: that its protagonism as an Apu took
shape in a region where a majority of people have turned to evangelism,
and where a Catholic priest became one of its most important spokes-
persons. It took a proposed mining project—with the threat of open pits,

116!|!CHAPTER 3
toxic chemicals, and altered water courses—to make the latent “indige-
neity” of Porcón and people’s relationships to a sentient landscape po-
litically visible and significant in the present. I use the term indigeneity
recognizing the complex politics of class, language, ethnicity, and race in
Peru. First of all, the term is not used by people in rural Cajamarca (who
tend to refer to themselves as “campesinos” rather than as “indigenous”
or “Indian”). Also, I do not mean to suggest that people are more or less
indigenous based on a set of prescribed characteristics (for example, lan-
guage or dress). As scholars have pointed out, we need to “move beyond
thinking of indigeneity in the all-or-nothing terms of authenticity and in-
vention, cultural survival and extinction” (see M. García 2005:6). Recog-
nizing the complex ways in which identities are made and negotiated, I
want to explore how indigeneity came to be articulated through the en-
gagement of various actors.

“Quilish Is More Than Quilish”

Three years after the 2004 protests, Father Arana wrote an article reflect-
ing on the significance of the campaigns against mining at Cerro Quilish
and asserting his unwavering commitment to protect it: “If the ecological
matter put forth by the avarice of gold that has laid eyes on Cerro Quilish is
to be understood as merely a technical-scientific problem, then I’ll always
say no. And I’ll do the same if these questions are reduced to problems of
a cultural, social, or religious-symbolic character. It is not with these half-
truths that life will be protected and defended, but rather with the under-
standing and practice of ecology as an integral matter: scientific, cultural,
social, political, historical, and ethical” (Arana 2007). For Father Arana,
the Quilish conflict could not simply be addressed with technical solu-
tions. If the controversy was to be considered from an “ecological” point of
view, in his definition of the term, it would be necessary to take a holistic
approach that incorporates the scientific, sociocultural, political, histori-
cal, and ethical issues at stake. Considering one of these dimensions sepa-
rately, without seeing the larger whole, would only produce “half-truths.”
Rejecting the perils of reductionist thinking, Father Arana has written
that “Quilish is more than Quilish.” What was at stake in the protests,
he explained, was not only the protection of this mountain; for Quilish
also symbolized the protection of local people’s right to water, their cul-
tural identity, and the democratic right to prior consultation (Arana 2007).

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!117

Evoking Quilish’s multiplicity was fundamental for making the struggle
known nationally and internationally.
Although he has tried to play down his leadership role, no other indi-
vidual has had as much of an impact on mining debates in Cajamarca or
incited as much controversy as Father Arana. When I met him in 2005, he
was already a nationally and internationally recognized figure whose busy
schedule took him from his office at GRUFIDES to campesino commu-
nities, and from giving Sunday mass to speaking at conferences in Lima
and abroad. In 2004, following the Quilish protests, he received a human
rights award from the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (a
Peruvian human rights umbrella organization), the first of several awards
recognizing him as a “hero of the environment” (as Time magazine called
him in 2009) (Chauvin 2009). Then in his early forties, Father Arana had
been born and raised in the city of Cajamarca. Driven by both spiritual and
intellectual pursuits, he combined his theological training with studies
in sociology, earning a master’s degree from the Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Perú. In public statements to the press, Father Arana dis-
played a calm eloquence and spoke in measured statements. It was easier
to get beyond his serious demeanor in person. Usually dressed casually in
jeans and a sports jacket, he exuded warmth, humor, and an easy disposi-
tion, but any discussion about Minera Yanacocha was sure to evoke pas-
sionate views and a quick temper.
When the Quilish controversy emerged, he was based at the Parish of
Guadalupe, in the city of Cajamarca, along with two other priests with
whom he shared a strong friendship and a commitment to social and en-
vironmental justice. The offices of GRUFIDES were on the property of
the parish, directly below the priests’ living quarters, and Father Arana’s
combined role of religious figure and NGO activist was one that made
many people uncomfortable—particularly the Catholic Church hierarchy.
The priests at the Parish of Guadalupe recognized the problematic con-
sequences that their stance on mining issues could bring but remained
critical of both Minera Yanacocha and the church as an institution. One
of them told me: “We are priests in spite of the [Catholic] Church” (“Somos
curas a pesar de la iglesia”), making clear their rebelliousness vis-à-vis the
institution. They were particularly critical of the current bishop of Caja-
marca and priests who appeared to protect the interests of the wealthy and
the mining corporations.

118! |!CHAPTER 3
 It was a radical change from the time when José Dammert headed the
archdiocese, between 1962 and 1992. Bishop Dammert was part of an
international movement that sought to interpret the church’s teaching
through the eyes of the poor and the oppressed, and to work on their be-
half. As in much of Latin America, the ideas of liberation theology that
inspired the work of Bishop Dammert had a significant influence on NGOs
and individuals whose work merged Christian teachings with issues of
economic justice, human rights, and (more recently) environmental con-
cerns. During his years in Cajamarca, Bishop Dammert devoted special
attention to Cajamarca’s rural poor and supported the work of the rondas
campesinas, gaining friends and foes along the way. Father Arana met the
bishop when he joined the Juventud Estudiantil Católica (a Catholic youth
group). Bishop Dammert became a mentor to him and was instrumental
in his decision to become ordained as a priest. Father Arana thus began
his ecclesiastical life within an activist church that saw the poor as its main
priority, and with the youthful optimism shared by a group that, as one of
his close friends told me, wanted to build a better world.
As part of his efforts to serve the rural areas, Bishop Dammert created
the Cristo Ramos parish in Lower Porcón and sent Father Arana to live
there in 1991, shortly after he was ordained. It was around this time that
Minera Yanacocha began its operations in Cajamarca, and campesinos
contacted Father Arana with complaints that the company was encroach-
ing on their property and pressuring them to sell their land. In 1994, he
acted as mediator in an extrajudicial agreement between Minera Yana-
cocha and campesinos who claimed the mining company had begun ex-
ploration activity without their permission and caused damages to their
property. Thanks to the intervention of the Porcón parish, the campesi-
nos received monetary compensation for these damages. Already, Father
Arana’s criticism of the mining company was causing controversy, and the
new bishop wanted him to leave the region to avoid causing problems. He
left Porcón to continue his studies, including seminary studies in Italy. But
it was during his time as a rural priest that Father Arana made contacts
with people and established a reputation in the countryside that would
last beyond his years in Porcón, and even when he was no longer there,
people would seek him out to request his help.
Father Arana’s position as a trusted authority figure allowed him to hear
firsthand about campesinos’ initial altercations with the mining company

