Mineração no Brasil: o caráter do subdesenvolvimento e da dependência da indústria extrativa mineral

Abstract

The formation of Latin America has important relationships with the development of the world capitalist system itself. The expansion of the world market and the incorporation of new spaces into the system of production and circulation of goods, as an intrinsic condition for the survival and reproduction of capital, required the establishment of an international division of labor in which the region essentially played the role of supplier of products. supplies to industrialized countries and consuming products manufactured in these countries. Within the social thinking of development theories, overcoming these different realities between countries does not refer to their level of development and, therefore, role in the international division of labor, it would only be complete as less developed countries expanded their integration into the system World capitalism and fulfilled the historical stages of overcoming underdevelopment. Going against the hegemonic thinking of development theories, the Marxist Dependency Theory presents a distinct formulation about the Latin American reality, breaking with the development-underdevelopment binomial as unlinked processes. TMD theorists demonstrated the operating mechanisms of capital that operate specifically in the region and were able to establish the conditions for allowing the structuring of dependence on Latin American formations. Based on contributions from the Marxist Theory of Dependency, this work investigated the role of mining in the Brazilian “development of underdevelopment” and discussed the current role of the mineral sector in reproducing the condition of dependence in Brazil. It was observed that in recent years there has been a process of expansion in mineral exports, in particular the increase in iron ores, stimulated by demand from China, thus resuming the primary-export character of the country strongly linked to mineral exploration.