Relating Divergent Worlds: Mines, Aquifers and Sacred Mountains in Peru

Abstract

This article examines a conflict over the expansion,
into Cerro Quilish (Mount Quilish), of the Yanacocha gold
mine, in Northern Peru. In campaigns against the mine, Cerro
Quilish was an aquifer (a store of life-sustaining water) and an
Apu (usually translated from Quechua as "sacred mountain").
Neither the product of ancestral tradition nor the invention of
antimining activists, Cerro Quilish came into being through
knowledge encounters that brought together actors with diverse
interests, although at times a single entity—water—became
the central focus of debate, obscuring other realities. Drawing
on science and technology studies literature, I examine the
practices that bring entities into being and argue that contem
porary conflicts involve an ongoing process of contestation
over socionatural worlds.