Book Review: Natural Resources, Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Latin America: Exploring the Boundaries of Environmental and State-Corporate Crime in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico

Abstract

result she “...is often dismissed by other White feminists as essentialist, fluffy, simplistic...” (p. 71). However, it is because her invocation is not meant symbolically but quite literally and is inseparable from nonviolence, anti-racism, and feminism that her book has the heretical power to help shift our culture back to where we came from, as in from Mother Nature-Earth. Such a literal take deeply challenges the blindspots of our now globally dominant culture of objectifying Mother Nature, as it touches uncomfortably upon its deeply embedded hubris and ethnocentrism. This hubris and ethnocentrism have their roots in Christianity, along with a bias towards Paganism, hence Nature-Earth, whether we are fully conscious of it or not. This is the one area of weakness for me given her Western focus, as in her presentation of Christianity and the role it has played in relation to colonizing and exterminating Paganism, as in the role of Pagan Goddesses (such as Sheela na gig). For although she mentions Christianity broadly in a number of places, she makes almost no differentiation between Catholicism and Protestantism, the latter which has in general no remaining representation of the divine feminine and not uncoincidentally has been and remains in many ways in its American evangelical form the chosen weapon and refuge of the motherfuckers. This lack of more nuanced analysis of Christianity makes her closing plea that as a culture “...motherfucking must be foresworn; all forms of rape and rapism must end...” (p. 236) a bit less likely. For until we recognize the source of our actual spiritual and physical survival, most in our culture will not call upon the “Mutha.” As a result, I fear the Earth will remain an “It” and we will “consume her strength,” as beautifully expressed by Marilou Awiakta in her poem “When Earth Become an ‘It’” (p. 2). Yet nevertheless we must remember, as Caputi expresses, our “...‘Mutha’s’ powers of ending one way and beginning another” (p. 4). In that spirit, I am hopeful that “call our ‘Mutha’”will have a catalytic impact. In fact, I will be buying my 92-year-old mother one and who knows, perhaps we can do some “reclaiming” of our own; Cunt! For more on ‘cunt’ reclaiming see Inga (2018) and Rees (2013).