Extractivism and Emergency Powers in Latin America

In the post-9/11 context, the threat of terrorism has been invoked to justify a whole series of exceptional measures in the United States and Europe. Showing a divergent trajectory, the situation in Latin America displays quite different characteristics which are worth considering. Although the threat of terrorism is relatively low, governments in the region often refer to new problems, particularly violent crime and the protection of natural resources as a source of economic development, to resort to old institutional emergency provisions. This study seeks to identify the specific features of Latin American exceptionalism through a series of case studies from Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala and Peru in which emergency powers are used to safeguard the operational activities of the extractive industry. Through these cases, we observe a sort of institutional memory through which the historical concentration of power in the executive and the violent strategies used to deal with internal conflicts are maintained and adapted to suit the main purposes of Latin American governments in the 21st Century.