Das "Minas" e suas Serras: narrativas de construção das paisagens da mineração no Quadrilátero Ferrífero (MG)

Abstract

The territory knowed as Quadrilátero Ferrífero de Minas Gerais has its historical formation marked by the exploitation of its natural resources, mainly, its mining deposits. The landscapes resulting from such process, at the same time as they have been appropriated as significant examples of the cultural and natural heritage of the country, can also be identified as symbols of environmental degradation and territorial injustice, arising from the appropriation of this territory by the contemporary mining industry. The mining industry, a space agent that represents the interests of capital in the territories, in addition to a great capillarity, has the need to use, until exhausted, a large part of its natural, social and cultural resources. It is precisely to minimize and mitigate environmental damage in these areas that the State must act as mediator between the action of such industry and the right of conditions for the reproduction of other space agents that coexist in these territories; Socially and economically most vulnerable. Currently, patrimonialization of landscapes in Brazil as provided by State regulations can be perceived by two main biases: the environmental and the cultural one. Although these legislations converge in their legal foundation, often their applicability to the preservation and regulation of the uses of the resources of a determined territory does not always produce harmonic results among themselves. In our point of view, the usual territorial action based on the fragmented performance of state agents, to the detriment of a synergistic action among them, constitutes one of the major obstacles to the consolidation of a State policy for the management of landscapes in a territory. And to illustrate our idea, we will use the landscape heritage resulting from the application of environmental and cultural heritage regulations, as can be seen in territories that have their modified ambience, and resources used by the mining industry. In face of what was found, what we intend in the present work is to reflect on the Quadrilátero Ferrífero of Minas Gerais´s landscape heritage as a product resulted from the preservation actions tooked by the State on territories that have been changed by the mining industry by using theoretical reviews and case studies into this territory´s context.