Carlos Tornel carlos.a.tornel@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy
Petro-populism and infrastructural energy landscapes: The case of Mexico’s Dos Bocas Refinery
Tornel, Carlos
Authors
Abstract
In 2018, recently elected presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) promised the construction of a new refinery in Mexico. Arguing a lack of energy independence and the urgent need to ‘rescue’ petro-state giant PEMEX and the stateowned electricity company CFE from the mismanagement and neoliberal policies of previous administrations, the Dos Bocas Refinery (DBR) became one of the main flagship projects of AMLO’s administration symbolizing a discourse of energy security and national pride. This paper reviews the process of approval and construction of the refinery by assessing, the material and relational character of energy infrastructure, the “politics and poetics” that are built into the promises of infrastructure projects, and the shifting temporalities of infrastructure and their interaction with emerging ‘petropopulist landscapes’ which serve as material evidence of oil-led development. Drawing on Anthropology's and Geography’s ‘infrastructural turn’, this paper reviews a series of government documents, speeches and declarations supported by interviews with energy experts to understand the symbolic meaning of energy infrastructure and how the DBR has become deeply entangled with a nationalist political project which has instituted an inertial path-dependence towards the continued use of fossil fuels, off-staging other concerns associated to climate change and the energy transition at the national level.
Citation
Tornel, C. (2021). Petro-populism and infrastructural energy landscapes: The case of Mexico’s Dos Bocas Refinery. Nordia Geographical Publications Yearbook, 49(5), https://doi.org/10.30671/nordia.98353
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Dec 1, 2021 |
Publication Date | 2021 |
Deposit Date | Jan 25, 2022 |
Publicly Available Date | Jan 25, 2022 |
Journal | Nordia Geographical Publications |
Print ISSN | 1238-2086 |
Publisher | Pohjois-Suomen Maantieteellinen Seura ry |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 49 |
Issue | 5 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.30671/nordia.98353 |
Files
Published Journal Article
(521 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Copyright Statement
Open Access pathways permitted by this journal's policy are listed below by article version. This pathway includes Open Access publishing
EmbargoNo Embargo
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Copyright OwnerAuthors
Location: Any Website, Journal Website
You might also like
Editorial to Re-worlding: Pluriversal Politics in the Anthropocene
(2022)
Journal Article
Seeking common ground: On possible dialogues between Marxisms and Political Ontology
(2022)
Journal Article
Climate change and capitalism: a degrowth agenda for climate justice
(2019)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search