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!119

and to intervene on their behalf. In the process, his day-to-day experiences
in rural communities convinced him that Cerro Quilish was more than
what could be captured by the utilitarian value of the resources it provided
(land, water, and pasturelands) and that might be compromised by min-
ing activity. Campesinos told him they had always known Cerro Quilish
contained gold and water and spoke of a “golden fountain” from which
water sprung and flowed in two directions (Arana 2007). This, according
to Father Arana, was an apt description of Cerro Quilish’s location in the
area of the continental divide separating the watersheds that drain into
the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They also told of how, if the first clouds
of October appear above the crown of Cerro Quilish, it will be a year of
heavy rains and bountiful harvests (Arana 2007). For Father Arana, the
significance of Quilish was evidenced in the stories passed on from gen-
eration to generation, and in the little “altars” made of rocks where cam-
pesinos would bring holy water, liquor, peppers, salt, candles, strands of
lamb’s wool, or little pieces of leather. “They prayed first to God Almighty,
Father of Jesus Christ, and then came the libations and offerings to the
earth with trickles of water,” he wrote (Arana 2007), translating the prac-
tices of campesinos according to his understanding of religion. In this way,
Cerro Quilish became a “sacred mountain,” a designation that caught on
in the media yet differed from what Cerro Quilish was to campesinos: an
agentive being with whom people interacted and established relationships
necessary to sustain life.
Like many priests working in the Peruvian countryside since the colo-
nial period, Father Arana accepted the coexistence of Catholic saints and
sentient entities, of special offerings left in rocky caves and processions
in honor of Christ (like the Cristo Ramos celebrations held annually in
Porcón). In his writings and reflections on Cerro Quilish, Father Arana
seemed to tap into a consciousness of a world in which such mixtures
were still possible, even if they were not always evident in peoples’ every-
day lives. In Porcón, Apus did not have the prominence that they do in
the southern department of Cuzco, for example, where some mountains
are the focus of yearly pilgrimages, or recognized as important protectors.
In the Cajamarca region, by contrast, the influence of Spanish colonial-
ism prevailed over many precolonial practices. The indigenous Quechua
language is spoken in only a few communities, and a significant number
of rural people attend the evangelical churches that now predominate

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in the region. As in other parts of Peru and Latin America, evangelical
Protestantism has grown rapidly since the 1960s. According to the 2007
departmental census, 14 percent of the population professes an evangeli-
cal religion (compared to 80 percent who identify as Catholic). While
this is a relatively small percentage, the rapid inroads of evangelical reli-
gions in Porcón is evidenced by the proliferation of non-Catholic Chris-
tian churches. Also, since many Catholics are nonpracticing and regular
church services are not available in each caserío, the majority of active
churchgoers are evangelicals. Evangelism has had a significant influence
on most aspects of everyday life, from politics and community leadership
to personal habits, including the avoidance of alcohol. Evangelism also
discouraged any behavior that could be seen as violating its monotheistic
teachings (for example, making offerings to the dead, or being fearful of
places where earth-beings are said to hide).
It was in this setting that Father Arana argued that Cerro Quilish was
not only a mountain, and not just a source of water: it was an Apu, and
a source of life. It was a message that became part of his writings, inter-
views, and sermons delivered during events organized in the defense of
Cerro Quilish. On August 28, 2001, thousands of people marched to Cerro
Quilish and symbolically demarcated an area that had been declared a
protected area in a controversial municipal ordinance. The following are
fragments of a homily given on Cerro Quilish during this event:

Quilish, for campesinos here, is still the APU, the mountain that is pro-
tector of all earthly and heavenly life. Pantheist paganism, might say
those who do not understand that the campesino’s relationship with
nature is the delicate thread that sustains all life. . . . Quilish is about to
be seized from us[;] the destiny that the miners want to give Quilish is
to transform it into some millions of dollars that will fill their pockets,
without regard for the many people for whom Quilish is a source of
water, and therefore, a source of life. Today we are here to tell ourselves,
in the presence of God, that we renounce the avarice of gold; and that
we will not allow others to transform our source of water into a handful
of gold to satisfy their greed; that we will not permit that their idola-
trous way of life, in which everything is sacrificed to a gold idol, con-
tinues without regard for how many lives depend on this, our source
of water. (Arana 2002)

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!121

According to Father Arana, for “the miners” (meaning those involved with
the mining company and, more generally, its supporters) Cerro Quilish
was a source of minerals and profits. That it could also be an Apu and an
aquifer allowed for the moral condemnation of the materialism and greed
that goes along with the “idolatry of gold.”
In addition, Quilish’s identity as an Apu challenged any arguments that
justified mining activity based on economic calculations about the utili-
tarian value of resources. In other words, the fact that Quilish was an Apu
made it incommensurable, in the sense that it was irreducible to gold or
other forms of material benefits. The question ceased to be: “How can
Cerro Quilish be mined responsibly?” (as the problem is often framed by
corporations promoting an image of Corporate Social Responsibility); nor
could the dispute be described simply as a disagreement over how com-
munities would “benefit” from the project. The multiplicity of Cerro Qui-
lish disrupted the equivalences at the root of proposals to “manage” the
impacts of mining activity with technological solutions and compensation
agreements with affected communities.
Father Arana’s interpretations of Catholic teachings and of campesinos’
relationship with Cerro Quilish were certainly controversial, and many ac-
cused him of being a “false prophet” and of introducing the idea of the Apu
where it had never previously existed. Fergus Bordewich (1997) describes a
similar dynamic in Killing the White Man’s Indian, where he tells the story
of a conflict over the building of telescopes on Mount Graham, in Arizona.
While opponents called it an Apache sacred mountain, others claimed that
this was the invention of activists and their well-meaning but misguided
non-Indian supporters. Bordewich argues that the success of the campaign
to block the construction of the telescope rested on “the power of myth
to sway the hearts of Americans who continue to see relations between
Indians and whites as an unending morality play of predators and victims,
of evil and innocence despoiled” (1997:238). Such narratives of indige-
nous peoples as environmental stewards fighting off evil interlopers may
also have been at the root of the campaigns to protect Cerro Quilish and
contributed to the romantic appeal of the Apu. Yet the binary opposition
between “authentic” indigenous tradition on the one hand, and invented
(and thus “fraudulent”) interpretation on the other, does not capture the
way Cerro Quilish came to matter as both an Apu and a source of water.
Father Arana’s arguments were controversial precisely because they

