The dialectic of the carrot and the stick in the expansion of the extractive frontier in Oaxaca, Mexico

• Introduces the dialectic of the carrot and the stick in extractive governance. • Corporate benefits produce differentiated and conditional forms of legitimacy. • Coercion changes the conditions under which opposition and accommodation occur. • Coercion and consent transform one another as extractive conflicts evolve. The expansion of large-scale mining in Mexico since the 1990s has been accompanied by intensifying socio-environmental conflicts, particularly in rural and Indigenous territories. While existing literature has shown that extractive governance frequently combines coercive practices with strategies aimed at securing local legitimacy, this article argues that these mechanisms are mutually constitutive rather than simply simultaneous or complementary. It develops the concept of the dialectic of the carrot and the stick to explain how corporate social responsibility (CSR) and coercion recursively reshape the conditions under which one another operate over the life of an extractive project. The article examines the San José silver and gold mine in Oaxaca, Mexico, operated by Fortuna Silver Mines (FSM). Drawing on qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2024, including interviews, field observations, corporate publications, media reports, and civil society sources, it traces extractive governance over more than a decade of conflict. It shows that community programmes and relationships with local institutions produced differentiated and conditional forms of legitimacy, while repression, intimidation, and violence increased the costs of dissent and weakened resistance networks. Coercion thus transformed the terrain on which legitimacy was subsequently cultivated, while persistent limits to legitimacy generated renewed pressures to contain opposition. The dialectic therefore describes a recursive process through which coercion and consent reshape one another, enabling extraction to persist despite sustained opposition.