As industrial mining has expanded its global frontiers so too have critiques of the environmental impacts on isolated peasant and indigenous populations. In the Andes of southern Peru, contemporary mining enfolds impoverished and ‘forgotten’ regions into the promises of bright new futures, animated by the promises of extractive development discourse. In doing so, contemporary industrial mining enacts and evokes latent forms of ‘social becoming’. While the poisonous consequences of living in the vicinity of extraction and environmental degradation are popularly known, they are understood, initially, as a price to be paid for development and historical neglect. The ‘externalities’ of industrial promise for local populations require what this paper terms as ‘toxic endurance’. However, ‘endurance’ is an exhaustible and unequally distributed quality, and calculations must consistently be recalibrated to determine whether silence and uncertainty remain viable strategies in the Andean search for a ‘better life’. Through the parameters and limits of endurance, and contrary to assumptions, this paper will highlight the incentives for complicity with, and acquiescence towards, environmental degradation by those in the precarious shadows of mining.

随着工业采矿扩大其全球边界，对孤立农民和土著居民的环境影响的批评也随之而来。在秘鲁南部的安第斯山脉，当代采矿业将贫困和“被遗忘”的地区纳入了光明的新未来的承诺中，并因采掘发展的承诺而充满活力。在这样做的过程中，当代工业采矿制定并唤起了“社会形成”的潜在形式。虽然生活在开采和环境退化附近的有害后果是众所周知的，但它们最初被理解为为发展和历史忽视付出的代价。工业承诺对当地居民的“外部性”需要本文所称的“毒性耐受性”。然而，“耐力”是一种可以耗尽且分布不均的品质，必须不断重新校准计算，以确定沉默和不确定性是否仍然是安第斯山脉寻求“更好生活”的可行策略。通过耐力的参数和限制，与假设相反，本文将强调那些处于不稳定的采矿阴影中的人参与和默许环境恶化的动机。