“O começo do fim do mundo”: violência estrutural contra mulheres no contexto da hidrelétrica de Belo Monte

Abstract

The theme of the following thesis is structural violence against women in the context of “large infrastructure projects”, particularly the ones developed in the Brazilian Amazon region. The object of the study was the relationship between violence against women and the construction of Belo Monte Hydropower Plant, but, in order to realize it, it was necessary to contextualize violence, looking back at the main features which define the process of historical constitution which led to the idealization and execution of Belo Monte. Beyond that, we seek to problematize violence as an explanatory category of reality, analyzing its assumptions and determinations, emphasizing the struggles and resistances as a dimension of violence. The research used, as an analytical method, dialectical and historical materialism and it was a quanti-qualitative study based on a perspective of critical and feminist theory, on the observation of the context and experience, the discourse of women and on official institutional data about violence against women. The information consulted was analyzed by a triangulation technique. The data analysis allowed us to argue that the relationship between violence against women and the social order is still considered secondary, and this violence mostly seen as a result of individual choices and interpersonal conflicts. However, such violence is a condition and a byproduct of social relationships reflecting its own modus operandi given its exacerbation. In this research, violence against women took many forms which can be synthesized as expropriation-oppression-exploitation of female lands, spaces and bodies, with a particular emphasis on rape, but also as others, some well-known - such as domestic abuse and sexual and psychological harassment –, some more insidious like the ones subsumed in social relationships, be them through more direct forms of violence, or through the dynamics of relationships which naturalize it – ethnocide, land and means-of-labor expropriation, exploitation of labor, racism against indigenous, black and river women. Research also revealed that State policies tackling violence against women, when they are put in place, focus only on domestic violence and shifting blame and liability towards individuals. At Belo Monte, such policies were not enough to guarantee protection or safety to women affected by the project, which allows us to assert omission and connivance of the State with the cases which took place within the context of the dam’s construction, not as a collateral effect, but as part of structural relationships in the region. The study also highlights the prominence of women in the struggles against the project’s construction and in the fight for their rights through their resistance to the many forms of violence used against them. The results suggest that violence is, in its form, a continuum, which wages war on people and nature, with violence against women as an indispensable instrument. Thus, as a structural form of violence, tackling violence against women must necessarily question patriarchal, racist and capitalist foundations of social relationships. Therefore, new paradigms of sociability are not possible if we continue to fragment relationships, focusing on individual liability and looking for solutions in “cages” and in “prisons”.