A produção do espaço no eixo sul da metrópole de Belo Horizonte: o Instituto Inhotim (Brumadinho-MG) e o fetichismo da natureza

Abstract

The metropolization process of the city of Belo Horizonte (MG) towards its south area conformed a specific and complex urban outskirt, called the South Axis, where are located high luxury real estate properties in the municipalities of Nova Lima and Brumadinho. The (re)production of space on that site shows some trends or contemporary strategies of reproduction of capital that articulate the capitalization of ground and monopoly rents and the production of new commodities associated with the discourses and representations of nature, specifically a romanticized and at the same time rationalized nature, which, paradoxically, both renounces the effects of urbanization as helps to strengthen them. The real estate properties located in this fragment of the metropolis often correspond to the redirection of investments formerly allocated in mineral production, an activity that favored the concentration of land by mining companies. In Brumadinho, an old farm called Inhotim, in which there used to be iron ore mining, was transformed by its owner Bernardo Paz in an exposure place for his collection of works of contemporary art scattered amid meticulously crafted gardens. Owner of the Itaminas Group, the entrepreneur Paz founded the Civil Society Organization of Public Interest (OSCIP) called Inhotim Institute, whose headquarter is located in this farm. By joining the so-called Third Sector, he could involve public and private funding through partnerships and tax incentive policies for the management of his assets. The expansion of the association, ruled by the increasing number of tourists and the positive coverage by the media, has increased the land value of the site and the surrounding area, where there will be built several private real estate developments by the company Horizontes Ltda., controlled by Paz. The expansion of the Inhotim Institute caused the fading of the village Inhotim, a community that had, by 2005, around 300 people and whose homes and land were purchased by the entrepreneur. The stunning magnitude and abundance of investments, real estates properties, partnerships and sponsorships, art pavilions, botanical species, visiting public, media visibility and academic research involving the Inhotim Institute and the enterprise linked to it can reveal the production of necessities defined by the metropolization process. The transformation of urban centers after the capitalist crisis of accumulation, revealed in the 1970s, was made by mobilizing new strategies focused on the production of space, which require a very close coordination with the State, which is responsible for ensuring legal rights on private ownership of land and on construction parameters as well as for providing basic infrastructure to facilitate investments. The use of culture and art, made commodities in urban recovery projects, became more frequent after the transition of the capitalist regime of accumulation. Cultural and artistic commodities, as well as being an important part of the large cities services sector, allow obtaining direct or indirect monopoly rents, which require the existence of some kind of uniqueness to the establishment of monopoly prices. The real estate production and large urban projects for declining industrial areas and degraded centers, or new areas of expansion in joint actions with the State, have started to incorporate landscaping projects as a marketing strategy. The creation of the Inhotim Institute is an explicitly example of this process and makes clear that the "free time" and "free spaces" cannot be treated separately from a broader discussion on the urban society. The fetishism of nature, made possible by the scission that alienation places and which is assembled in the spectacle, masks the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production and, by legitimizing certain spatial practices, contribute to its reproduction.