The prefix ‘infra’ means ‘below’, referring to the underlying structures that sustain societies. Generally, the term is used to describe the human-made, built structures that surround us and allow the mobility and flow of things, people and information across physical space.
Infrastructures played an important role in the building and maintenance of empires and their extractive economies. Roads and railways lay the basis for accessing valuable natural resources and transporting them to the imperial states. Many so-called ‘great’, historical infrastructural works were made possible through the dispossession of Indigenous land, enslavement of Black people, and the indentured labour of migrant populations.
Today, the term infrastructure conjures connotations of state expansion and corporate profit, as processes of infrastructure planning and implementation are based on power-infused practices involved in bringing into being particular worlds or ontologies, whilst erasing others. It does not take us by surprise that many contemporary infrastructures serve the interests of powerful nations (and therein, the dominant class), frequently resulting in the neglect and destruction of human lives and of the very contexts that generate life.
Infrastructures mediate and reconfigure the organisation of life, including its material, social and affective structures. In fact, they are interdependent, mutable socio-material arrangements that therefore can foster any kind of life and sociality that we are able to imagine. In the face of the infrastructural decline that followed deindustrialisation and austerity politics, voices for different and commons infrastructures have become louder. In particular Indigenous land defenders and intellectuals have made us aware of the possibilities of constructing infrastructures aimed at the maintenance, cultivation and repair of a complex and heterogeneous web of life, sustaining diverse ecosystems and generating the conditions for the flourishing of untamed life.Infrastructure megaprojects are civil, mechanical and electrical engineering works that require large investments of public and private resources. Generally, as megaproject is defined each infrastructure work whose cost exceeds one billion dollars – in poorer countries that can be over one hundred million dollars. Such works tend to attract a high level of political interest and public attention, as well as social opposition due to adverse impacts on local populations and the environment. Infrastructure megaprojects can be built for the tourism, energy or transport sector, and subsequently, large numbers of experts, politicians and companies are involved in the planning and construction of such a project.
International organisations and planners of public or private institutions promote megaprojects under the premise of modernization and economic progress. Their construction is usually justified with the alleged benefits for local residents and with a vision of a future based on economic development, which involves jobs for local populations, access to medical and educational services, and the expansion of transport networks to boost the regional economy and global integration.
The implementation of infrastructure megaprojects frequently has negative implications for the environment and human settlements impacted by their construction, since they cause alterations of local economic-productive systems and, as a result, radical transformations of social life. Among possible negative impacts are: contamination of local ecosystems and reduction of existing biodiversity; community division and conflict; forced displacement and related trauma; revocation of collective landholding schemes and subsequent loss of community cohesion and endangerment of indigenous cultural survival; criminalisation of opponents and land defenders; corruption and backroom deals between governments, companies and local elites.
Infrastructure megaprojects are part of a developmentalist vision of the world that is based on imaginaries of modernisation and capitalist progress. This vision has been questioned by different sectors of societies, not only because of damages to populations and the environment, but because of the often irreversible social and relational impacts. Infrastructure megaprojects establish a new kind of territoriality, that is the collective forms of living and governance of the natural world. In particular, rural ways of life and economies become reconfigured and subordinated to suit the extraction of natural resources, the production and transit of goods and the circulation of capital. Often the cultural survival of indigenous, afro-descendent and traditional communities becomes endangered.
There are no easy responses or quick fixes to this. Any infrastructure megaproject – in a signatory state of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 – that may affect indigenous peoples or their territories must obtain their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). This is a specific right that pertains to indigenous peoples. The consent seeking procedure must be culturally appropriate, which is a huge challenge in an intercultural environment that involves multiple ethnic groups and languages, and where indigenous populations remain digitally excluded. However, FPIC remains a defective and insufficient tool that does not guarantee cultural survival in the ways that indigenous peoples envision or desire. In reality, the procedure is often bypassed by national governments and international corporations or fails to comply with the standards due to interventions of corrupt elites and local authorities.
Research shows that an extensive assessment of the wants and needs of local communities prior to infrastructure planning, contracting and implementation is paramount. In many cases communities already possess visions of what kinds of infrastructure they desire. Often, those relate to well-equipped and staffed hospitals and specialised medical institutions, sanitary and waste management facilities, educational institutions and broadband and mobile phone connectivity, among others. The inclusion of token minority individuals into design and implementation procedures is not able to produce sustainable solutions. Communities aim to develop as a whole and in their own cultural ways; it is therefore crucial that infrastructure projects take locally existing knowledge, capacities and economies into account and boost those. Smaller projects that involve local staff and skill sets are generally better equipped for this than megaprojects.
This website is part of the research project “Gender Violence and Security in the Interoceanic Industrial Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: A Critical Examination of Policies and Practices”, and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 844176.
