Mapping Out Juridified Conflicts over Mining: The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil Database

Abstract

Indigenous peoples, rural and peasant populations, and Afro-descendants have increasingly disputed mining and other extractive ventures in the territories they inhabit in various regions of Latin America. This article introduces an open-access digital and bilingual curated repository of data that compiles legal and legal-like actions by various actors in the context of paradigmatic conflicts over mining in Central America and Mexico. It situates the relevance of this digital resource against the background of the increasing global recourse to law in socioenvironmental conflicts - a tendency that may be defined as the juridification of environmental politics. The article also places the database in relation to key debates in digital humanities and discusses potential uses as well as future developments and challenges to expanding and improving such a resource.