The Cosmopolitics of Resistance: The Belo Monte Dam and the Struggle of Riverine Communities

Abstract

The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant in the Brazilian Amazon caused an 80% reduction in the flow of the Xingu River downstream of the main dam. Affected riverine people claim losses and the precarization of living conditions and are engaged in a dispute over water and the permanence of their territories. Based on documentary research, observations, and dialogues with riverine people, we highlight the cosmopolitical dimension of resistance to dispossession, which involves human and non-human agency. From this perspective, the struggle for recognition as a traditional people is not only a strategy for defending rights but a way to politicize the nonhierarchical, intertwined relationship between the riverines and nature. We argue that the cosmopolitical perspective captures the onto-epistemic dimension, which is crucial in both dispossession and people’s resistance. Such conflicts highlight violent dimensions of dispossession and, at the same time, make visible the politicization of the relationship between humans and non-humans.

Keywords:

• Accumulation by dispossession
• Brazilian Amazon
• cosmopolitics
• epistemologies
• human-environment relationship
• ontologies
• riverine people

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor, the guest editors, and the two anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

We dedicate this work to the riverine people of the Volta Grande do Xingu. We thank them for the interviews, for their confidence, and for sharing their trajectories. We hope that their struggle will bring them a just reparation for the suffering they have experienced.

Dedicamos esse artigo aos ribeirinhos da Volta Grande do Xingu. Agradecemos pelas entrevistas, por sua confiança e por compartilharem suas trajetórias. Esperamos que sua luta lhes traga uma justa reparação ao sofrimento que tem vivido.

Notes

1 In this paper, empirical sources are coded by type (I = interview, PO = participatory observation) and date. All sources in Portuguese language have been translated by the authors.

2 The first author lived 18 months in Altamira, between 2014 and 2015, and has regularly visited the region since 2015 as a researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and for master and doctoral research. The second author undertook PhD field research in 2013–2018, staying a total of 12 months in Altamira.

3 For further information regarding the process of displacement and resettlement, its inherent patterns of non-recognition and right violations see Chaves (2018a, 2021), Weißermel (2020), Weißermel and Chaves (2020), and Randell and Klein (2021).

4 A similar situation, also in Latin America, is reported by Muehlmann (2012) on indigenous peoples in the Colorado River basin, who place their interrelationships with the river as a counterpoint to modern statistical analyses that numerically quantify basin characteristics.

5 https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2020/11/12/em-meio-a-seca-historica-belo-monte-desvia-o-rio-xingu-de-peixes-e-pescadores (accessed October 2, 2022).

6 The MPF is a public body representing and defending the rights of the population. The prosecutors working in the MPF of Altamira, as well as defenders linked to the Public Defender’s Offices, are allies of those affected by the UHE Belo Monte, and work in concert with the leaders of those affected, local NGOs (Xingu Vivo para Sempre, Fundação Viver Produzir e Preservar, Instituto Socioambiental) and social movements, such as the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB).