Brazil’s Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining, a WhyHunger ally, organized its First National Meeting in the Amazonian state of Pará. MAM is a social movement formed by urban and rural families affected by extractive mining in Brazil. They advocate for sovereignty of the Brazilian people over the country’s resources. Created in 2012, the organization is one of the newest Brazilian social movement and WhyHunger had the honor to fund the organizing of its national secretariat as well as the organization of its First National Meeting. As this article shows, MAM members’ clarity about the current challenges and opportunities is inspiring.
This is a repost, written by Verena Glass.
In mid-May this year, about 700 people from 16 Brazilian states met in Parauapebas, in the south east of Pará, to discuss an issue that impacts the lives of hundreds of communities and families, yet it is not very present in the minds of the Brazilian people: the extraction, processing, transport and impacts of mining.
The image the general public has of mining in Brazil is probably that of the iron ore mine of Carajás (owned by Vale), the largest of its kind in the world. It was established during the military dictatorship in the region where today the city of Parauapebas grows disorderly. More recently, the country’s worst environmental crime in history, caused by Vale and BHP Billiton in Mariana, has caused national commotion. It fatally killed 19 people, it killed the Doce River and it affected hundreds of communities in the states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo. The commotion was mainly caused by the impunity granted by the State and the Judiciary to the defendants. But few are aware of the broader impacts of Carajás, or of the fact that what happened in Mariana happens across the country. With particular emphasis on the impunity.
Pará, one of the states that is most affected by mining activities in Brazil, has also been one of the main stages of the conflicts related to the sector. This is why a movement called the Movement of the Affected by Mining (MAM) was born here about six years ago, in this region of the Grande Carajás project. Initially promoted by members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), the purpose of the MAM is to unify the struggles of the victims of the mining industry. Since then, the MAM has grown to become a national movement. Keeping the same acronym, it changed its name to Movement for Popular Sovereignty in Mining. In mid-May 2018, the MAM held its First National Meeting, bringing together in Parauapebas around 700 people, including farmers, quilombolas (afro-descendants), riverside dwelling people, indigenous people, workers, university students and researchers, from 16 Brazilian states (Piauí, Ceará, Bahia, Pernambuco, Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Pará, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Federal District, Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) as well as representatives of movements from South Africa, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
Challenges
Challenges Through the frame of this 1st National Meeting of the MAM, it is possible to see a complex picture that highlights some of the great challenges that the movement will face in its process of becoming a national social organization. First, different from the MST (the Landless Workers Movement, from which it originated) or other movements of the Via Campesina, such as the MPA (Movement of Small Farmers) or CIMI (Indigenist Missionary Council), the social basis on which MAM intends to work is varied, diverse and sometimes antagonistic. How to create an internal culture that makes it possible to deal with indigenous communities, quilombolas, fishermen, farmers and at the same time with urban communities affected by the use of water or by the pollution generated in the extraction and processing of iron ore; with communities impacted by railroads or pipelines that drain mining production; with mineworkers and outsourced workers that have precarious labour conditions; with artisanal miners, and others? Fabiano Bringel, a professor at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, gives an example: after the recent flooding of the tailings basin of the company Hydro, in Barcarena in the state of Pará, the affected communities demanded the closure of the mine. But the workers wanted to keep it operating. How to deal with this paradox? How can we organize groups that are so different in their cultures and in their relations with territories? How to organize in regions where the dependence on
mining companies seem insurmountable and its impacts intolerable? Another challenge of the movement is the regionality and the specificity of the mining activity in national territory. According to Marcio Zonta, coordinator of MAM in São Paulo, about 80 different mining products are extracted and processed in Brazil. How to deal with the specificities of uranium mining in Bahia, granite in Rio Grande do Sul, gold in Goiás or bauxite in Pará? How to deal with emerald mining in the Bahian backlands or diamond and gold mining in the indigenous territories of Alto Tapajós (in Pará)? How to deal with the impacts of smelters, old and new railways to transport the ores, of the ore pipeline between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro? And, finally, the key issue: what does MAM mean with “popular sovereignty in mining”? What is the “soul” of MAM? What is its flag, its strategy, its tactic?