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disrupted a “modern” understanding of politics that stems from the sepa-
ration of Society and Nature (Descola and Palsson 1996) and relegates
politics to the representation of humans (Society), and science to the rep-
resentation of nonhumans (Nature). This distinction rests on what Latour
(1993:13) calls the “crossed-out God, relegated to the sidelines.” Through
the process of purification (the ever-increasing separation of Society and
Nature), God was separated from the realm of the profane and relegated
to the sphere of “spirituality,” where it could not intervene with worldly
affairs. According to Latour, God was made transcendent, and also irrele-
vant, and thus did not pose a threat to the rationality of science.
In protests against mining expansion and subsequent media coverage
of these events, activists and journalists sometimes defined Cerro Quilish
according to a Catholic conception of the “sacred” or a romantic vision of
ancestral knowledge, and relegated it to a “spiritual” dimension detached
from its material properties. It could be said that Father Arana did this
also and simply incorporated the idea of the Apu into his own (modern)
understandings about Catholicism and environmentalism. Father Arana’s
translation suggests that an Apu was a “sacred mountain” according to
“local beliefs,” which maintains the dualisms that keep earth-beings (and
the worlds to which they belong) confined to the sphere of spirituality.
Treated as belief, Cerro Quilish does not pose “an epistemic alternative to
scientific paradigms (ecological or economic)” (de la Cadena 2010:349),
making it easier to dismiss from politics.
However, it could also be said that Father Arana tried to reject reduc-
tionist analyses that interpreted the defense of Cerro Quilish in terms of
two incompatible spheres: that of the mythical, spiritual, romantic, and
ideological, or that of the technical and scientific (Arana 2007). By refus-
ing this ontological separation, Father Arana connected the plane of the
secular with that of sentient entities like Apus and infused his critique of
capitalist mining with both religious teachings on morality and hydrologi-
cal studies of aquifers. Thus, it could be said that Father Arana brought
the “crossed-out God” back into the world of the secular (and hence, into
the realm of politics), making it impossible to settle the controversy solely
through economic, technical, and scientific arguments.
The campaigns in defense of Cerro Quilish evoked an animate land-
scape that was part of campesinos’ experience of the Cajamarca country-
side. People’s relationship to the beings that populated that landscape was

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!123

not always expressed in everyday practice, but it nevertheless inspired the
campaigns against mining and contributed to their success. I went to Por-
cón with the hope of understanding people’s relationship with the neigh-
boring mine, the resources that enabled their subsistence, and the moun-
tain that had become so emblematic in debates over mining.

Knowledge Encounters in Porcón

The communities that dot the main highway leading up to the Yanacocha
gold mine have changed political and administrative jurisdiction through
the years but are part of an area that locals have generically designated as
“Porcón.” As in other communities around the mine, Porconeros have an
ambiguous relationship with the mining company, one that oscillates be-
tween dependence and rejection, resistance and cooperation. The water
used in many of these communities (for domestic and agricultural activi-
ties) originates in Cerro Quilish, and it is for this reason that many people
from the area participated in the 2004 protests against the mine. Follow-
ing the Quilish controversy, however, Minera Yanacocha’s heavy invest-
ment in development projects and the number of people employed at the
mine (either directly or through subcontractors) made many people more
accepting of the company. In general, the people who continued to orga-
nize against the mine after the Quilish protests considered Porconeros to
be “pro-Yanacocha” or, at least, apathetic when it came to mobilizing in
opposition to the company.
Nevertheless, Porcón continued to hold particular significance for
anti-mining campaigns. As one of the last remaining pockets of Quechua
speakers in northern Peru, the region’s distinctive characteristics—
particularly its festivals, communal agricultural practices, and artistic tra-
ditions such as weaving and stonework—captured the imagination of many
urban intellectuals, NGOs, artists, and activists, especially those critical of
the mine. In the historical imagination, Porconeros were brought from
what is now Ecuadorian territory during the Inca reign. The Incas used the
practice of mitimae, or displacing a group of people into another area, as a
strategy to weaken enemy groups, maximize their resources, and expand
their empire. Many people in Cajamarca attributed the cultural distinc-
tiveness of Porconeros to this early history of displacement, as well as their
subsequent marginalization and relative isolation from surrounding com-
munities. Porcón’s unique qualities became part of the imaginary of both

124!|!CHAPTER 3
rural and urban actors involved in the defense of Cerro Quilish, while the
changes they saw in Porcón became the focus of criticisms against Minera
Yanacocha. For example, when cement houses with ceramic-tile façades
built by campesino mine workers began to appear among typical adobe
constructions, people criticized what they saw as ostentatious behavior,
growing social disparities, and a break from local customs. In anti-mining
narratives, Porcón stood for a way of life being effaced by the mine’s influ-
ences, and one of the last remnants of a precolonial past.
I went to Porcón with the intention of exploring these narratives around
mining and the role of “the countryside” (what people call el campo, con-
trasting it with the city) in the emerging conflicts. My first contacts in the
area were made through Ernesto, a friend in the city who had worked with
Father Arana in the Porcón parish high school. His fascination with what
he termed the “Andean worldview” (la cosmovisión andina) inspired his
involvement in the Quilish campaigns. He illustrated educational materi-
als produced by NGOs, including little storybooks about the consequences
of mining activity. In one of our conversations, Ernesto explained that he
incorporated what he learned about the rural reality and Andean world-
view in Porcón into his drawings and stories, which were intended for a
campesino audience. What he wanted me to see was that in spite of the
changes and conversion to Adventism, this cosmovisión was something
that people carried with them and expressed in subtle ways, even if they
had to outwardly behave according to the evangelical teachings (which in-
cluded strict codes for dress, diet, and behavior). Just as evangelical Chris-
tians could no longer participate in the Catholic festival of Cristo Ramos
but still watched from a distance, he told me, the fact that people could
not talk about the sun and water being “sacred” did not mean that people
did not treat them as such.
Ernesto introduced me to Salvador, who was in charge of the Quechua
Academy in Cajamarca, one of the many organizations that had also lent its
support to the anti-mining campaigns. The role of the Quechua Academy
was to promote the language by offering classes (primarily to teachers) in
the city, as well as by organizing activities in Quechua-speaking commu-
nities intended to foster pride in the Quechua language. This was not an
easy task in an area where, as I was frequently told, parents preferred that
their children learn English, thinking that this might help them get a job
at the mine.

