A terra jurou não esconder nada

Abstract

The title is a saying used by residents of Nova Lima (Minas Gerais) to express their discontent with the repression of the military dictatorship in the city as well as their attachment to the land. The research is concerned with the how residents of the Mingú neighborhood deal with the omnipresence of mining in their daily socio-spatial life. The neighborhood, built to house mining company workers, is located on a hillside between a gold mine that operated from the 19th century until 2003 and a gold and sulfuric acid processing industry that still operates. The text is structured around narratives articulating data from the historical and current context of the socio-spatial group, obtained through interviews and activities with residents, and research into historical sources. It describes the processes by which people, in their daily practices, sometimes face up to the problems generated by mining, and sometimes accommodate themselves, according to the horizon of expectations and objectives they develop, even in an unstable context marked by heteronomy, expropriation and other forms of violence. This constitution of the socio-spatial group informs the discussion on the production of disasters by mining — understood as comprehensive processes and not as natural events, isolated in time and space — in the continuum between extractivism and neo-extractivism.