Tempo da reparação: luta e memória da comunidade atingida de Paracatu de Baixo, Mariana/MG

Abstract

This is an ethnography of the Paracatu de Baixo community’s reparation. It was affected by the collapse of the Fundão iron ore tailings dam in the city of Mariana, Minas Gerais. The residents were compulsorily displaced from the subdistrict to the city, where most of them are now living, according to a routine arranged by technical employees of Samarco (Vale and BHP Billiton) and Fundação Renova, created by the mining companies to repair the damage. The main objective is to characterize the affected people’s struggle to resume their way of living. I show that memory has become the main way to access the community from the contamination of Gualaxo do Norte River and the destruction of the land so that the ways of life have become unlivable. Based on fieldwork, reports, and documents, I describe the imposition of technical and legal apparatus in the process of reparation. I reveal how the affected people deliver their requests in these patterns, arguing that memory makes them real from a community’s perspective. The disaster establishes a rupture of time, creating “before” and “after,” when the ways of living, thinking, and making were extremely distinct. The affected people summon the past to evaluate the present and to think about the future. Therefore, the community is brought to the present by speaking, which is transcribed into projects, maps, chats, and monetary value. Memory composes the technical ways that aim for fair and full reparation.