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"We were replaced by pines": dispossession, displacement, and the colonial wound in Pilpilco's coal plant closure.

Authors :
Novoa, Magdalena
Morales Fredes, Daniela
Source :
Labor History. Jun2024, Vol. 65 Issue 3, p316-336. 21p.
Publication Year :
2024

Abstract

This paper explores the racialized experiences of industrial closure and economic restructuring of the former Pilpilco coal mine through oral histories and feminist arts-based methods. We argue that Pilpilco's industrial closure illuminates the layers of historical violence exerted on bodies and land as inseparable categories to colonize and extract resources and labour in the Chilean coal basin in Mapuche land. Pilpilco's industrial closure illustrates how coloniality operates in Latin America, perpetuating racial, gender, political and social hierarchical orders and prescribing value to certain peoples and territories while disenfranchising others (Quijano, 2000, Lugones, 2008). The article reflects on the colonial wounds that continue to harm inhabitants and their environments, prolonging their inability to heal intergenerational pain. Finally, we analyse residents' creative strategies to reclaim Pilpilco's land through heritage recognition, women's solidarity, and alliances with indigenous struggles. The study expands the reach and depth of deindustrialization studies, providing insights into how processes of industrialization, deindustrialization, and reindustrialization unfolded through the entanglements of settler colonialism and indigenous dispossessions, authoritarian regime and political repression, and neoliberalism and social demobilization. It also contributes to the field by providing a perspective on industrial closure from women's experience – those unpaid care workers who sustained life in coal mining communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
0023656X
Volume :
65
Issue :
3
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Labor History
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
177218791
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2024.2326029