No horizonte, a exaustão: disputas pelo subsolo e efeitos socioespaciais dos grandes projetos de extrativismo mineral em Goiás

Abstract

The inclusion of the Cerrado of Goiás in the national and international production of goods is directly connected to geopolitics and strategies aimed at seizing territories disputed by the hydro-agribusiness, the pharmaceutical-chemical industry, tourism, and mining. Territorial resources such as land, water and ores become vital for the capital to keep its expansionary pace and income generation, focused on disputes over territories and class struggle in the face of a worldwide demand for agricultural-mineral commodities. The social-spatial effects caused by large extraction enterprises bring about social-environmental conflicts and impact the organization of spaces of collective existence of Peasant Communities, land workers, quilombolas and indigenous peoples in Goiás – the Cerradeiros Peoples. Thus, the purpose of the research was to understand the social-spatial effects of the large mineral extraction projects in Goiás, mainly the Mining-Chemical Complex in the cities of Catalão and Ouvidor, in southeastern Goiás. The methodology employed used techniques involving qualitative research and quantitative data collection. The comprehension of the reality and the subjects investigated was made possible by methodological procedures such as field research, interviews, participative research, a field journal, audiovisual records, data tabulation and informative tables, charts and diagrams. It was argued that mining is inseparable from the economic and social formation of Goiás at different production stages of its territory. It was found that the mining companies have their own geopolitics concerning occupying the Goiás’ Cerrado with an unequal, contradictory appropriation of the subsoil by strategies for control and expansion of large mining enterprises. Hence, besides land and water, the subsoil is considered to be a disputed territory. Such process is attached to the globalization of capital and the reprimarization of the Brazilian exporting agenda, with the participation of Goiás in the context of the megacycle of commodities in the 21st century’s first decade. This (re)positioned the Cerrado within the production of goods, as of the modernization of territory and commoditization of nature. Consequently, struggles for land, water and the subsoil are inseparable from the contemporary agrarian issue, and constitute what has been called the agricultural-hydro-mining business. This process also binds together resistances/existences and the working class collective organization, without overlooking the meanings and cultural practices of the subjects who resist/exist. However, the thematic approach focusing on the large mineral extraction projects in Catalão/Ouvidor has shown that conflicts with Peasant Communities, overexploitation of labor, exhaustion of landscapes, and expropriation of peasant families are concrete examples of a primitive capital accumulation and its continuous role in the dynamics of capitalism. It has also revealed the unreformability, uncontrollability, and destructiveness of capital. On the horizon, exhaustion.