| By A. Bebbington and M. Scurrah | Published in Subterranean Struggles: New Dynamics of Mining, Oil and Gas in Latin America. Edited by A. Bebbington and J.Bury. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Excerpt: The Peruvian Amazon was the scene of significant mobilization and violence during the 2000s, with concerns over extractive industries at the very heart of these conflicts. As indigenous people and others have questioned the Peruvian government’s efforts to expand the hydrocarbon frontier, perhaps their most frequent point of reference has been the experience of oil extraction in the region of the Río Corrientes (Corrientes River) in the Northeast Peruvian Amazon. The history of Río Corrientes shows how petroleum production activities can generate social and environmental abuses in an isolated area where government agencies are barely present and offer little oversight of the extractive process (see also Chapter 9 in this volume, by Postigo, Montoya , and Young). At the same time, the case illuminates the conditions under which such abuses can catalyze conflict and shows how an affected population can develop organizations, strategies, and alliances that allow it to combine resistance and negotiation in its efforts to contain the extractive frontier. In this instance, as we discuss, such resistance and negotiation ultimately led to a shift in relationships between the population, business, and the state, and brought parts of this state more directly into the regulation of extractive activity , with effects that reach beyond the specificities of the case.