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The primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the power dynamics of largescale mining expansion in Ecuador and its contentious relation to development. My study of these dynamics is situated in the recent context of political change in Ecuador, which started when progressive President Rafael Correa took office in 2007. His political project, called the “Citizens’ Revolution”, gave rise to a vibrant, nation-wide debate about society-nature relations and alternative development, while also promoting the advent of large-scale mining. I applied an ethnographic research methodology to one of the most emblematic and conflictive cases in this context: the Mirador project, the country’s first largescale, open pit copper mine located in El Pangui, a canton in the southern Amazonian mountains of the Cordillera del Cóndor.

The literature on the expansion of large-scale mining in Latin America has been booming over the last decade, and has provided numerous new insights into the drivers and effects of the Latin American mining frontier and the anatomy of mining conflicts. My detailed study of the Mirador case also contributes to the understanding of power dynamics, and aims, as well, to add new perspectives to this literature by drawing on insights from contemporary academic debates on territory, power, and micro-political ecology.