| abstract |
Latin America's resource-rich nations face a profound contradiction: despite decades of
booming extractive revenues and successive waves of governance reform, they remain trapped in
cycles of institutional fragility, social unrest, and democratic erosion. This is not a problem of
policy failure or bureaucratic inefficiency; it is the expression of a deeper structural crisis rooted
in the afterlives of colonialism (Quijano, 2000; Escobar, 2008; Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).
Postcolonial states did not simply inherit mineral wealth; they inherited institutional logics
forged in conquest, centralized fiscal extraction, racialized territorial control, and epistemic
monopolies that continue to define who governs and who is governed (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979;
Gudynas, 2009; Perreault, 2013). From the colonial mita to the modern Canon Minero in Peru
and the gas governance structures of YPFB in Bolivia, these systems have not been dismantled,
instead, they have been repackaged under the banners of modernization and development
(Bebbington et al., 2018; Postero, 2017). By integrating institutional economics with dependency
theory and decolonial critique, this thesis exposes how legal and administrative reforms often
simulate democratization while entrenching elite control. In both Peru and Bolivia, multinational
corporations, state technocrats, and militarized forces form durable coalitions that co-opt
Indigenous rights frameworks such as prior consultation laws and plurinational recognition to
legitimize continued dispossession (Fabricant & Gustafson, 2011; Webber, 2017;
Arellano-Yanguas, 2011). This is not governance gone wrong, it is governance working exactly
as designed (Richani, 2013; Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006). Territorial conflict is not an
aberration but a mechanism of rule. From the Conga and Las Bambas conflicts in Peru to the
TIPNIS highway and lithium disputes in the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the use of
state-sanctioned violence is routine, not exceptional (Svampa, 2019; Bebbington, 2009;
Gudynas, 2015). Extraction is maintained not just through bulldozers and contracts, but through
the repression of dissent and the erasure of alternative territorialities (Santos, 2007; Escobar,
2018).
This continuity is evident in ideologically opposed regimes, as seen in Peru's neoliberal
decentralization and Bolivia's left-wing resource nationalism, converging on structurally similar
extractive models. This convergence reveals a hard truth: the primary constraint is not ideology
but the deep political economy of dependence, which positions extraction as the only viable path
to governability without redistribution (Webber, 2017; Gudynas, 2011). Governance reforms
repeatedly fail because they misread the terrain. The obstacle is not flawed procedures—it is an
institutional purpose. Extractive institutions are not broken; they are functioning precisely to
concentrate wealth, suppress contestation, and defer redistribution (Acemoglu & Robinson,
2012; Ferguson, 1994). Real transformation requires more than transparency measures or
technical adjustments. It demands a redistribution of power: the integration of Indigenous
governance systems, binding participatory mechanisms, and structural checks on elite capture
(Postero, 2017; Santos, 2007).
Unless these foundational asymmetries are confronted, resource-rich nations will remain
locked in extractive cycles that breed conflict, deepen inequality, and corrode democracy. The
question is no longer whether they can afford structural change, but whether they can survive
without it.
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