Abstract
This chapter focuses on the agency of the people in confronting a transnational corporation and national elite interests and in defending their lands, their territory and the river. While the story told so far primarily illustrates the power the corporation had in shaping and controlling knowledge and space, the Chapter brings attention to the power of social mobilisation. It tells this side of the story chronologically, starting with the early alliance between activism and science, leading to intense protests and confrontations, and ultimately to a more juridical and political forms of contestation after the valley had been flooded. The Chapter argues that the initiation of the dam’s operation itself signified a tipping point for the resistance movement that, without being able to stop the project, changed the political landscape in Huila lastingly.
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Helmcke, C. (2023). Resistance—Defending Territory. In: Engineering Reality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40643-0_11
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