O processo de expropriação de terras pela mineração no contexto da reparação do desastre em Brumadinho/MG

Abstract

The thesis analyzes the process of land expropriation by mining company Vale in the context of the socio-technical disaster it caused by the company in the Paraopeba River basin. Focusing on the municipality of Brumadinho, the study looked at the process of expropriation before and after the collapse of the B1 tailings dam in the Feijão Jangada complex. In the aftermath, mining company Vale increased the number of its rural properties in the region by 265%, jumping from 4,400 hectares to 9,500. Six different modalities of land and territory expropriation have been identified, namely: compensation, indirect domination, purchase and sale, emergency/reparation, territorial amputation, and leasing. The expropriation process, through these modalities, is implemented from “within”, from “outside” and on the margins of the institutional structure created for disaster management. The violent process of land domination imposed by the mining company has a set of characteristic practices and modus operandi, such as the destruction of expropriated property and the implementation of “security governance” through a private surveillance system. From a historical perspective, the municipality of Brumadinho can be seen as a perennial frontier in which the arrangements between the political and economic systems make it possible for mining companies to continue to dominate territories. The disaster management policy does not change this situation, but reinforces it. State policy, operated within the framework of the Ideology of Coercive Harmony, despite creating an institutionalized structure for managing the disaster, produces “mobile borders” between the political system and mining capital and, within these mobile lines, under the myth of comprehensive reparation, Vale and the state expand the extractivist model. In this context, the mining sector in Brumadinho is advancing within the framework of neo-extractivism, continuing the plundering of the region that began in the 17th century. During the fieldwork period, the author spent two years living in a village in Brumadinho, where he was able to experience various spaces together with those affected. The data that makes up the research was collected in the field, through documentary analysis and by consulting public information systems.