Necropolítica no Quadrilátero Ferrífero: territorialização da violência mineral e o caso de Aranha, Brumadinho/MG

Abstract

In light of the current mining landscape in the state of Minas Gerais - particularly in the region known as the “Iron Quadrangle” (Quadrilátero Ferrífero or QF), where a true catastrophe unfolds daily upon bodies and territories that are continually violated - this paper aims to present the case of the Aranha community (in Brumadinho). This community was found to have high levels of exposure to heavy metals, as revealed in a study conducted by Fiocruz and UFRJ following the collapse of the Córrego do Feijão dam in 2019. To analyze this situation, the paper adopts the concept of necropolitics, as developed by Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembe, grounded in Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, which will serve as the methodological framework. It is argued that such contaminations are part of a set of strategies - a dispositif, in Foucault’s terms - whose goal is to serve a particular mode of governmentality, that is, a rationale of the State that takes the population as its object, political economy as its guiding knowledge, and apparatuses as strategic instruments of power used to control this population and ensure economic efficiency. According to Mbembe, this control is exercised through the power to let live or make die invisibilized bodies - unlike biopolitics, which seeks to foster life in the population to enhance productivity. While different in approach, both concepts aim to ensure the maximization of the economy. The hypothesis to be discussed is that mining in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero has historically been constituted through discursive and non-discursive practices (dispositifs) whose objective (or strategic function) is the control of bodies and territory, in order to ensure the best economy for Capital located outside the exploited region. This is the central argument that this work intends to develop, using the theoretical frameworks of Foucault and Mbembe and focusing on the Aranha community in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, as the case study.