The subterranean state: The municipal work of artisanal miners in the northern Peruvian Andes

Abstract

Since the mid-2000s, residents of Algamarca—a rural locality in the northern Peruvian Andes—have been extracting minerals informally within the concession of a foreign mining company. Since then, most mayors of the municipalidad de centro poblado or village municipality of Algamarca have been directly involved in this economy. Based on ethnographic research, this article’s main objective is to analyze the synergy between their roles as mayors and as informal miners, as well as the influence of artisanal mining networks on their performance and capacities as authorities of a parasitic institution located at the lowest level of the Peruvian state structure. The research reveals how these miner-mayors managed to assemble their mining organization with the precarious municipal body, reconciling a constellation of individual and collective aspirations. As the mining organization consolidated over time, the political coalition became more sophisticated, providing revenues, political networks, and technical expertise that proved essential for the municipality’s survival and the political reach of its authorities. The result was the constitution of a ‘subterranean state’: an emerging political formation that, while officially operating as a state institution, is sustained by an informal structure of extraction that serves as its foundation. This political configuration not only feeds on the resources extracted from the subsoil, but also derives its continuity from arrangements operating beneath the formal circuits of state governance. This study enriches research on the politics of artisanal and small-scale mining operators, who are often simplified to disruptive and anti-state actors.