The progressive leopardism and the neoextractivism: the cases of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile in the context of the commodities boom

Abstract

In the beginning, the self-proclaimed progressive governments in the Latin America of the 21st century declared their wish to modify the production model and jump off post-neoliberalism. This meant step away the extractivist primary commodity exports model and implement strategies for economic diversification. These measures would have as direct consequence decreasing socio-environmental conflicts in the territories.

Shortly, the governments that took this ideological turn presented a paradox expressed not only continuing the primary commodity exports model, but deepening it. This led to a selective neo-extractivism, which as consequence brought high levels of environmental conflict in the territories.

The aim of this article is to characterize the progressivism in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, focusing on their extractive processes. The hypothesis proposes that during the progressive governments, socioenvironmental conflicts increased in the three cases. Methodologically, bibliographic discussion was chosen to characterize the progressivism as well as the design of a data analysis matrix based on those socioenvironmental conflicts related to mining, before and after the progressive governments of the three countries analyzed between the years 2001 and 2013.