Abstract

ORDUZ ROJAS, Claudia Marcela  and  BARROS PEREIRA, Doralice. The Collapse the Fundão Dam's Failure and the Rise of Disaster Capitalism in Brazil. Cuad. Geogr. Rev. Colomb. Geogr. [online]. 2023, vol.32, n.1, pp.19-34.  Epub Feb 29, 2024. ISSN 0121-215X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcdg.v32n1.94479.

On November 5 2015, the Fundão tailings dam, owned by Samarco (Vale SA/BHP Billiton), broke leaving nineteen dead, thousands of people affected, and a trail of destruction along the Doce River basin. This article aims to understand the connection between the dam's collapse and the rise of disaster capitalism in Brazil. Data was collected from primary and secondary sources, and fieldwork. It is concluded that the collapse of the dam allowed the first great experiment of disaster capitalism in Brazil, implemented through three shock therapies. The first one was the rupture of the dam itself, which, although avoidable, occurred abruptly and violently. The second therapy was an ambitious neoliberal, anti-democratic, and unpopular economic program adopted to repair and compensate for the damages and caused. Not being enough, those affected were also subjected to several mechanisms and techniques of collective torture that contributed to reduce social spending, neutralize opposition to economic treatment, and consolidate disaster capitalism in Brazil. All in all, these three shocks allowed the design of a brand-new "normality" -more ailing, brutal, and perverse-, only to benefit a small global corporate elite.

Keywords : dams; Brazil; capitalism; ecological crisis; disaster; market economy; iron; mining.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )