O rompimento da barragem da mina Córrego do Feijão: controvérsias da Política da Informação sobre riscos e impactos associados às barragens de mineração

Abstract

On January 25th, 2019, the tailings dam B-I at Córrego do Feijão Mine, belonging to Vale S/A, in the municipality of Brumadinho (MG), collapsed. The gravity and recurrence of socio-technical disasters in Brazil give rise to the need for clarifications from the State regarding the processes that trigger such crisis situations and also the response procedures to them. It is problematized that the concentration of information by hegemonic agents tends to compromise the territorial sovereignty of the State in the prevention of geotechnical risks associated with mining dams and in the full damage repair caused by the rupture. The aim is to investigate the Information Policy about the risks and impacts related to mining dams from the survey of controversies, enabling to highlight the socio-technical network which builds up this policy. Referring to the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the principle of generalized symmetry is assumed, which grants human and non-human actors the status of actant, allowing both political and technical aspects to be incorporated in the analysis. The main controversy, which also unfolds into others, stems from the fact that the informational upgrades brought about by globalization, although allowing for an increasingly deeper and more predictable knowledge of the geographic space, have not guaranteed the protection of the collective interests and the environment. It emerges from this analysis that the socio-technical network involved in the production of information about geotechnical risks is articulated around a fiscalizing procedure based on data of self-declaratory nature, provided by the private sector, which hires external audits. As a political axis of this network, the neoliberal rationality, oriented towards competitiveness, explains the Corporate Policy of prioritizing the company's handling of reputational and economic impacts, in detriment of territorial risks, as well as supports the discourse of delegitimation of the State as an administration model, in order to justify budget restrictions that disrupt state action, without making it disposable. Considering that the State's ability to act on the territory is associated with data integrity and information reliability, territorial sovereignty is closely related to informational sovereignty, undertaken from a greater incidence on the uses of information, which defines the set of intentions and interests associated with this resource. Within the scope of the repair process, a priori, in the judicial sphere, a decentralization on the production of technical-scientific information was established to enable the assessment of collective damages, through the implementation of Brumadinho-UFMG Project. The benefit of expanding the network of actors involved in the construction of the scientific fact lies in the crossing of the different studies produced, comprising a system for validating information and legitimizing results. Despite the complexity and uncertainties surrounding the damages, the Judicial Agreement reconfigured this network, demobilizing expert studies and reducing the possibility of the emergence of controversies, as it may configure a black box, shutting off complex procedures.