Ruin Porn in Paracatu
The old village of Paracatu, sits in a quiet, relatively isolated and fertile valley, fifty kilometres from the historic town of Mariana. A settlement of predominantly subsistence farmers, with a church and community centre at its heart, its eighty homes once stood scattered either side of the sparkling Rio Gualuxo. Then on Sunday November the 15th, 2015, this arcadian nexus between humans and nature was all but destroyed. As children played football, families worked on their small holdings, and the faithful prayed, terrifying news spread through the village. The Fundão tailings dam, owned by the mining company Samarco, had collapsed without warning, and released a fifty million cubic metre avalanche comprised of ground rock, sand, clay, mercury, copper, lead, zinc, arsenic, and manganese. Bento Rodriguez was the first village to be inundated by the toxic tsunami, that took another four hours to bury Paracutu under two metres of contaminated sludge. Seventeen hours later it arrived at the Atlantic coast leaving in its wake nineteen dead and a trail of utter devastation. As I walked around the ruined buildings it was difficult to imagine or rather reconcile the aerial photographs of the immediate post disaster landscape, that resembled a World War I battlefield, with the view in front of me. Enveloped in resurgent greenery, the assemblages of broken walls, shards of concrete, and random pieces of furniture, had assumed a disturbingly picturesque quality that camouflaged the full horror of the landslide which had destroyed not just homes, but memories, social networks and a whole way of life, . Nine years later and the battle for adequate compensation and rehousing continues. In the intervening years, the global mining enterprise Vale-BHP, shorthand for the appropriately named, Broken Hill Propriety Company Ltd, has tried to distance itself from the tragedy, arguing that they were mere shareholders in Samarco. In fact, Samarco is one of their joint-ventures and it has now been proven that the directors knew of the dam’s structural weaknesses. In April 2024, the lawyers prosecuting the mining company delivered a devastating indictment: “The new evidence revealed in court today appears to torpedo BHP’s public position that they were mere shareholders in Samarco. In 2015 BHP promised that the truth about the dam collapse would come out. It has spent the intervening eight and a half years denying fair repair and recovery to the victims, whose lives were devastated, while spending millions in the courts frustrating attempts to get at the truth.[i] The Brasilian government meanwhile have demanded an additional 16 billion dollars in reparations. The case continues.
[i] https://pogustgoodhead.com/court-orders-bhp-ceo-to-hand-over-contract-as-new-evidence-reveals-bhps-true-involvement-in-mariana-dam-disaster/ accessed June 21, 2024