About extractivism
A brief essay about the environmental situation in Argentina
In November 2023, Javier Milei was elected by 56% of the votes as Argentina's new president. The so-called “libertarian”, “anarcho-capitalist” or “minarchist” president, arrived with the promise of fiscal cuts, an increase of the salary in dollars, and lower inflation, all of this supported by a strong adjustment on the so-called “political caste” during the campaign. Amidst novel speeches and proposals from the past, the working class, disgusted by the tired Peronist caste, changed its focus again and looked for a new savior. This is no surprise to anyone: the Argentine economy came out of the pandemic even weaker than before, with a model sustained by pure inflationary monetary emission and, therefore, increasing the misery of the working class. The inefficiency of the Peronist governments in dealing with the economy led to a climate change denialist president who, without mincing words, went so far as to say: “a company can pollute a river as much as it wants”, without proposing concrete solutions on how to solve the externalities in the economy, came to power.
How does the economic and social situation in Argentina relate to the environment? Let’s see.
Argentine capitalism is small, agrarian, and delayed. Without going into further detail, this concept will allow us to understand the economy better. Small because of its low capacity to accumulate and reproduce capital, this is generated by its total dependence on the main efficient branch of the economy: agriculture; as a consequence, the differential income obtained from agricultural exports is used to subsidize the other branches of the economy (the industrial branch) in such a way that it can never reach the necessary scale to compete in the world market. However, in recent decades, with the decline in demand from the giant red Asian country (which at the time characterized our country to grow at Chinese rates), the economy began to suffer and the compensation mechanism continued to weaken.
However, it would seem that there is a light at the end of the tunnel: this light comes from the Northwest. Mining activity is nothing new in our country. Since the constitutional reform of 1994 (Art. 124), this activity has seen a significant advance in which mining companies that invested were guaranteed less state regulation and almost no taxes (3% in the case of lithium in Jujuy), favoring the lobby. This dynamic of extraction of natural resources, in large volume or high intensity, which are essentially oriented to be exported as raw materials without or with minimal processing, is what we call extractivism.
But then: What is wrong with a country accepting foreign investments to exploit resources that the state cannot (or does not want to…) take advantage of? Well, first we must understand that the types of extractivism that occur in Argentina (agriculture and mining) expand or contract according to the pulses of the world economy. As mentioned above, the advance of the agricultural frontier between 2004–2011 had a name: China. The increase in demand led Argentina to play a not insignificant role in the export of raw materials, something that may come to happen with the advance of the demand for green technologies and electro-mobility. These, however, are benefits that will flee out of the country. Investments by transnational companies promise jobs and development, nothing could be further from the truth. Macroeconomic impacts are almost null, generating significant impacts to local populations and environmental liabilities that the provincial state has to solve with limited resources, adding to the precariousness of the labor force, with a minimum sector of the population benefiting from high salaries.
But this does not only impact the “poor animals” or the “Indigenous” communities if there is such a thing nowadays. Eduardo Gudynas, proposes the concept of ecological amputation for these exploited sites that lose the capacity to recover by nature’s own methods, for example, the exploitation at the mine entrance or the “sojización” of large extensions of fields. Consequence: droughts, water and atmospheric pollution, floods, heat waves, and therefore, a decrease in the quality of life of the working people. In general and concrete terms: Argentina (and Latin America) becomes an intensive supplier of unprocessed natural resources for the world market, wasting territory, nature, and human lives without even leaving crumbs for the state. This primarization of the population leads to a decrease in productive sectors that require greater technological complexity, which generates stable and high-value-added employment.
This could go on for a long time and there are several links to delve into more detail that will be left for other articles. In conclusion, we are approaching a country with greater deregulation and little interest in environmental matters, and yes, that affects you. Today we live in a rather strange time, with internationally recognized figures denying right and left the consequences of the ecological component on the life of the working class, homogenizing and fragmenting it for their benefit. But hey, we can always go on vacation to Mars!
