From mud to chaos – CartaCapital

After a little more than three years of the rupture of the dam of Mariana which made 19 dead and killed the Rio Doce, Brazil has experienced another week of horror and mourning in Brumadinho, with a death toll of up to 350.

First and foremost, one must call his name: the dam break in Mariana and Brumadinho, was not a "natural accident", such as a hurricane or tsunami.

It is a crime against the environment. , in which Vale was directly responsible for fraud or negligence.

The way in which the Brazilian state is organized also has its share of responsibility. For decades, oversight bodies have derailed and have demonstrated clemency and a large open revolving door between the public and private sectors.

Mining control officials are often or have been linked to the sector and in particular to Vale.

To give you an idea, to date, no family affected by 2015 has been resettled in Mariana and most of the victims are still waiting for compensation.

Of the 68 environmental fines, only one is paid in 59 installments. On the other hand, even after the tragedy, Vale regained its market value – to the point of appearing in an article from The Intercept highlighting the economic functionality of the tragedy – and paid over 7 billion reais in profits and dividends to shareholders in 2018, further increasing the remuneration of its directors.

On his website, the miner says his mission is to "turn natural resources into prosperity and sustainable development". Their values ​​are "life first" and "take care of our planet".

Apart from institutional marketing, cynicism gives way to reality. Hundreds of deaths and a significant portion of the region's watershed were buried under the mud. And shareholders' profit preceded the repair for thousands of families in the affected areas.

With two episodes in such a short period, it does not even speak to chance or surprise. Over the past decade, international studies have linked dike breaks with ore price cycles.

The urgency of starting operations in a discard period encourages mining companies around the world to choose technologies and locations unfit for installation.

The upstream dam technique, applied to Mariana and Brumadinho, is the least expensive and the least safe.

In Mariana, the construction of the dam started irregularly in 2007. In Brumadinho, it was in 2008. Just at the time when the ton of iron ore had reached the value the highest of the century.

This type of badysis leads us to believe that tragedies are not exceptions, but an element of the predatory mining "package" by large multinationals.

Bruno Milanez, that a new dam break was "a matter of time", pointing out that we had one every two years from 2002 to here.

It is impossible that we can not link them to the privatization of society. Vale's major crimes have been post-privatization, with a predominance of shareholder profit logic above all, including life.

Vale's responsibility can not lead us to ignore the connivance of public power through flexibilization. environmental licenses.

In the case of Minas Gerais started with Aécio Neves and followed with Antonio Anastasia and Fernando Pimentel. The latter approved Brumadinho's new license to erase the lights of his government in December 2018.

What Bolsonaro had foolishly announced as an intention – the facilitation of licenses, the end of the "beautiful industry", was already at to be exploited for some time by public officials of different parties in the name of "economic development"

Here we come to a fundamental point. Mariana and Brumadinho will not tell us anything if these criminal tragedies do not lead us to question the effects of the current development model on the planet and our lives.

The Brazilian economy is deeply dependent on exports of minerals, grains, water and energy. Our development is based on commodity exports, which over the last three decades have led to a revival of the economy, led by agribusiness and extractive industries.

Regarding the international division of labor, Brazil has been converted into a farm in China.

In addition to economic subordination, because it ceases to add value when selling primary products – reviving the colonial pattern -, it results in an irrational predation of the economy. environment and violence against entire populations

Indigenous, quilombolas, river populations and other traditional peoples are the main affected by these projects and the most affected by the destruction of nature and its territories.

We bear witness to this with Vale's predatory mining. These mega-economic projects have the first benefits and deepen social inequalities and the destruction of the environment. It is this logic that must be overcome. The lesson we must learn from Brumadinho is to bring to the table the debate on the model of development in Brazil