Knowledge Exchange as Resistance: Predatory Mining in the Zona da Mata

By Russell Nylen

On a brisk early morning in July, the employees and volunteers of Iracambi, a research/reforestation NGO, rushed to prepare for a bus full of 15-16-year-olds coming from a school in the nearby town of Rosario da Limeira. These teens were taking part in Iracambi’s Young Eco Leaders educational program that educates local youth on the values of preserving their surrounding environment. This program has been one of Iracambi’s responses to increased mining pressure in the region that threatens not only their reforestation efforts, but also the livelihoods of traditional farmer communities and the preservation of the nearby Serra do Brigadeiro State Park.

This region of Brazil known as the Zona da Mata (forested zone) is a small segment of the once vast Atlantic Forest that originally spanned over 500,000 square miles, of which now less than 10% remains. This region of the Atlantic Forest was originally inhabited by indigenous populations such as the Puri, and over the course of Minas Gerais’s colonial history, the environment and indigenous populations have been brutally reduced largely due to intensive extractive industries. Portuguese settlers began a trend in extraction due to a massive gold and then diamond rush; the economy’s exports have since shifted to iron ore, coffee, and soybeans. While the largest source of wealth in Minas Gerais comes from the mining sector, the largest source of employment is small-scale family agriculture (Minas Gerais, n. d.).

Figure 2: A small welcome sign as your drive into Iracambi

Iracambi works with local communities to promote more sustainable forms of agriculture and reforest the region surrounding the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park. Its mission is to reduce the fragmentation of the remaining forests, and their Young Eco Leaders is a significant part of their efforts to persuade the surrounding communities that theirs is an environment worth saving. On this day, the teenagers visiting Iracambi were set to do a mock debate on the impacts of mining within their region. After a brief presentation about the environmental history of Brazil and a general outline of the Atlantic Forest (hotspot for biodiversity, over 20,000 species of trees, mining’s contribution to its destruction, etc.), the kids were divided into groups for their debate: one in favor of the mining operations while the other debates against it. While I am surprised at some of the information they were able to provide both in support and defiance, their exercise reflects the larger debate that is occurring as a new wave of mining interests in the region have grown. This time, the product of interest is bauxite: a mineral that is refined into aluminum.

Figure 6: Iracambi employee providing a lecture to the Young Eco Leaders before their mock debate.

The residents surrounding the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park learned in 2003 that the federal government had sold a massive number of bauxite concessions within the territory to Brazil’s largest aluminum producer Companhia Brasileira de Alumínio (CBA). These concessions cover over 6,700 hectares, encompassing over 11,000 family farms, large swaths of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park Buffer Zone, and are estimated to contain an estimated 73.7 million tons of bauxite which would produce about USD $3.5 billion worth of aluminum (Connor 2011: 6). While Minas Gerais has had a long history of mining (the name of the state translates to general mines), it has also had a notable share of disasters such as the Brumadinho dam collapse that is considered to be Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. While there are many incidents of dam ruptures in Brazil, this particular incident was caused by the Vale mining company and resulted in over 250 casualties and the destruction of the Rio Doce (Doce River). The recent push to extract bauxite around the Serra do Brigadeiro has concerned many community members and activists as the region holds the second-largest reserve of bauxite in Brazil, leading many to consider it as the new frontier for mining.

The fear of extractive industry moving in with no restraints, combined with an understanding of mining’s negative impacts has led a variety of organizations, movements, and collectives to resist a predatory style of mining in which these corporations act unfaithfully to access extraction locations. These predatory tactics include sowing conflict within communities to prevent organized resistance, trespassing private property to prospect land without consent, pushing into areas of environmental preservation along with indigenous and quilombo territories, breaking environmental laws, greenwashing their activities, and even supposedly hiring researchers to conduct ethnographic studies of certain community organizations to better disrupt their resistance. One individual impacted by the Brumadinho dam break described mining as “very seductive, but it is only ten years of euphoria followed by 100 years of agony.”

Figure 9: Isabela Mendes points to show me the marked difference between the forested and mined sides of the hill.

The mock debate held by the teenagers at Iracambi served as an introduction to the debate that is at the forefront of a variety of organizations, movements, and collectives. These groups come together once a year to discuss the actions of mining corporations and their methods of resistance at the Troca de Saberes (exchange of knowledge). The Troca de Saberes is an event held on the campus of UFV (Federal University of Viçosa) over four days at the end of July to provide space for these discussions and solidarity building. Over these four days, organizations such as Iracambi and CTA-ZM, movements such as MAM and MST, and collectives representing quilombos and indigenous communities come together to discuss a variety of conflicts. While many topics are discussed, such as access to territorial rights for quilombos and indigenous communities and the legalization of cannabis for medicinal purposes, the urgent focus is on mining.

Figure 11: Sign at the entrance to the Troca de Saberes (Exchange of Knowledge).

During this four-day event, I sat in on discussions and watched performances and documentaries that described the injustices caused by regional mining corporations. I also attended a roundtable discussion held by the Comissão dos Atingidos pela Mineração (commission of those impacted by mining), a collective that incorporates organizations and movements within the region with lawyers and activists that work to protect the Serra do Brigadeiro. Representatives of these different groups discussed the difficulties of organizing communities against mining and potential strategies for future resistance. One obstacle involved the mining corporations’ pandemic-era strategies of targeting households that were isolating to promote efforts. Recently, prospectors hired by CBA have been trespassing on private property: an overstep that lawyers believe could be brought to court to slow down their operations. Along with that, one commission member proposed working with quilombos, indigenous communities, and povos tradicionais through the legal system for official government recognition as a protected territory. While some are skeptical of the practicality of this method of resistance, others argue that it would incorporate social aspects of environmental protection necessary to enact transformational environmental justice result.

Figure 16: Main meeting between organizations working with mining such as MAM, CTA-ZM, NACAB, etc.

The air throughout the Troca de Saberes was electric with the urgent search for collaborative methods to resolve these issues, and as the evening turned to night, people came together to sing and dance. These performances of spoken word poetry, politically engaged theater and dance, and live music, lifted spirits and solidified solidarities. People shared positive visions of the future by swapping seeds of native plants and sharing cultural traditions to be passed down to future generations. As the final day of the event wound down, attendees exchanged contact information and looked forward to future conversations. While this time spent exchanging ideas is integral to the resistance against predatory mining in the region, we recognize that this journey of resistance is only the beginning and will continue to be the focus of conversations for years to come.