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!125

 Salvador, who was in his early thirties, had an earnest expression and
soft-spoken manner. His unassuming nature inspired trust in those who
met him. Salvador had studied to be a teacher and learned Quechua from
his grandfather. He and his two sisters were raised by his grandparents
after his mother died when he was a month old. His father worked at
the Porcón Farm, which took him away for long periods, and he later re-
married and started another family. Salvador was close to his grandfather
but said that when he was young, he didn’t understand or value his grand-
father’s teachings. It was only when he was nineteen or twenty, training as
a teacher and getting involved with the Quechua Academy, that he began
to appreciate them. He was the only one of the grandchildren who felt
some affinity with his grandfather’s ideas and accompanied him on trips
to the mountains to conduct what Salvador called rituales, rituals that
involved presenting coca leaves and other offerings to the mountain as a
way of giving thanks.
Salvador’s work with the Quechua Academy put him in touch with
people in Peru and abroad working to promote the Quechua language,
and he became a kind of spokesperson for “Andean culture.” He was once
invited to Canada (where he passed up the opportunity to stay and teach
Quechua at a university) and took some typical Porcón artifacts as a way
to share aspects of the culture with his hosts. However, when he visited his
native Cochapampa, his work and beliefs were at odds with his family, all
of whom had adopted the Adventist religion. “Salvador worships [adora]
the moon, the sun, everything,” a neighbor once commented as she told
me about the friction that this sometimes caused with his father, who was
actively involved with the local Adventist church.
During my stays with his grandparents in Cochapampa, a small caserío
consisting of some eighty families that is part of Upper Porcón, Salvador’s
family provided me with a glimpse of the many facets of life in Porcón.
Traveling to Cochapampa simply required riding one of the many combis
(minivans used for public transportation) that travel from Cajamarca to
different points along the main highway. It took approximately forty min-
utes to reach Km. 16, the last stop on a route with regular daily service. This
fluidity between the city and countryside was also an effect of the mine’s
arrival, and people had grown used to frequent trips to the city—to shop
for groceries, visit relatives, deal with administrative matters, or attend

126!|!CHAPTER 3
school. From Km. 16, it was a twenty-minute walk to the house of Salva-
dor’s grandparents, just behind the primary school.
Cochapampa was typical of communities within Minera Yanacocha’s
“area of influence,” a designation that made it eligible to receive various
forms of support. The company made yearly donations of classroom sup-
plies to the primary school, and children could be seen carrying back-
packs that read “Yanacocha loves you”—presents from the previous year’s
Christmas gift giving, personally delivered by Yanacocha employees who
volunteered their time as part of the company’s community outreach. In
rural communities such as this one, people have long combined subsis-
tence farming and small sources of income with support from a number
of state-run assistance programs: mothers take turns cooking breakfast
with food donations provided by PRONAA (National Program for Nutri-
tional Assistance), and both the Wawa Wasi nursery program and Vaso
de Leche (Glass of Milk) program provide mothers with staples such as
sugar, powdered milk, and oatmeal, as well as occasional opportunities
for income-generating activities. Minera Yanacocha was one more donor
that had been integrated into this wider network of assistentialism that
people depended on.
In the rainy season, the path from the highway to Cochapampa turned
to mud and was traversed by small streams that swelled with the heavy
rains. The elementary school teachers, who came up from the city each
day on transportation partially paid for by Minera Yanacocha, complained
about the wet trek to the school. The rains also gave the landscape a green
lushness, a deceiving image of fertility given that the fields didn’t produce
like they used to and there was not enough pasture for the animals. Most
families grew grains, tubers, and some vegetables adapted to the high alti-
tude and complemented agriculture with the sale of milk. In addition to
cows, some people also kept sheep and small animals (chickens, ducks,
and guinea pigs) for sale or consumption.
Compared to other communities in the vicinity of the mine, Porcón was
an area with a high population density and land divided into small plots.
The story of Salvador’s family exemplified the pressure on land resources
that is typical of Porcón. His great-grandparents lived on what used to be
the Porcón Hacienda, paying rent to the landlords in exchange for using
a parcel of land. Before the agrarian reform of the 1960s, which put an

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!127

end to the hacienda system, they purchased the land that now belongs
to the family. When they were too old to work the land, it was passed on
to Salvador’s grandfather, who in turn divided his two hectares of land
among his four children. Salvador’s father, Mariano, had established his
household on the property that corresponded to him and had to divide his
property among six children from his two marriages. Salvador showed me
the property that he would inherit, a strip of land about 20 by 50 meters,
large enough to build a small house but certainly not to farm. Salvador
lived in the outskirts of the city on land belonging to his wife and had no
intention of moving permanently to Cochapampa, but some of his sib-
lings had already started to build their houses. “It’s beginning to look like
a little village [ pueblito],” he commented with an ironic laugh when we
approached the cluster of houses, lamenting that it was more and more
difficult to live from the land—and that perhaps this was not what people
wanted anymore.
This was a typical story repeated across Porcón, as fields decreased
in size with each generation. Campesinos struggled to subsist on small
plots, battling rancha (potato blight), low soil fertility, and unpredictable
weather. It was also difficult to sustain livestock on small plots of land,
and having enough grass or fodder to feed the animals was a constant
struggle, especially in the dry season. When the grass shortage turned
critical, toward the end of the dry season, Salvador’s grandmother, Maria,
walked more than an hour each day to Upper Porcón, where she rented
some pastureland from a relative to feed her two cows.
Given the importance of having access to pasturelands, many campe-
sinos have multiple properties and grazing areas. This way, animals can
rotate between different communities, sometimes located at different
elevations, to ease the perpetual grass shortage. This strategy was com-
mon among campesinos in the Cajamarca countryside and resulted in
a constant movement of people as well as an intentional effort to main-
tain links to multiple places of residence. When mining activity exacer-
bated the pressure on existing resources, this fluidity of movement and
people’s attachments to multiple communities influenced the way people
organized against Minera Yanacocha. Beyond simply defending the land
where a mining project would be developed, people were concerned with
defending an expansive network of agricultural fields, pastures, and water
necessary to maintain the household economy.

128!|!CHAPTER 3
 People’s negative reaction to the Quilish project was in part based on
the increased pressures that the mine would have on land and water re-
sources that enabled people to eke out a living. However, people did not
necessarily have a clear position “for” or “against” mining. Minera Yanaco-
cha was already part of a network of relations that at times contributed to
people’s livelihood, and at others, made it more difficult. Temporary wage
labor, donations, and development projects were considered useful insofar
as they had become integrated into people’s livelihood strategies, but with
the recognition that these benefits were short-lived. This contradictory
relationship with Minera Yanacocha—its promises of employment and
development on the one hand, and its failure to live up to people’s expec-
tations on the other—contributed to the conflictive and sometimes self-
interested relationship that people had with the company. They utilized
it for their benefit, whenever it was convenient, and resented it at other
times. The Quilish protests were one instance in which people’s discon-
tent resulted in the rejection of the proposed project. Arguments about
the importance of Quilish as a key source of water resonated among people
in Porcón, who were already experiencing shortages of pasture land, and
lower crop yields. But what of the arguments about “Apu Quilish” that also
emerged from the experience of life in Porcón?

