O desastre na/da Bacia do Rio Doce: violências e violações sistemáticas no âmbito do (neo)extrativismo.

Abstract

Samarco’s Fundao mineral tailings dam (Vale S.A / BHP Billiton), on November 5, 2015, collapsed and caused 19 deaths and damages to thousands as it left a trail of much greater destruction along the Rio Doce Basin. Considered the largest disaster related to tailings dam in Brazil — and one of the largest in the world — the catastrophe challenges us to reflect upon the extent, magnitude and complexity of losses and damages as well as the systematic negligence and omissions on the part of the companies involved. From the analysis of three moments, the article analyzes the overlapping issues of social processes — territorially circumscribed — violent and suppressive of fundamental rights, in the scope of (neo) extractivism. We conclude that the collapse of the dam and living with the disaster reveal the systematic context of violence and intrinsic abuses of extractive capitalism, whose pattern of accumulation destroys environments, territories, cultures and lives.