Eighteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

This paper discusses the reparation process of Paracatu de Baixo, a destroyed community in Mariana town, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Approximately three hundred people lived in this countryside community, which was affected by the rupture of a tailings dam, owned by the mining companies Samarco S.A, Vale S.A, and BHP Billiton Ltd. That stands out as the major environmental disaster in Brazil, where 50 million cubic meters of iron ore tailings leaked, covering more than 663 kilometers, and flowing until the Atlantic Ocean. The residents of this community were moved to the city, and their houses collapsed. The land they planted and the Gualaxo do Norte river where they fished are polluted. Although much focus now is to talk about (pandemic) recovery, I propose one step back with the question: Is it possible to recover a community? In my fieldwork in 2019, I realized that reparation is not recovery. According to the affected people, what was lost cannot be recovered. The community life in their land will never come back; however, they will not stop fighting. Using an ethnographic perspective, I describe how memory is an essential device to reclaim their rights. If they cannot recover their lives, they developed a method to reclaim them by comparing before and after the disaster. Thus, I conclude that they are fighting for indemnity and resettlement by dealing with memories while looking for possible futures.