Chapter 8 tests the cross-regional validity of the refined theory by tracing processes in Ecuador and Peru and comparing them with patterns in Slovakia and Poland. After a brief discussion of antecedent conditions and crises before critical periods of major market reform, I assess neoliberal junctures in Ecuador and Peru with special attention to the hypothetically crucial variations in terms of political agency. The next two sections analyze divergent path dependencies that stemmed from nuanced juncture contingencies, ultimately showing that illiberal tendencies in the Andes were shaped in ways consistent with theoretical expectations. Finally, I compare the South American and Eastern European cases by focusing on the mechanisms of production and reproduction linking neoliberal junctures and subsequent illiberal tendencies. Contrary to prior research, I conclude that Andean illiberalism’s capacities to be politically dominant and to be contestatory vis-à-vis liberal democracy are, as in Eastern Europe, best understood as distinct adaptations to societal reactions resulting from prior historical contingencies. By offering a theoretically grounded comparative account, this chapter invites new ways of thinking about developments after neoliberal reforms in Latin America.

Chapter 7 further develops the study’s critical juncture framework and justifies its extension to cases in South America. Drawing lessons from Eastern Europe, I begin by distinguishing between varying illiberal tendencies in Slovakia and Poland, based on which I offer new theoretical insights. As I elaborate sequences linking (1) illiberals’ divergent ability to be politically dominant back to whether neoliberal reform agents were social democrats or polarizing populists, and (2) contestatory versus moderate tendencies back to whether or not anti-neoliberal protest was institutionalized during critical periods of early market reform, I elaborate the argument about the durable effects of contingency associated with postcommunist junctures. I then make the case for applying the refined framework to South American cases. Here, I note some blind spots in scholarship on Latin American populism and highlight important commonalities between dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Andes. Next, I review the advantages of analyzing developments in Ecuador and Peru from a comparative perspective that is sensitive to both cross- regional and intra-regional patterns of similarity and difference. Ending with a discussion of the insufficiency of standard explanations of illiberal trends, the chapter sets the stage for the paired comparison that follows.

The magazine Renacimiento was one of the most important periodical publications in the evangelical world during the first decades of the twentieth century. Founded in 1921 by missionary Juan Ritchie, it became the voice of the Peruvian Evangelical Church (Iglesia Evangélica Peruana – IEP), the first national denomination in Peru. The magazine was part of initial efforts to develop Protestant journalistic work, in which other Protestant missionary agencies also participated. However, the influence of the Renacimiento was decisive in creating a Protestant consciousness and developing reactions to various social and religious topics based in a nascent evangelical identity. This chapter will focus on selections from the first years of the magazine (1921–1930), paying close attention to the political and social dimensions of faith in its articles as well as the construction of evangelical identity. Its aim is to contribute to our understanding of this crucial period of evangelical history by analyzing a forum in which the voices of missionaries and national leaders converged.

Francisco García Calderón (1883–1953) was one of the most prestigious Spanish American intellectuals during the first decades of the twentieth century, when he was considered “the best interpreter of the continent’s realities.” A Peruvian national, he was born in Valparaíso while his father (then provisional president of Peru) was held prisoner by the Chilean government following the negotiations that ended the War of the Pacific. The family returned to Peru in 1889, and settled in Lima, where García Calderón grew up. He studied philosophy and letters at the Universidad de San Marcos, graduating in 1903. He soon rose to prominence among a new generation of intellectuals, particularly when the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó wrote the prologue of his first book De litteris (1904). In 1906, he moved with his mother and siblings to Paris, where he spent the next four decades of his life. His book Les démocraties latines de l’Amérique was first published in French with a preface by the French president Raymond Poincaré, in 1912. While some fragments of the book appeared in Spanish in 1951, the full first Spanish version was published by the Biblioteca Ayacucho in Caracas in 1979.

Selected passages from “Nuestros indios” (1904) by Manuel Gonzalez Prada (1844–1918).

Four: I turn from the cormorant itself to the bird’s natural product, guano, a resource that in the nineteenth century brought the Pacific into the global economy, profoundly affected the environment worldwide and enriched Europeans through the de facto slavery of thousands of Chinese indentured labourers on the Peruvian guano islands. Beginning with the filthy riches made from the guano trade by the UK-based Gibbs family, I outline the chemistry of guano, the European capitalisation of guano, and the conditions of labour of the guano workers. I then turn to the James Bond novel Dr No, locating Ian Fleming’s interest in guano and his transposition of the guano trade from Peru to the Caribbean in his banking family’s close connection with the Gibbses. I conclude with a discussion of the origins in the history of guano of the idea of dirt as ‘matter out of place’.

