Alejandra Watanabe Farro, Ph.D.
My research examines the political economy of climate and extractivism in the Andean region, focusing on how power structures, racialized territories, and hegemonic discourses on “green development” shape environmental governance and perpetuate historical inequalities. Drawing on Cultural Political Economy, I investigate the meaning-making processes through which extraction and capital accumulation are legitimized, particularly the role of whiteness and discursive strategies in transnational resource governance.
I approach these questions through an interdisciplinary lens spanning human geography, critical communications studies, and Latin American political ecology. My dissertation, “Discursive Geographies of Extraction: The Racialized Legitimization of Copper Mining for a Green Energy Transition in Chile and Peru,” examined how mining elites and state institutions deploy environmental narratives to justify extractive expansion under the banner of climate action, and how these narratives actively erase Indigenous and rural resistance.
I hold a Ph.D. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, an MA in Environment, Development and Policy from the University of Sussex, and a BA in Communications. I was part of the founding cohort of graduate students in the Human Rights Investigations Lab at UCSC, where I led undergraduate students in open-source investigations to uncover and verify human rights violations in the Americas. I am also a co-founder and member of the Extractivism and Society Research Cluster at UCSC.
Areas of interest
Political Economy of Climate, Political Ecology, Critical Human Geography, Environmental Communications, Just transition, Environmental Racism in the Americas
Publications
Watanabe Farro, A. “Discursive Geographies of Extraction: Towards a Territorialized Application of Cultural Political Economy of Extractivism in Chile and Peru.” Extractive Industries and Society, under revision, 2026 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2026.102020
Watanabe Farro, A., Hernández Garavito, C., Mejía, A., Méndez, C., Molina-Vital, C., Noles Cotito, M., Pereyra Chávez, N. & Smith, A.(2023) Protests in Peru: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on a Structural Crisis, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 32:1, 157-175, DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2023.2219209
Artiga-Purcell, J. A., Chiasson-LeBel, T., Leiva, F., & Watanabe-Farro, A. (2023). Disaster Extractivism: Latin America’s Extractive Shock Therapy in the Age of COVID-19. Latin American Perspectives, 50(4), 172-192. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X231187886
Public scholarship
Watanabe Farro, A., Hernández Garavito, C., Mejía, A., Méndez, C., Molina-Vital, C., Noles Cotito, M., Pereyra Chávez, N., & Smith, A. (2023, July 30). Protestas en el Perú: perspectivas interdisciplinarias para entender una crisis estructural. Travesía.
Falcón, S., Naurenberg Dunkell, S., Segatti, M., Mikhail, M., Watanabe Farro, A., Alba, V., Arguílez, I., Onchi-Molina, D., & Rodríguez Sotelo, T. (2021, January). Disinformation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Latin America. Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas, UC Santa Cruz.
Chiasson-LeBel, T., Artiga-Purcel, A., & Watanabe-Farro, A. (2020, October 1). Pandemia y extractivismo: una contaminación colonizadora cruzada. Alainet.org
Teaching and Mentoring
I facilitated instruction in Latin American and Latino Studies across courses in cultural studies, research methods, and introductory seminars (2020-2026). And supervised undergraduate researchers in open-source human rights investigations (2019-2022).
Environmental Racism in Latin America (LALS 179, Winter 2024)
Academic Literacy and Ethos: Social Justice and Community (JRLC 1, Fall 2023)
I hold a Ph.D. in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz, an MA in Environment, Development, and Policy from the University of Sussex (UK), and a BA in Communications.
Before pursuing academia, I worked as a social communicator for environmental organizations in Peru, where I designed and implemented strategic communication campaigns supporting environmental policy change.