Moderate Radicality
Charles Trocate, national leader and founder of MAM in Parauapebas, explains that during the six years in which the movement sought to gather political strength and to reflect on the mining sector in Brazil, a central element for the MAM matured, which is to not deny mining as a founding principle. He explains that in this sense, there are three central orientations of the movement: resistance to the implantation of projects in new territories (the right to say no to mining), fight against the expansion of mining and move beyond mining there where the conjuncture allows, and struggle for social control over the country’s natural mineral resources. This includes social participation in the discussion and elaboration of policies for the sector, in the decision on how to use the generated resources, and in the definition of how, where and for who the ore is produced.
“Simply saying ‘no to mining’ does not cover the complexity of the sectors with which the MAM dialogues. There are places where it is possible to say no to mining and to build other economies. In these places we will not negotiate mitigation but resist and propose alternatives. There are places where we must overcome mining, where there is an accumulation of forces that make this possible. But there are places – like Parauapebas – where we cannot avoid mining. “What we need is to organize the social forces and give another destination to what Carajás produces”, Trocate explains. “To say that we are against mining makes it difficult for us to dialogue with society. No society lives without mining. But mining cannot just be done anyhow, impacting everything. We have to build a pact with Brazilian society. Our motto is: say no, overcome, and where this is not possible, to have social and popular control over the activity”, he adds.
According to the leader, it is important to stress that this is the birth place of MAM. “I hope it gets radicalized. We have a great need for political awareness, we have to move beyond denunciations, and we have to gather popular wisdom to understand what is ‘popular sovereignty’. The program of the MAM has not yet been finalized. What we have are its nuances.”
However, what is clear, Trocate points out, is that the response to the mineral conflicts and the basis of resistance must be linked to civil disobedience and not to a process of bureaucratization and institutionalization of the movement. “Civil disobedience must be our mark. We have to disobey the laws of capital and the mining code, and we have to dissociate the actions of the communities from the institutionality of the State.”
With an eye on taxes
With an eye on taxes The MAM has adopted a profoundly critical discourse on what it understands as an incestuous relationship between the State and capital. The State acts as an extension of the mining business in the licensing procedures, in the legislative processes and in its leniency with missteps and social and environmental impacts. In this sense, the movement will have to create a rift in this relationship between the state and capital, says Marcio Zonta.
On the other hand, the MAM has chosen two priorities that have a strong link with state institutions: the struggle to increase the value of the CFEM (Financial Compensation for the Exploration of Mineral Resources, or royalties from mining, paid by companies to Municipalities (65%); to the States and the Federal District (23%), and to Federal administration organs (12%)) and the end of the Kandir Law, which exempts products and services destined for export from ICMS tax (VAT).
Although there is no legal provision for the allocation of royalties collected by states and municipalities to environmental or social compensation, health, education or other benefits for the population affected by mining, according to the coordination of the MAM “striving to increase CFEM should not be a problem for us; because the higher the fee a company will have to pay to the government, the less it will want to settle here. Companies are settling anywhere because they do not pay much tax,” argues the direction of the movement.
“We are trying to build critical thinking in society about mining,” Charles Trocate sumps up. “In many places we will build the MAM, but in others, if we help make society understand that there is an ongoing mineral problem, we have already played an important role. During the next period, between 2018 to 2021, we have to think of agroecology as a way to move beyond mining; spreading political awareness about how to overcome mining, and communication and massification of knowledge about the mineral conflict.” And, of course, the strengthening of the efforts to make the MAM a national movement. “Defeating the resistance is easier if we are not organized,” adds Marcio Zonta.” There are many territories across the country where mining companies want to enter. This represents a huge looting that is yet to come. Therefore, where there are conflicts with mining companies, we will act on a national level.