This chapter explores why, despite being central players in transnational drug markets, Mexico and Peru’s post-authoritarian trajectories of peace and violence differ. It first examines how the Mexican military developed a powerful counterinsurgent state to fight leftist insurgents and dissidents under one-party rule. Once it succeeded in suppressing rebels through a Dirty War, authoritarian specialists in violence helped transform local traffickers into transnational drug cartels. After democratization, the first administration failed to adopt a transitional justice (TJ) process and subsequent governments deployed the surviving counterinsurgent state to fight a War on Drugs, leading to the proliferation of conflicts that turned Mexico into one of the world’s most violent democracies. Focusing then on Peru, the chapter traces the rise of the counterinsurgent state under military dictatorship, its expansion during the civil war, and its transformation under Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship. After defeating the rebels, the head of Fujimori’s secret service seized control of transnational drug-trafficking. Following the collapse of dictatorship, the adoption of a robust truth commission and the prosecution of Fujimori’s security apparatus led to the dismantling of the counterinsurgent state, prevented the outbreak of large-scale drug wars, and set Peru on a twenty-year path of relative peace. However, failure to adopt TJ “boosters” opened a new era of violence.

As gold prices have soared, the Amazon and its inhabitants have had to bear the brunt of a rampant, environmentally destructive gold-mining rush. Small and medium-sized illegal, informal, and other irregular forms of so-called artisanal gold mining, as well as large-scale corporate gold mines, cause major and multifaceted socioenvironmental–health–human rights crises. The dynamics of the gold-mining boom are important to understand the key political economic sectors behind forest degradation and deforestation and to highlight how RDPEs work. The overall situation in the Amazon is presented, analyzing the causes of gold mining and the violence, especially in Peru, Brazil, and other key regions. The triple frontier between Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil is also analyzed as the irregular gold-mining RDPE is one of the most important drivers of deforestation. In this region, gold-mining operations are led by ex-guerilla groups in Venezuela, paramilitaries and other armed groups in Colombia, and, increasingly, by the First Capital Command and other drug factions from southeastern Brazil in Roraima’s Yanomami Indigenous lands.

Peru’s Amazon is the site of a violent and fast-moving gold-mining rush, which has caused divides within Indigenous communities and devastating environmental impacts from the mercury used in gold extractivism. There has been a massive increase in illegal or informal gold mining, especially in Peru’s Madre de Dios province. Tens of thousands of miners operate on rafts in the rivers or dig for gold by increasingly mechanized means. In Madre de Dios there is a gold-mining RDPE that explains the bulk of land and forest use. In addition to an exploration of the dynamics of gold extractivism, this chapter also assesses the conflicts and resistance at play in this context. Indigenous communities, especially in the Amazon, are currently facing huge extractivist pressures, which has started to polarize many communities and change their relationship with the extractivist phenomena. Some community members have started to extract gold illegally and destructively, while most resist these temptations, invoking nonmodernist cosmologies and understandings that place barriers to extractivist expansions.

The conclusion unites the key empirical, theoretical, and methodological lessons, showcasing findings on the causes of deforestation relevant for several scholarly fields. The book’s original contribution and approach highlight the importance of RDPEs as the ultimate cause of deforestation. These RDPEs are also building blocks of global capitalism and regional drivers of deforestation, enabled by state actions, yet simultaneously resisted by progressive state and civil society actors. Ranching-grabbing in Brazil and gold mining–organized crime in the Amazon are explored as particularly important extractivist systems that help to explain deforestation in the Amazon at a deeper level. The book also discusses clearcutting and how it is driven by the aims of the pulping, papermaking, and wood energy sectors in Finland. Finland is a Nordic welfare state in the EU, which provides a novel comparison of how regionally dominant extractivist systems can vary yet still cause loss of forests across the North–South divide in the world-system. The lessons are related to broader discussions around global forests and deforestation.

This book analyzes the role of different political economic sectors that drive deforestation and clearcutting, including mining, ranching, export-oriented plantation agriculture, and forestry. The book examines the key actors, systems, and technologies behind the worsening climate/biodiversity crises that are aggravated by deforestation. The book is theoretically innovative, uniting political economic, sociological, political ecologic, and transdisciplinary theories on the politics of extraction. The research relies on the author’s multi-sited political ethnography, including field research, interviews, and other approaches, across multiple frontiers of deforestation, focusing on Brazil, Peru, and Finland. Why do key global extractivist sectors continue to expand via deforestation and what are the differences between sectors and regions? The hypothesis is that regionally and sometimes nationally dominant politically powerful economic sectors are major explanatory factors for if, how, and where deforestation occurs. To address the deepening global crises, it is essential to understand these power relations within different types of deforesting extractivisms.