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If you do not remember, mister Excuse me, I’ll now tell you That here where now stands
That here where now stands This high building
That here where now stands This high building
Was an old house A two-story mansion
It was here, mister That me, Mato Grosso and Joca
Built our shack
But one day
Oh, don’t even mention it There came the men with the tools
The owner wanted it demolished
The owner wanted it demolished..
- And are irreversible, this is important. It’s not something that may have an impact
that we say “ok, we recover it afterwards and it is just like before”.
- In the rainy season, this water here gets red, red, really red.
Just like blood.
In 2012, Brazil exported 350 million tons of minerals. More than half of the export was of primary products.
Minerals without any beneficiation.
Serra Pelada, Pará state. The largest open gold mining in the world in the 80’s,
shocking everyone with its human anthills cutting mountains,
is now about to be re-opened.
The Canadian company that acquired the mining rights over Serra Pelada estimates that
there are still 40 tons of gold in the mine. The socioenvironmental impacts of this mining will be without precedents,
as for each gram of gold extracted, it is necessary to remove 4,5 tons of debris.
But the greed of the Brazilian government is such that it authorized this exploitation,
as well as the Belo Sun gold mine, in the Xingu region. It is estimated that, after a decade of gold exploitation,
the company will have left behind a mountain of highly toxic waste such as cyanide,
equivalent to two Sugarloaf mountains, in Xingu.
- My God, look at it!
- Look what the military police just did to this citizen!
We have to take him out!
they could not done this to me,
I live here in Serra Pelada for a long time.
A new mining code is being proposed by the Brazilian government.
The future of communities, indigenous peoples, quilombos, territories and the environment is at stake.
Mining companies are among those that most heavily finance electoral campaigns in Brazil
after construction companies. These are extraordinary numbers, more than 20 million reais [8,7 million US$]
donated to electoral campaigns, and, let’s say, by coincidence,
the reporting deputy of the proposal is one of those who received more money from mining companies.
So mining companies have a lot of influence in Congress through campaign donations.
In the last ten years, Brazil has experienced a process of gigantic growth in mining,
the business increased 550% in the last ten years.
The minister of mining and energy also has important connections with these mining companies.
- These governments are investing in what? In raw materials, right? In raw materials
that are transformed into commodities. They are investing in that.
And the mineral has become the great commodity for the government.
The Carajás region is one of the places most impacted by mining,
and where Vale S/A exploits the largest iron ore mine in the planet. There are more than 3 million people
that suffer not only with the mining exploitation and socioenvironmental devastation, but also with its logistics,
which changes dramatically the life of dozens of communities, affecting their livelihoods in their territories.
A railway of 892 km transports daily, for uninterrupted hours,
the iron ore extracted from the mine to the port of Ponta da Madeira, in Maranhão state.
The Carajás railway was inaugurated at the time of dictatorship, and is now being duplicated.
- Now it’s five hours a day, five hours and something, that people hear train roar every day,
within 24 hours.
With the other one, it’s 11 hours and 25 minutes, within 24 hours, hearing train roar.
Mining destroys what is traditional to build a new logic,
and in the building of this new logic, the populations are out, because they don’t fit in this context.
The Brazilian national mining plan 2030 estimates investments of 350 billion dollars
in the next 17 years. The proposal of the government is to multiply
for three or four times the mining extraction in the country.
- Is this Brazil? Is this right? Is this justice? Is this participation?
Is this social? Is this society?
There are many elements that we should really discuss with all freedom.
It’s not about attacking, it’s about looking at what is best
for the people, for the Brazilians, and not for certain groups.
- Mentioned the protection of water sources, mentioned the protection against the impacts on the neighborhood,
mentioned the protection against air pollution. In this code you don’t have
a single mention, not a single one, either about the impacts over communities, the impacts
over the water and water sources, or the air. So, this code is absolutely silent
about socioenvironmental issues, or the impacts over communities.
And this is one of the main struggles of the National Committee, to try to really
include the aspects of communities, the rights of communities, the limits to the process
of exploitation that happens inside a community
- It’s not a coincidence that the bill of law on indigenous rights and the mining code
are being processed together at this moment, after a long time. That is because
the mining interests want to invade indigenous lands, as they want to invade the whole national territory.
- Here we are abandoned, there is no support from public policies, no support
from public authorities. In practice, the mayor came and said “here, CSN, it’s in your hands,
you do whatever you want”
but meanwhile we are here, CSN is running over us, running over anything, over feelings, over nothing,
over rights, you understand? For them this doesn’t exist, this word doesn’t exist, respect, right…
So its expansion, how do you say… It’s the progress that runs over,
I don’t give a damn about those I’m running over, you know?
