Comic-Strip Mining: Neo-Extractivism and Land Conflicts in Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020) and Nelly Luna and Jesús Cossio’s La guerra por el agua (2016)

Abstract

From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation communities to the forest fires that rampage across the Gran Chaco due to soy deforestation, the devastating impact of neoextractivism is writ large in the Americas. To the backdrop of ecological devastation and the struggle for natural resources, local peoples across the region are faced with the impact of cultural upheaval and displacement brought about by faceless multinational corporations. In this article, I address the way two comics artists have used the graphic form to address neoextractivism, highlighting how investigative comics can create counterimaginaries of exploitation by relating image-stories told by local inhabitants. In 2016, working in collaboration with Nelly Luna Amancio and Ojo Público, the Peruvian Jesús Cossio published the webcomic La guerra por el agua, a study of the impact of the Tía María mine in Ayacucho, southern Peru, an operation owned by the Mexican company Southern Copper, later also released as a newspaper-sized pamphlet version in 2018. And in 2020 the US-Maltese Joe Sacco – who spoke at the launch of La guerra por el agua – released his graphic work Paying the Land, an exploration of the upheaval caused to the Dene in the Mackenzie River Valley by both the Canadian state and mining enterprises. Though both journalistic works are cut through by social protest and political wranglings, they simultaneously demonstrate the power of the micropolitical – in which we might include the comic form itself – to transgress the narratives and imaginaries of big capital.

Keywords

• Canada
• Peru
• comics journalism
• neoextractivism
• slow violence
• Joe Sacco