Scientists and Mountain Spirits

During the time that I spent in Cochapampa, children and adults told me
many stories—about good and evil mountains, the creatures that emerge
from water springs at night, the places one should not venture for fear of
losing his or her spirit (ánimo), the dangers of rainbows, and the plants that
cure susto (literally “fright,” which afflicts young children in particular,
when traveling in dangerous areas). Sometimes I would ask about Cerro
Quilish, thinking that people’s stories could help me understand why so
many had joined forces in its defense. Most of the stories I heard were not
about a benevolent protector that might correspond to an environmen-
talist narrative or to the image of a “sacred mountain” that tended to sur-
face in campaigns against mining. Instead, they were about harmful spirits
lurking in caves and water springs, especially in mountains which, like
Cerro Quilish, concealed precious minerals and other treasures to entice
humans into the underworld where evil spirits reside.
These stories coincide with those in a monograph by anthropologist

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!129

Ana de la Torre (1986) titled Los dos lados del mundo y del tiempo, which
is based on research conducted in communities around Cerro Quilish in
1979 and 1980. Her informants described a Shapi, a being who emerges
from the underworld through tunnels that end at water springs. From
these water springs, the Shapi waits for its victims in order to steal their
ánimo, tempting them with the promise of sweets, gold coins, livestock,
and other offerings. “Bad” mountains are those associated with the source
of rivers and water springs, since water is property of the Shapi. The dan-
ger of the Shapi lies both in its evil intentions as well as its ability to fas-
cinate and entice humans with promised gifts; this contradictory nature,
the tension between danger and desirability, destruction and fecundity, is
what produces the natural order.
Salvador once explained to me that the water used in Cochapampa
came from the Kunguna, a small mountain with a distinctive rock façade.
At the top of the mountain was a wooden cross decorated with flowers
and offerings from the few practicing Catholics that have not converted to
evangelism. I once accompanied Salvador and a group of teachers from the
Quechua Academy to the Kunguna, where Salvador conducted the rituals
that he had learned from his grandfather and continued to do on his own,
usually with groups of visitors such as this one.
The water from the Kunguna, Salvador told me, comes from Cerro
Quilish. He explained the importance of Quilish and its relationship to
other mountains: “The Kunguna is female, and Quilish is her husband—
he’s male. His brothers are Cerro Negro, Campanario, Qaqamarca. . . .
The mountains talk to each other at midnight, to find out how they are
doing. All of them have water, but Quilish has more of it. They are like
veins: if you cut off one arm the water starts to diminish. They are like
people.” This is what his grandfather had told him, and I heard similar
stories from others. The liveliness of the landscape remained even though
many people had new religious obligations that discouraged such think-
ing. Mount Kunguna was considered one of those places that one ought
to approach with care, since the presence of water springs and the entities
that could emerge through them could bring danger to those who ven-
tured near them. People described the beings that emerged from the water
springs as demons or evil bird-like creatures.
During my time in Porcón, people’s stories and accounts made evident
their detailed knowledge about the location of water springs, the flow of

130!|!CHAPTER 3
rivers, the route of irrigation canals, and other details pertinent to their
livelihoods. But my conversations with people also reminded me that the
intimate, lived experience of everyday life that is often conceived as “local”
or “traditional” knowledge is always born from encounters.2 Julie Cruik-
shank explores three different types of knowledge encounters in her ac-
count of the socionatural history of glaciers in Alaska: encounters take
the form of actual meetings between strangers; they are interactions be-
tween humans and a rapidly changing landscape; and they concern on-
going exchanges between stories and their subsequent readers and lis-
teners (2005:16). Similarly, some of the knowledge encounters that shaped
the socionatural history of Porcón include interactions among Porconeros
and state agents, Catholic priests, evangelical missionaries, NGOs, and
mining engineers. But knowledge encounters also involve elements of the
surrounding landscape (both before and after mining’s transformative
effects) and the animate entities that make that landscape. Furthermore,
encounters take place as stories about Cerro Quilish travel outside Por-
cón, and when these stories become translated, reinterpreted, and perhaps
reincorporated into different knowledge practices.
I learned about these multiple encounters during a conversation with
Margarita, a twenty-nine-year-old mother whose husband worked for a
subcontractor at the mine. Margarita’s family lived just above the path
leading to the highway, and on my way to or from Cajamarca I would
sometimes find her peeling fava beans or harvesting potatoes. It was not a
good harvest; the medicamentos (pesticides) were too costly, and the pota-
toes were full of worms, which she picked out and tossed into the wait-
ing mouth of the dog sitting beside her. The family shared just over half a
hectare of land with her husband’s sister, who lived on the other side of the
field. One day we were chatting at her house while she washed the dishes
in a large tub on the ground and were joined by her twelve-year-old son,
Jaime. Jaime liked telling me stories about devils inhabiting the Yanacocha
mine, which he had heard from his father and uncle who worked there. I
asked Margarita what she knew about Cerro Quilish:

MARGARITA: The water that we drink comes from Quilish, they say. They
say that in Quilish, there’s a lagoon inside, which rises every which
way.
FABIANA: Who says this, the elders?

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!131

 M: The scientists. They study it, that’s why they say this. This is what
they tell us.
JAIME: It’s also on the radio.
M, J: They talk to each other. The devils talk to the gringos.
J: [Mount] Kunguna also talks to [Mount] Aliso.
M: And Aliso talks to Quilish.
J: They recorded this, when they talked, and they play it on the radio.
They speak in Quechua, in English.
F: What else do the scientists say?
M: Quilish has a lagoon inside, they say. It springs every which way.
F: That’s where the water comes from?
J: Yes, it springs from the foot of the mountain. There they made a reser-
voir, and then it comes through the pipes. That’s where they take the
potable water, and it reaches our house.
F: So this water from the tap comes from Cerro Quilish?
M: That’s what they say. A lagoon, they say.
F: Before you heard it on the radio, did people tell stories about Cerro
Quilish?
M: No, we hear them on the radio. “Quilish is life.” If it’s mined the water
will be contaminated, and we’ll die, like chickens [laughs].
J: There used to be frogs, but these are dead now.
M: There are no frogs now, before there were, green ones.
J: Now the mine has contaminated them.
M: On the path, you’d find them . . . it’s been seven, eight years that there
aren’t any. I used to be afraid to walk there; we’d find the little frogs,
around the rocks, green ones . . .

