In genre-bending Dirtigol, Luis Manuel Claps sets out to document the ‘Esquel effect’, the wave of organised resistance to large-scale industrial mining which spread across Argentina and beyond following a 2003 referendum on the installation of a gold mine in Esquel. Dirtigol, an alter-ego of the author himself, sets off in search of similar movements. <a class="view-article" href="https://soundsandcolours.com/articles/argentina/new-book-on-the-track-of-dirty-gold-follows-stories-of-environmental-resistance-63590/">Read Article</a>
Extractive Companies Privatize Repression and Counterinsurgency in the Americas
Hundreds of police officers attend an operation in illegal gold mining area of La Pampa, in Madre de Dios, southern Peru, on July 13, 2015.
Sebastian Castaneda / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
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As activists increasingly confront extractive industries, militarized repression of those protests has become a growing and lucrative business. This phenomenon is salient across much of the world, including the U.S., where fossil fuel companies are funneling money to police departments that repress anti-racist and environmental justice movements. However, private security is a particularly growing business in Latin America, which is also the world’s deadliest region for water and land protectors.