Às margens do rio Doce e no meio da lama: os danos do desastre da mineradora Samarco sobre o município de Governador Valadares/MG

Abstract

The hardships among the communities affected by the socio-environmental impacts resulting from the collapse of the Mining Company Samarco’s tailings dam along Doce River basin exposed the Capitalism System’s despoil effect and its standards of domination. Based on Marxist approaches, this research aims at analyzing the big companies’ control processes on certain locations, mainly in those regions whose economies are based on extractive logic, or which serve as strategic links for this sector's activities. Governador Valadares City, due to its logistical connection’s importance for this mining system, through Vitória-Minas Railroad’s (Estrada de Ferro Vitória-Minas/EFVM) facilities and its maneuvering and maintenance yard, is used by Vale to transport a large part of its production. Vale's recent governance background has demonstrated its capacity for territorial control, and, in this specific scenario, it was accepted by the public authorities, as a way of obtaining political and economic advantages. However, the collapse of Fundão, one of the retails dams, required the creation of a new more complex strategy, due to the magnitude of the damage and the commotion generated in that context. The extrajudicial mechanisms adopted, with the promise of speeding up and efficient compensations, were implemented and imposed on the people who were affected, as a way of breaking down the political dimension of popular participation in reparatory and compensatory legal actions. The creation of Renova Foundation as a private disaster management’s pattern, established a new way of extracting value for mining companies, as they can lead the operational guidance of repairing programs and actions, anticipating costs, and achieving privatization advantages.