Águas e vidas suspensas: uma leitura da ruptura dos metabolismos hidroterritoriais a partir do rompimento da barragem da Vale S.A. em Brumadinho (MG)

Abstract

In this thesis, we analyze the environmental conflicts related to water in the region affected by the collapse of the Vale S.A. dam in Brumadinho (Minas Gerais, Brazil) in 2019. Based on the conception of water as territory, grounded in political ecology, we investigate how the socio-spatial transformations caused by the in situ deterritorialization of the Paraopeba River contribute to the persistence of water-related conflicts. We also examine the damage repair and mitigation processes carried out by Vale within this context. We adopt a qualitative approach, based on document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and fieldwork conducted with communities directly affected in the municipality of Brumadinho, such as Tejuco and Parque da Cachoeira. The study situates these conflicts within the broader scenario of intensifying water disputes in Brazil in the early 21st century, resulting from the subordinate insertion of Brazilian territory into the logic of global accumulation. Within this process, we highlight the advance of neoliberalism, neo-developmentalism, and neo-extractivism, which have shaped forms of water appropriation and exacerbated environmental impacts. Minas Gerais, in particular, has become the state with the highest concentration of water conflicts, worsened by the dam collapses in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019). Based on the theoretical-conceptual framework and empirical analysis of the cases studied, we propose the notions of the material and cognitive deterritorialization of waters. The former occurs through the capitalist production of space and metabolic ruptures; the latter, through the production of modern water by modern science. Additionally, we propose the concept of hydro-territorial metabolisms as a way to interpret environmental conflicts over water, considering territory as a mediator—at various levels—of the relationships between communities, territories, and waters. The analyses reveal that the repair process conducted by Vale and mediated by state agencies has reproduced technocratic and deterritorialized water management logics, disregarding the diversity of ways of life and social relations with water resources. Such an approach results in violations of the human right to water and in the homogenization of struggles for access by imposing exclusionary criteria for the provision of drinking water. By discussing hydro-territorial metabolisms and their destruction as both a condition and a result of capitalist accumulation by dispossession, the study shows how the disaster not only interrupted the material and symbolic flows of water but also created a new terrain of dispute where the rights, territories, and ways of life of the affected populations continue to be denied or rendered invisible.