Margarita went on to recount some stories her grandfather had told her,
about mountains that contained gold. I asked if her grandfather had also
told her stories about Cerro Quilish, and she replied: “They used to say
Cerro Quilish was evil. It would eat you. Yanacocha couldn’t get there, the
water springs would suck you in. Quilish was such an evil one! Little boys
would die, dried up. But not anymore. It’s become tame. I don’t know how.
Now we can get there, we’re not afraid at all. Before they used to believe,
our grandparents. . . . And because of their beliefs, the children would die.
But now we know the word of God, and we don’t believe anymore [in evil
spirits]. We’re not even afraid.” Margarita’s account combines her grand-

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father’s stories and NGO campaigns against mining with her own obser-
vations of water springs at the foot of Cerro Quilish and the experience of
walking on paths full of frogs to the nearby community of Chilimpampa
(named after the chilin, one of the types of frogs commonly found in the
area). Many campesinos commented on the absence of frogs as a conse-
quence of mining activity, and this concern was picked up by environmen-
talist campaigns and the mine’s own countercampaigns. The “scientists”
that she mentions could refer to members of local NGOs or international
consultants that went to Cajamarca to lend support to the Quilish cam-
paigns. For example, a public event held in March 2004 to present ob-
servations to Yanacocha’s Environmental Evaluation Study included the
participation of members of GRUFIDES, a lawyer from Lima, and an en-
vironmental scientist from Belgium. Radio spots, printed materials, and
educational workshops run by NGOs usually made reference to studies
carried out by local and international organizations, even though the in-
formation was translated into nontechnical language. Thus, the “lagoon”
refers to scientific descriptions of Quilish as an aquifer that holds water,
but this idea merged with stories told in Andean communities, which say
that large subterranean lakes exist beneath mountains. While rivers, lakes,
and water springs are obvious sources of water, mountains themselves can
also be considered sources of water, even if they show no evidence of being
so (Sherbondy 1998:229).
Jaime and Margarita attributed their knowledge about Cerro Quilish to
what they heard on the radio, but in their accounts the radio spots (pro-
duced by NGOs to raise awareness about mining) became entangled with
their own conceptions about mountain-beings. Mountains have human
qualities and “talk to each other.” They referred as well to versions of stories
about gold-bearing mountains and greedy individuals who meet a tragic
fate when they are confronted by evil spirits. In recent versions of this oft-
told story, the “gringo” perpetrators are North Americans and Peruvians
from the capital city working for Minera Yanacocha. The NGO campaigns
drew from these stories in order to reach a rural audience, even though
as Margarita claims, people who converted to evangelism “don’t believe”
in them anymore. At the same time, she continued to attribute agency to
Cerro Quilish when she explained that the reason Cerro Quilish no longer
harms people is that “it’s become tame.”
The stories told by Margarita and Jaime mesh “scientific” narratives

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!133

about the importance of Quilish with a world of spirits and agentive moun-
tains. Both were necessary in order for stories about Cerro Quilish to
travel outside the boundaries of Porcón and the Cajamarca region. While
hydrological arguments appeal to universalizing ideals of science and en-
vironmentalism, testimonials incorporated into anti-mining campaigns
appeal to the particularities of local knowledge. As I was constantly re-
minded in the field, however, what are usually thought of as “scientific” and
“traditional” knowledge are both the result of local-global encounters—
encounters that are unequal and unstable and have unpredictable effects.
Neither scientific narratives nor local stories are fixed and unchanging,
and as they become part of new transnational contexts—of global mining,
environmentalism, and cultural rights—they are transformed and in turn
help transform those contexts with which they merge. Sometimes these
different types of knowledge connect, and sometimes they slide apart
(Cruikshank 2005), but as the Quilish case makes clear, these knowledges
do not have to be based on shared interests or a common understand-
ing of the world. Divergent knowledges can also communicate and come
together in unexpected ways. One of the ways in which noncongruent
knowledges came together in the Quilish controversy was in discussions
around water. As I will show, arguments about the importance of Cerro
Quilish as a water source were important for the campaigns against the
mine, but they also helped further the interests of those in favor of the
project.

Traveling Knowledges
In Peru, spirits and other beings that inhabit the mountains (variously
known as “Muqui” and “duendes,” among other names) have long been
part of mining activity, engaged in complex negotiations with mine
workers facing the dangers of the underground mines.3 The ideas about a
sentient landscape that I encountered in Cajamarca were part of this larger
socionatural world that remains present in the popular imagination in the
Peruvian highlands. However, the Apu that Cerro Quilish came to repre-
sent was not already part of a “traditional Andean cosmology” but came
into public view through multiple interactions as it was incorporated into
anti-mining protests.
Father Arana’s evocations of Cerro Quilish’s “sacredness” resonated
with people in the campo as well as urban residents, including those who

134!|!CHAPTER 3
were part of his congregation but also others who shared his Catholic
background. The protection of the environment from mining pollution,
and the defense of Cerro Quilish in particular, came to be seen by some
within this group as an intrinsic part of their Catholic duty. One example of
how these ideas were articulated comes from a bulletin produced in 2003
by the Asociación para la Defensa Ambiental de Cajamarca (Cajamarca
Association for Environmental Defense), which included some members
of Father Arana’s Parish of Guadalupe: “We Christians of Cajamarca de-
fend Cerro Quilish, the Sacred Apu, for the traditional campesino way
of thinking. . . . To defend Quilish as a Mountain where campesinos can
worship God . . . is a challenge for us Christians who are called to culti-
vate a spirituality, that is, a life according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ that
recuperates the meaning of God, always present in nature, which speaks
to us of its Creator.” The idea of the “sacred” helped to translate the re-
lationship between campesinos and Cerro Quilish into the language of
Catholicism. At the same time, Cerro Quilish’s identity as an Apu trav-
eled beyond a religious audience, enrolling environmentalists, journal-
ists, and other supporters—including campesinos themselves, who per-
haps reappropriated the meanings of Cerro Quilish in ways that helped
to strengthen their claims.
Narratives about “Apu Quilish” that were part of Father Arana’s writ-
ings were quickly picked up by the media, as were the arguments about
water that activists emphasized in their campaigns. National and interna-
tional news stories that circulated about the Quilish protests consistently
described the conflict as one that revolved around the defense of Caja-
marca’s primary source of water. For example, La República, a national
daily with a liberal slant, referred to Cerro Quilish as an aquifer that sup-
plies water to the city (La República 2004). Some national media reports
also mentioned the need to conduct hydrological and hydrogeological
studies of the watershed before any exploration work could continue, a
point that was written into an agreement between the mining company
and local leaders that put an end to the protests (El Comercio 2004).
In missives from organizations such as Oxfam America and the interna-
tional press, descriptions of Cerro Quilish as a source of water were often
accompanied by references to its local significance as a sacred mountain.
An article from AFP newswire stated that “campesinos justified their atti-
tude [against exploration activity] alleging that the mountain is sacred and

