Road Blockades During the Pandemic: Indigenous Citizenship and New Territoriality

ABSTRACT In the Peruvian Amazon, the blocking of land and river routes has become an increasingly common strategy among Indigenous groups to exercise active citizenship. Originally a means to express opposition to government decisions—particularly those concerning land tenure, territorial governance and property rights—this form of collective political expression has long shaped Indigenous histories across the Americas throughout the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. Road blockades in Peru have a long and complex trajectory; through them, Amazonian communities have redefined their position vis‐à‐vis the state, shifting from marginalisation and invisibility to recognition as legitimate political actors. Despite their significance, the spatial dimensions of these protests—especially in relation to infrastructure as both the site and object of contention—remain understudied in social science research. In 2020, during the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, many Indigenous communities in Peru deployed road blockades for an unprecedented purpose: as a strategy of health self‐defence, grounded in political and economic self‐organisation. This response echoed long‐standing demands and exposed deep‐rooted structural inequalities. The adoption of this protest tactic during the pandemic raises two central questions: First, what socio‐political and cultural factors shaped this collective action? Second, what consequences did it have within the triangular relationship between emergent spatial practices, modes of collective action and broader political disputes?