The mayor doesn’t even send teachers
or doctors here, you understand? In our health center, the doctor comes once every fifteen days, if he comes at all,
the nurse once a week.
In 2012, mining consumed 52 billion liters of water.
Enough to supply water to the city of Niterói, in Rio de Janeiro, for two years.
Mining uses a lot of water and uses a lot of energy, right? Therefore the construction of so many dams…
Belo Monte, the most important and polemic dam in Brazil today
the largest dam in the world currently under construction, Vale owns 9% of Belo Monte,
and this has a reason.
- You take water from here, from the Doce basin, and take it to another state. It’s almost like
if we had a basin transposition. We extract a great volume of water
here from Minas, and send it to the port. What are they going to do with this water there?
Will there only be minerals with water in these pipelines,
or will there be water, pure water, going there?
- So that the company comes and begins to remove the cangas, which is the caprock of our mountain ranges,
and works as a sponge that allows the recharge, so the rain falls and comes
slowly down through the cangas; for the mining companies, the cangas are waste. So they make these huge piles of waste.
Waste is garbage, something that they don’t want, they want the mineral.
So they destroy the context that allows the existence of the aquifer,
what allows that the rain doesn’t leave but drips down, then when
they come to the mineral, they destroy the place where the water is accumulated, because they must
pump all the water that they find in their way. So they suddenly eliminate a whole aquifer
that lies under a mountain range, they pump either for their own use, the majority
or transfer it to another slope, so what happens? 5, 10, 15 kilometers away,
communities that have always had their springs, that depended on them, begin to see these dry out,
and often don’t understand the reason. Definitive loss of aquifers, pollution in our valleys and water streams
health problems because of air pollution, all the detonation of the soil,
saúde por causa da poluição do ar, por causa de toda a detonação do solo, os problemas
the social problems in the cities, so it is the accumulation of many severe impacts caused by
an economic activity, and mainly that these are irreversible, that is very important.
- The water I have here is in the mouth of my cows, in the mouth of my chickens,
in the mouth of everything. It’s a fountain near the corral that I’ve had all my life. It used to run crystalline there
my wife used to do the washing there… Now where my wife washes clothes
it’s up to here with mud.
And very shallow water running over it.
- Look at the mud lying here, look. See the color, the color here in the bottom, look.
This here was a pump, you see.
This won’t last more than two years,
that they are up in the water spring up there, this won’t last more than two years, no.
The water was crystalline, we bathed... After this it gave itches, even lesions.
I want to give a message to the owner of Anglo to go and take a look at the water spring of the Ferrugem up in the waterhole in Passa Sete
that is full of dirt, of filth, to look at the two water springs because there are families suffering below
many farms and families that are suffering below.
Not only me.
- It’s a million times more profitable to be a small farmer than to work inside a mining company.
Mining is the sector that kills, mutilates and deranges workers most.
And one of the most unhealthy and underpaid activities.
What a worker earns in six hours of work, he is able to pay the salary
of the whole month, in average, of the workers in Vale.
Imagine. Imagine that. According to some calculations we made, this will reduce even more.
Itabira is the Brazilian city with the highest number of suicides. While the national average
in 2012 was one suicide for every 25.000 inhabitants, Itabira had one case for each 1.500 inhabitants.
The question remains: who profits with mining?
Brazil is in 85th place in the Human Development Index.
Exporting minerals did not make Brazil a developed country.
On the contrary, the profits arising from mining are only channeled to the government and large corporations,
many of them foreign.
But we can change this, by raising awareness
about the relevante of the fight for social and environmental relevance, for the rights of indigenous peoples, quilombolas,
of those affected by mining and of the communities living around the mines.
The socioenvironmental movements together have the power to put pressure in governments and change the direction of this history.
Here is our provocation: Inform, engage.
Together we can build a new world.
We lost all our stuff And stood outside in the street watching the demolition
Oh how sad I felt Each board that fell
Hurt in my heart Mato Grosso wanted to scream, but I told him:
- they are right, we get ourselves another place
We only felt resigned when Joca said: “God gives the cold according to the blanket”
Today we work and mown the lawns
And we sing like this to forget
Saudosa Maloca Maloca querida
Where we spent the happy days of our lives
Wistful shack Beloved shack
Where we spent the happy days of our lives