Corporate Social Responsibility as a Form of Political Control in Mining and Hydroelectric Projects in the Sierra Norte de Puebla

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the corporation-community relations that led to the resistance process, which since 2011 the Sierra Norte de Puebla has undergone due to the Ixtaca mining project, in the municipality of Ixtacamaxtitlán, and to the Puebla I hydroelectric one, in the municipality of San Felipe Tepatlán, which initially had local acceptance. Through qualitative methodologies, such as ethnography, documentary research and chronological reconstruction of conflicts, opponents were found that were not articulated in the local or regional spheres. This results from the practice of corporate social responsibility, which makes invisible relations of negative reciprocity and politically captures communities. Thus, although research is limited to an initial phase, it provides empirical evidence of the local mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession, which characterize neoextractivism.