Communities of Struggle: Spatializing Power Resources in Peru's Agrarian Strike

Abstract

This article analyses a striking case of collective action under extreme precarity: Peru's 2020 agrarian strike, which successfully repealed a law that had undermined labour rights for two decades. Drawing on an ethnographic case study in Barrio Chino (Ica) and surveys, we examine how mobilization emerged in such an adverse context for collective action. The article makes two theoretical contributions. First, it spatializes the power resources approach (PRA), demonstrating that territory actively reconfigures the power resources available to workers. Second, it adapts the concept of ‘community of struggle’ to explain how shared experiences of life and work can structure effective organizing practices without formal affiliation. The analysis reveals a key tension: The organizational fluidity that enabled rapid and effective mobilization also hindered the consolidation of permanent structures. This finding challenges linear narratives about union power construction and illuminates the contradictions inherent in organizing under extreme precarity.