The Breakage of the Fundão Dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais Three Years Later: Considerations on a “Crime that Renews Itself”

Abstract

This article addresses the context of class struggle three years after the breakage/crime of the Fundão Dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais, which occurred on November 5, 2015. This event is inscribed in the productivist logic of the context of dependent capitalism. The process of extraction and sale of iron ore, one of the most important commodities in Brazil at the outset of the XXIst century, is shaped by the fall and resurgence of profit rates, which contributes to the perpetuation of dependence and the subordination of the continent and Brazil to the core capitalist countries. After the breakage/crime two antagonistic positions emerged in the process of compensation and reparation of damage/losses: that of the Renewal Foundation, an institution closely tied to the mining companies that caused the breakage/crime, and that of the struggle and demands of the victims. It is concluded that the context of struggle and resistance is arduous, characterized by antagonistic social class interests that are materialized in bureaucratic-institutional and legal-normative actions, which reaffirms the historical domination of capital over the working class in the context of mineral extraction.