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!135

that the gods of Andean mythology (Apus) gave it to them ‘in concession’
to take care of them” (Cisneros 2004). In another article, titled “Protests
Continue against Gold Prospecting on Sacred Peruvian Mountain,” a jour-
nalist from the Associated Press wrote that Cerro Quilish was “historically
considered an ‘apu,’ or deity, by local Indian communities” (Caso 2004). In
the national press the term Apu did not appear with great frequency, but
the alleged sacredness of Cerro Quilish was nevertheless present in media
coverage (e.g., Sandoval 2004) and influenced public opinion on the issue.
Before the Quilish protests, Apus and other entities were usually rele-
gated to studies of “folklore” (or more recently, to tourism, and to “New
Age” and environmentalist discussions) but were not taken seriously in
political debates. Additionally, the idea that Cerro Quilish was an impor-
tant aquifer set the conflict apart from earlier disputes around mining
activity in the country. Certainly, water had previously been a concern in
mining regions, particularly when rivers and streams were contaminated
by mine runoff. However, the idea that a mountain needed to be protected
because it was a source of water marked a shift in thinking about mining,
water, and the environment. Water helped make the Quilish issue compel-
ling and drew the support of people who did not necessarily identify with
an “environmentalist” or “anti-mining” stance.
In part, the shift to discussions about water related to new technologies
of open-pit mining that involve moving massive quantities of earth, using
chemicals that could leach into bodies of water, and using large quanti-
ties of water in the mining process. In modern mines like Yanacocha, the
unknown and unpredictable risks associated with mining operations are
the most worrisome for neighboring communities: the lowering of the
water table, the reduction of water flows in rivers and irrigation canals, and
contaminants that are often undetectable to the naked eye. Once Cerro
Quilish was identified as a key source of water for the region, these un-
seen and unforeseen hazards became more tangible. Activists used these
arguments to put a stop to the project and made water a key element of
future conflicts.

Quilish as Water
The Quilish anti-mining protests, unprecedented in the country’s history,
prompted Yanacocha’s definitive withdrawal from Cerro Quilish. Bowing
to public pressure, Minera Yanacocha asked the Ministry of Energy and

136!|!CHAPTER 3
Mines to revoke its exploration permit. Following the protests, the min-
ing company emitted a communiqué in which it recognized its mistakes:

The events that took place in September have made us understand the
true dimension of the preoccupations that our insistence to initiate ex-
ploration studies and activity in Quilish generated in the population,
both in the countryside and the city.
We have listened to the preoccupations expressed by people of the
countryside and the city, with regard to the quality and quantity of
water. In this respect, we will work jointly with communities with the
objective of obtaining an integral and transparent solution that will
allow us to protect this precious resource.
We want to give testament to our willingness to always listen to the
sentiments of the people of Cajamarca, recognize our mistakes, and
promote positive changes in our behavior that will permit constructing
our relationship with the population. (Minera Yanacocha 2004)

It was an unprecedented recognition of fault on the part of the company

and explicitly evoked the importance of water. Activism against the Quilish
project, including scientific arguments about the importance of Quilish
as an aquifer, helped make water the common language in which mining
issues were discussed. During the Quilish controversy and in subsequent
mining conflicts, protestors maintained that mining “at the headwaters of
the river basin” (en cabecera de cuenca) would inevitably affect the water
of communities downstream, and should not be permitted.
The focus on water in mining debates emerged alongside a national
concern about water issues that were not restricted to the impacts of ex-
tractive activity, but ranged from potable water and sanitation in urban
areas to global water scarcity and privatization. However, “water and min-
ing” became a prominent theme in the many water-related conferences,
forums, and educational events that were organized in Cajamarca and
throughout the country in the years following the Quilish protests. These
conferences often saw the participation of international experts and key
figures such as Father Arana and spokespeople from the mining sector.
In May 2007 in Cajamarca, for example, the first of an ongoing series of
“Water Forums” (organized by a coalition of actors that included the min-
ing industry) brought together representatives from corporations, govern-
ment, and civil society to discuss water-related issues and management

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!137

strategies. In several conferences on mining organized by NGOs, water
also took precedence in the presentations and discussions.
While arguments about Cerro Quilish’s role as a source of water con-
tributed to an anti-mining discourse, Minera Yanacocha also began to
give water more attention in its public relations campaigns. These cam-
paigns transformed Cerro Quilish into an object for technical and sci-
entific management and sought to counter criticisms against the mining
company. Much of Minera Yanacocha’s public relations work focused on
water issues that activists themselves had helped introduce into the de-
bate: for example, the company disputed the claim that mining processes
compromise water availability for local communities. Instead, Minera Ya-
nacocha’s educational materials and public presentations suggested that
the problem was not one of water scarcity, but of water management. In
its public relations materials, the company argued that Cajamarca had
abundant water, but it was “lost” because it was not captured and used to
its full advantage before it flowed into the sea. For example, a poster and
video campaign promoting Minera Yanacocha’s water management plans
stated: “We are collecting some of the water that Cajamarca loses at sea.
There is [enough] water. Let’s all think about how we can collect more of
it.”4 Thus, the solution lay in capturing more water by constructing water
reservoirs, dikes, and water tanks. Other company-sponsored projects fo-
cused on improving irrigation systems by lining canals to reduce water
loss and introducing spray irrigation technologies. The company also in-
vested in various participatory water monitoring programs that involved
state institutions and local communities. This emphasis on the technical
dimensions of water issues reduced the complexity of Cerro Quilish and
facilitated the company’s efforts to refocus the debate to emphasize the
management of resources.
Following the Quilish protest, the company focused its efforts on pro-
moting an image of environmental responsibility, institutional transpar-
ency, and public participation, all legitimized by technical arguments. This
strategy was apparent in the events that took place on the second anni-
versary of the Quilish protests. On September 2, 2006, the company in-
stalled a series of information panels around the stone fountain in Caja-
marca’s Plaza de Armas describing operations at the Yanacocha mine (see
figure 3.3). The panels contained photographs of the mine’s laboratories
and plant facilities, water monitoring programs, and reclamation projects

138!|!CHAPTER 3
FIGURE 3.3 A Yanacocha engineer explains the technical aspects of the mining
process in Cajamarca’s central square.

to restore vegetation around the mine. According to a Yanacocha press re-

lease from May 28, 2007, the idea for this event came from a group of mine
employees and was embraced by the company because it aimed to show
in a “transparent and direct way, through contact with mine workers, how
work is carried out at Yanacocha.” The visual displays around the foun-
tain, along with the engineers on hand to answer people’s questions, were
meant to inform people about the complex processes that are involved in
modern mining operations.
There was a festive feel to the event, as the engineers and other mine
employees who had volunteered to come out that Saturday morning
gathered to chat around the fountain and took turns engaging with the
public. Yet the relaxed and festive ambiance in the plaza concealed what
was in fact one of the most difficult periods for Minera Yanacocha since the
company’s arrival. Just one month prior, residents of Combayo had initi-
ated a roadblock to protest against Yanacocha’s plans to expand its mining
operations in the area. Combayo leaders insisted that the primary reason
for their opposition was their concern about the effects of mining activity
on the quality and quantity of their water (and consequently, farming and

