Resistances and Alternatives of the Mapuche People towards Fracking at Vaca Muerta, (Neuquen, Argentina)

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the advance of the non–conventional hydrocarbon frontier (fracking) at the Vaca Muerta formation in the Neuquen province of Argentina highlighting the territorial disputes that occur between different political, economic, and social actors. Therefore, we characterise both the advance of the extractivist model in Argentina and Latin America and the resistance and alternative creation processes of the social movements from their territorial dimension. Throughout the article, we present several actors, and their territoriality struggles against fracking, especially the hydrocarbon companies and their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies, the state on its different levels of government, and the indigenous communities of Mapuche people that ancestrally inhabit the area. From the analysis of these social actors’ territorialisation processes, the differentiated senses they give to the common goods and to the territories that contain them are revealed, creating a scenario of conflictivity and dispute, where moments of dialogue and negotiation and moments of bigger direct confrontation occur.