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!139

agricultural activities). Company officials dismissed the claims of Com-
bayo leaders, arguing that the conflict was driven by personal economic
interests—in other words, that the protests were a way to coerce the com-
pany into providing jobs for people in the community and contracts for
Combayo entrepreneurs wanting to work on development projects funded
by Minera Yanacocha.
The information displays around the fountain were part of the com-
pany’s efforts to overcome the tensions lingering since the Combayo pro-
tests began. But the timing of the event was significant for another rea-
son. While news about Combayo circulated around the country, it was an
earlier conflict that was on people’s minds: Cerro Quilish. The company
anticipated that some activists might attempt to commemorate the sec-
ond anniversary of the Quilish protests, but the fierce backlash against
NGOs and the Combayo protestors—expressed in angry editorials, pro-
Yanacocha rallies, and even direct hostility toward key activists critical of
the mine—thwarted the activists’ plans. Instead, I listened to the mine’s
engineers explain to passersby that the mine does not pollute the envi-
ronment or affect water quantity, even amid a few skeptical remarks and
pointed questions from the public. The engineers’ technical explanations
were an attempt to diffuse the conflicts that plague the industry, and which
they blame on irrational emotion, misinformation, and political manipu-
lation. Their direct engagement with local residents was part of the min-
ing sector’s renewed efforts to minimize opposition through informa-
tion sharing, replacing people’s uncertainties and fears of environmental
threats with technical arguments intended to dispel them.

Relating Multiple Worlds

“Will Quilish give its consent to be mined?” Herlinda’s question highlights
the challenge of understanding conflicts that are based on ontological dif-
ferences. For many campesinos in the region, Cerro Quilish is part of a sen-
tient, animate landscape disrupted by recent large-scale mining projects.
However, Cerro Quilish did not already exist as an Apu according to a
traditional “Andean cosmology”; rather, it came into public view through
multiple interactions and knowledge practices that revolved around the
anti-mining protests.
Salvador’s own role in the campaigns gave me some insights into how
he enacted the “traditional knowledge” that he was working to preserve.

140!|!CHAPTER 3
When I visited him in 2012, it seemed that the years that had passed since
the Quilish conflict had given him the distance necessary to analyze these
emblematic events from a different vantage point. Salvador continued to
work at the Quechua Academy, and he was writing a book about the his-
tory of Cochapampa from precolonial times to the present, based on the
stories that his grandfather and others had told him. It was a slow process,
since he worked on it during breaks between the Quechua classes he gave
as part of the government’s interculturality training for teachers. When I
read Salvador’s text—what he had managed to salvage after the latest com-
puter crash—I noticed that Mount Kunguna featured prominently in his
account. I asked him about the importance of the mountain, and if Kun-
guna was considered an Apu.
Salvador clarified that the word Apu was used only in the central and
southern parts of the country, while orqo was the word that was used in
the Cajamarca variant of Quechua. He also explained that not all moun-
tains (cerros in Spanish) are orqo; some are qaqa. When I asked him to
tell me about each kind of mountain, he said that orqo is a mountain with
“plants, water, and animals. You can walk and sow crops. It has spirit (es-
píritu), and people try to respect it. This is what my grandfather used to
say.” Qaqa, by contrast, had the opposite characteristics: “There are no
animals, plants, or water. You can’t walk on it, or it’s difficult to do so,
and you can’t sow crops. It’s a mountain that isn’t natural.” I asked him
to explain what he meant by “natural,” and he answered: “When there
are earthquakes or landslides (huaicos), they collapse; they are not stable,
they change form. It’s not the same as orqo, which is firm rock, it doesn’t
change, it’s stable.” To further clarify the difference, he walked up to the
chalkboard and drew the different kinds of mountains. He illustrated qaqa
as a row of overlapping pointed peaks, while orqo was rounded in shape,
with a gradual slope. Kunguna and Quilish were orqo, since they had the
characteristics he had described: They hold water, plants, and animals, and
they also have espíritu.
Salvador’s explanation made it clear that Apu had been a term used in
other parts of the country, but not by people in Cajamarca. He said that
the term was adopted by outsiders and journalists who reported on the
Quilish conflict, and it took hold. He acknowledged the irony of this, and
the advantages of using the term that was more “catchy,” to express what
is essentially the same idea. I noticed that in his own writing, he used

THE HYDROLOGY OF A SACRED MOUNTAIN!|!141

orqo and Apu interchangeably, and I asked him why. “Apu is more . . .
international,” he responded with a laugh. He said this half-jokingly, but
he was also being practical. What he cared about was that the stories get
told, and that children learn about the history of the region. Salvador, like
Father Arana, was performing his own kind of translation, and the changes
needed to be made to preserve what he construed as the culture of Porcón.
The struggles over Cerro Quilish involved a large number of partici-
pants whose interests both overlapped and diverged in productive ways,
contributing to the strength of the campaign against the mine. As I have
showed in this chapter, Cerro Quilish’s multiple forms made it possible
for the campaign to draw a diverse base of supporters and travel through
international activist and media networks. I am not suggesting that Qui-
lish’s multiplicity was planned or intentionally fabricated; rather, the vari-
ous actors and events I have described helped shape and bring to the fore-
front the particular forms that Cerro Quilish was to take at various stages
in the controversy.
When the movement was at its strongest, the multiplicity of Cerro
Quilish posed a challenge for Minera Yanacocha. Yet as I have sought to
show, “making matter” requires continuous effort, and the precariousness
of those multiple worlds became evident at times when the movements
against mining expansion became fragmented and activism weakened.
Arguments about water quality and quantity that anti-mining activists
introduced into the debates, along with the mining industry’s techno-
cratic solutions centered on environmental management, had the effect
of destabilizing Cerro Quilish’s multiplicity and enabling a singular reality
(water) to take hold. This singularity seemed to obscure (at least tempo-
rarily) other realities. Yet the potential for ongoing conflict remains, for
those other realities do not cease to exist. An attention to multiple worlds
reveals the collaborative processes of enactment that bring entities into
being. Contemporary conflicts over mining can thus be understood as an
ongoing process of contestation over socionatural worlds. This is always
an unfinished process and will continue as Cerro Quilish’s multiple forms
are enacted and reenacted in an evolving context of mining expansion.

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